Trend
US home electricity prices are rising four times faster than they did last decade
Through the 2010s, the average US household electricity price barely moved. Since 2020 it has climbed at more than four times that pace, and the increase shows no sign of returning to the old rate.
Why now: Payback calculators default to 2 to 3% a year for electricity price growth. Sixteen years of data say the last five years looked nothing like that.
Annual residential revenue divided by sales. Only complete years are plotted; partial-year 2026 is discussed separately below. Recent data may be preliminary.
View chart data
| Period | US average |
|---|---|
| 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 | 16.00 |
| 2024 | 16.48 |
| 2025 | 17.30 |
Source: EIA Form EIA-861M. Dataset and checksums.
Two decades, two speeds
From 2010 to 2020, the national average residential price went from 11.54 to 13.15 cents per kilowatt-hour. That is 14% over ten years, or 1.3% a year. Two of those years saw prices fall.
From 2020 to 2025 the price went from 13.15 to 17.30 cents. That is 32% in five years, or 5.6% a year. January–June 2026 averaged 18.16 cents. That partial-year observation is shown separately: it is not a full-year growth rate and is not included in the annual comparison below.
| Period | Start ¢/kWh | End ¢/kWh | Change | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 to 2020 | 11.54 | 13.15 | +14.0% | +1.3% |
| 2020 to 2025 | 13.15 | 17.30 | +31.5% | +5.6% |
Four of the five complete calendar years from 2021 through 2025 have posted a larger increase than any year of the previous decade, whose fastest was 3.2% in 2014. The exception is 2024, at 3.0%. The biggest single jump was 2022, when the average rose 10.1%.
| Year | ¢/kWh | Change from previous full year |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 13.01 | +1.1% |
| 2020 | 13.15 | +1.1% |
| 2021 | 13.66 | +3.8% |
| 2022 | 15.04 | +10.1% |
| 2023 | 16.00 | +6.4% |
| 2024 | 16.48 | +3.0% |
| 2025 | 17.30 | +5.0% |
What it means for a bill
Price is only half of a bill. The other half is usage, and usage has not changed much. The average US residential account used about 885 kWh a month in the year ending June 2020 and about 870 kWh in the year ending June 2026.
The average monthly bill over those same periods went from $115 to $156. Almost all of that increase is price, not consumption.
| Year | Use kWh/month | Bill |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | 885 | $115 |
| 2023 | 865 | $136 |
| 2026 | 870 | $156 |
Why this changes a homeowner's math
Most calculators that estimate the payback on solar panels, a heat pump or a battery ask you to assume how fast electricity prices will rise. Many default to 2 to 3% a year, close to the old decade's pace. If the last five years are the better guide, a system that displaces grid electricity pays back sooner than those defaults suggest. If prices revert, it pays back later.
Neither outcome is knowable today. What the data does show is that the assumption matters, and that the historical average depends heavily on which decade you pick. FrugalWatt's solar payback calculator currently holds the electricity price flat at whatever you enter, so its payback estimate is conservative if prices keep rising at the recent pace. Adding an escalation option is on the list.
What this data does not tell you
- Why prices rose. EIA's retail sales data reports revenue and sales by state. It does not separate generation, delivery and policy charges, so it cannot attribute the increase to fuel costs, grid investment or rate design.
- Your rate. These are national averages computed from total residential revenue divided by total residential sales. Your utility's tariff, and your bill, will differ.
- Inflation. All figures are in the dollars of the year reported. Consumer prices also rose faster after 2020, so the real increase is smaller than the nominal one shown here.
- Final numbers. EIA flags everything from January 2025 onward as preliminary. FrugalWatt keeps each release and will note any revision to these figures when the next data arrives.
Methodology and sources
Calendar-year prices are total residential revenue divided by total residential sales for the year, in cents per kWh. Annual growth rates are compound. Monthly bill and usage are 12-month revenue and sales divided by the average number of residential customers, divided by 12. Figures are nominal.
Dataset version eia861m-2026-08-26-e43e8601b730ec7e. Download the snapshot manifest and file checksums. The data month is separate from the release date and from the retrieval date. How we verify.
Corrections and updates
- September 16, 2026 Separated partial-year 2026 observations from complete-year growth comparisons and generated historical tables directly from the archived dataset.
Related
Drafted with AI assistance from FrugalWatt's data pipeline. Figures use the cited U.S. Energy Information Administration, Form EIA-861M monthly retail sales (sales_revenue.xlsx) snapshot; no interviews were conducted and no professional review is claimed. Editorial policy · Subscribe via RSS.