How much do US homes pay for electricity?

Homes paid 17.3 cents per kilowatt-hour on average in 2025, about 2 times the 8.6 cents of 2001. Each point is the average residential price across all US utilities that year, in cents of the day, not adjusted for inflation; EIA's survey starts in 2001.

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Key facts

Measure: Cents per kilowatt-hour, residential. Written from the data below.

  • The latest figure, for 2025, is 17.3.
  • That is 2 times the 2001 figure, 8.58.
  • It is the highest in the data, which go back to 2001.
  • The lowest was 8.44 in 2002.

The bigger picture, in plain words: Where is electricity cheapest in the U.S.?

This chart is one of the 50 in The U.S. in 50 charts, 2026, a yearly report of the key numbers on how the country is doing.

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Source and date

Source
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity Data Browser (retail sales)
License
Public domain (U.S. government work)
Data as of
Published

Citation

Chartly. “How much do US homes pay for electricity?” Chart. Data: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electricity Data Browser (retail sales), https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/browser/ (data as of December 31, 2025). https://chart.ly/charts/us-electricity-price (accessed November 4, 2026).

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The data

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The file has the numbers in this table, with the source, license and date. Please credit the source and Chartly. Developers can also get them as JSON (how).

Year Cents per kilowatt-hour, residential
2001 8.58
2002 8.44
2003 8.72
2004 8.95
2005 9.45
2006 10.4
2007 10.65
2008 11.26
2009 11.51
2010 11.54
2011 11.72
2012 11.88
2013 12.13
2014 12.52
2015 12.65
2016 12.55
2017 12.89
2018 12.87
2019 13.01
2020 13.15
2021 13.66
2022 15.04
2023 16
2024 16.48
2025 17.3

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