Methodology

How every number on this site is produced, and what it excludes.

Where the data comes from

All prices come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's monthly collection of utility retail sales (Electric Power Monthly), taken from the public bulk ELEC dataset rather than retyped from a web page. EIA data is a work of the US government and is in the public domain. Last retrieved 2026-11-02; the most recent month available is August 2026.

What the price means

EIA reports, for each state and customer sector, total revenue and total sales for the month. The price shown is revenue divided by sales: an average across every commercial account in the state. It therefore includes energy charges, delivery charges, demand charges and fixed monthly charges, all spread across all kilowatt-hours sold. Two consequences worth stating plainly: a small business with poor load factor usually pays more than this figure, and no supplier is offering this number as a rate.

What we compute ourselves

Three figures are arithmetic on EIA's numbers rather than EIA's own: average use per account (sales divided by accounts), the year-over-year change, and each state's rank. They are labelled as computed wherever they appear.

What we do not publish

If a state's latest month lags the national release, that state gets no page until its data arrives — we do not carry forward or interpolate a missing month. We do not publish utility-level or city-level pages, because the bulk dataset does not contain utility-level retail series and we will not derive one from a state average. We do not reproduce utility tariff documents.

Updates and corrections

Pages are rebuilt when EIA publishes, which is monthly. EIA revises prior months; when it does, our history changes with it. If a figure here looks wrong, tell us.