Electricity Rates by State

Where you live changes what electricity costs by a factor of four. The same refrigerator, the same hours, the same habits, and a household in Hawaii pays four times what a household in Idaho pays. Every appliance figure on this site is calculated from a rate, and this is where those rates come from.

Every state, cheapest first

Why the spread is so wide

Roughly half of a residential rate is not generation at all. It is transmission and distribution, which is to say poles, wires, substations and the people who maintain them. That portion is regulated, capital-heavy and rises fairly steadily whatever fuel prices do, which is why rates have kept climbing through periods of cheap natural gas.

The rest comes down to geography and fuel. Hawaii burns imported oil for most of its power, which is why it sits so far above everywhere else. New England imports natural gas through constrained pipelines and pays for it in winter. The Pacific Northwest has hydro, the Great Plains have wind and space, and the South Central states sit on top of the gas.

Regional averages

Regional figures are useful for context and useless for budgeting, because the spread inside a region is often larger than the gap between regions. The West average is dragged upward by Hawaii, California and Alaska; strip those three out and the remaining western states are below the national figure.

• South Central 14.73¢ — Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas
• Southeast 16.16¢ — regulated markets, nuclear and gas baseload
• Midwest 16.55¢ — wind and low density
• West 19.65¢ — skewed by three outliers
• Northeast 25.91¢ — aging grid, imported gas, mostly deregulated

Regulated and deregulated states

Thirteen states plus the District of Columbia let households choose their electricity supplier, and parts of several others do too. In those markets the rate on your bill depends on whether you shopped for a plan or stayed on the utility default, and the default is typically the more expensive option. In regulated states the utility rate is the only rate, set by the state commission.

Either way, the delivery charge and the people who restore your power after a storm do not change. Only the generation line moves.

What to do with your own rate

Find the cents per kWh on your bill and use that number rather than any state average, including these. State figures are revenue divided by sales across every household in the state, which makes them a fair ranking and a poor quote.

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Costs on this page use a national average residential rate of 18.44¢ per kWh (August 2026, EIA-derived state residential averages). Your own rate is printed on your electricity bill and is the number that actually matters. Every figure here is recalculated from one central rate setting, so these tables move when the national average moves.