Why is my electric bill so high? Price or use, state by state

A month’s bill is its price times the kilowatt-hours used, so the change in the average bill is the change in the price and the change in use taken together. Against the 12 months before, the average bill rose in 46 of the 50 states and DC, most in Washington, DC (+20.6%), Maryland (+18.9%), and New Jersey (+18.0%). In 24 of them homes used less electricity than the year before, so the price rose by more than use fell. Where homes also used more, the bill rose by more than the price did: use climbed most in Alaska (+4.0%) and Massachusetts (+3.9%). The bill fell in 5: Oregon (−0.2%), California (−1.2%), Rhode Island (−1.8%), Connecticut (−4.9%), and Nevada (−8.3%).

The table at the foot of this page splits every state’s bill this way. Each state’s own page shows the same three figures under its answer.

Against the 12 months before, the largest price rises among the states were in Maryland (+18.5%), New Jersey (+16.0%), Pennsylvania (+12.9%), and Washington (+12.9%). Washington, DC, which the table shows beside the states rather than ranked among them, rose 24.9%. The price rose in 47 of the 50 states and fell in 3: Connecticut (−6.1%), Nevada (−3.7%), and Rhode Island (−0.2%).

Every state’s price, with its latest month and a CSV, is in the table of electricity rates by state; how far each has moved over five and ten years is in the guide to price changes by state.

Within a year, how much a home uses moves further than the price: in the median state the heaviest month uses 1.8 times as much as the lightest, while the dearest month's price is 13% above the cheapest's. Averaged over 2021–2025, the dearest month fell in summer in 39 of the 50 states and DC and in winter in 12. The widest gaps between the dearest and the cheapest month were in Arizona (July $246, February $95) and New Jersey (July $218, April $86).

Every state’s months are in the guide to summer and winter bills.

Most plans bill a fixed amount every month, whatever the meter says. Across the 314 open plans priced here it runs from $0 to $99 a month, $17 at the median, or $206 a year before any electricity. In a 500 kWh month it is, at the median, 15% of the bill. The guide to fixed charges names the largest.

A home heated by electricity uses far more of it in winter than one heated by gas, and air conditioning does the same in summer. What that adds to a bill, state by state, is in the guide to electric heating costs, and what each appliance adds on a real plan is on the appliance running-cost page.

The bill analyzer takes the total and the kilowatt-hours printed on a bill and sets them against the plans your utility publishes. If your utility publishes more than one plan, the rate comparator prices each at the use you enter, and the guide to time-of-use plans shows how far apart the dear and the cheap hours are. Your state’s page, linked in the table below, lists every plan priced there.

• Delivery and supply: the two prices inside one electricity rate
• What published electricity plans cost, state by state
• What electric heating adds to a bill, state by state

Every figure here is computed when the site is built, from the records named below, by the same code that fills the state, utility and cost-to-run pages this guide links to. When those records are refreshed, the figures change with them; the words around them do not, which is why no sentence here states a direction the data has not been checked for.

The methodology page sets out what the rate engine assumes and where its figures stop being reliable.