US Energy Cost Explorer

Residential & commercial energy costs, by state

About this explorer

This site maps what US households pay for residential electricity and natural gas, and how those costs have changed over time. It covers prices, average bills, the burden those bills place on household incomes, seasonal patterns, and how each state generates its electricity, along with an hourly view of every grid in the Lower 48 states.

Data sources

  • U.S. Energy Information Administration, Hourly Electric Grid Monitor (Form EIA-930) and its reference tables

Data is fetched into a static snapshot roughly monthly, and the footer shows the current vintage. The hourly grid view is the exception. It checks EIA every 15 minutes. Most figures are statewide residential averages, which hide a wide spread between neighboring utilities. The Utilities tab is where that spread is visible.

Methodology notes

  • Prices. Electricity is the average residential revenue per kWh (¢/kWh); natural gas is the average residential price per thousand cubic feet ($/Mcf). The units are different physical quantities, so the two are only combined in dollar terms (bills, burden).
  • Average bills. The electric bill is annual residential revenue ÷ customers ÷ 12 (EIA-861). For years where EIA does not publish annual electric customer counts, the counts are averaged from the monthly series. The gas bill is the annual average price × volume delivered to residences ÷ residential customers ÷ 12. Where gas customer counts are missing, a typical-usage estimate (60 Mcf/year) is used and flagged.
  • Energy burden. Combined electric + gas bill as a share of median household income (ACS). It assumes a household with both services at statewide-average usage. Real low-income burdens are typically higher. 3% and 6% are commonly used thresholds for elevated and severe burden in energy-assistance practice.
  • Utility-level costs. The Utilities tab reads the annual EIA-861 filings directly, since the EIA API has no utility dimension. Each utility's price is its residential revenue divided by its residential sales, and its bill is that revenue divided by customers divided by twelve, the same definitions used at state level. A utility files several parts in one year, and every part is summed before either ratio is taken. Filings run about a year behind, so this tab is annual and has no monthly slider.
  • Commercial rates. The Residential and Commercial switch at the top of the page applies across the whole site. The commercial figures use the same sources and the same derivations applied to the commercial customer class. Commercial average bills are not shown anywhere, because that class spans everything from a corner shop to a hospital and an average across it would mislead more than it informs, and for the same reason the Bills and Energy burden pages step aside while Commercial is selected. Energy burden has no commercial version, since it is defined against household income. Two kinds of filings are excluded from the commercial utility table because they are not retail prices. Filings covering fewer than 25 commercial customers, which are mostly slivers of utilities based in a neighboring state, and the federal power marketing administrations such as WAPA, whose preference rate sales are wholesale in nature.
  • Utility-level gas. The Utilities tab covers natural gas as well, from the annual EIA-176 filings, with the same definitions. Gas reaches back to 2001 where electricity starts in 2015. The figures were checked by summing each state's companies back up and comparing against the statewide gas bills published elsewhere on this site, which come from a different survey and land on the same numbers.
  • Whole bills and half bills. A filing covers either the whole bill or one side of it. Where households buy energy from a competitive supplier and delivery from the wires utility, the two arrive as separate filings, and adding them would invent a number nobody pays. The service type is a control rather than a column, so an all-in price never sits beside a delivery charge, and in the partial modes the statewide average is left off the chart. Texas is the exception worth knowing. Its retail providers sell the whole bundle, so its filings are all-in and its wires companies file no residential sales at all. Gas splits the same way, between the gas included in a utility's own sales and a delivery-only charge for households that bought their gas from a marketer. Georgia shows this most clearly. Atlanta Gas Light files delivery of roughly $41 a month and the marketers file the gas separately at roughly $59, which together account for the statewide figure of about $104. Neither half alone is what anyone pays, so this site never adds them.
  • Inflation. The real-dollar toggle deflates by CPI-U to latest-month dollars. Percent metrics are unaffected. BLS never published a CPI value for October 2025 because the federal government shutdown halted data collection, so that one month is filled with the average of September and November. It is the only filled value in the series.
  • Change maps. Monthly metrics always compare the same calendar month (e.g. May vs. May) so seasonal swings don't masquerade as trends.
  • Generation mix. Utility-scale net generation by fuel from EIA. Rooftop (small-scale) solar is not included. Renewables include solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass.
  • Hourly grid data. The hourly view on the Generation mix page comes from the grid operators that balance supply and demand across the Lower 48 states, as collected by EIA on Form EIA-930. Alaska and Hawaii are not part of that survey, so they are not shown. The site checks EIA every 15 minutes and keeps the last three days. The pieces arrive at different speeds. Demand is usually an hour or two old, the fuel mix often arrives most of a day later, and flows between grids later still, so every figure carries its own hour and the chart marks where the fuel data ends. EIA stamps each value at the end of its hour, and the site shows the hour it covers in the grid's local time. EIA revises recent hours, so each refresh fetches all three days again.
  • Hourly fuels. The hourly survey has no separate biomass category and counts it under Other, so the hourly view shows the wind, solar and hydro share of generation rather than a renewable share, and it will not match the yearly figures. Batteries and other storage are shown as net output, below zero while they charge, and charging does not lower the share. The day ahead forecast is EIA's own. The regional and Lower 48 forecasts stop where the forecasts of the grids inside them run out, so a partial total never looks like a drop in demand. In a few grids the fuel breakdown and the net generation EIA publishes disagree, and both are shown as published. EIA's national demand also runs slightly above its national generation plus imports, by up to about 3 percent, so the demand line can sit a little above the stacked generation.
  • Grid map. No public boundary file for the grids was usable, so the map is built from counties. Each county goes to the grid that serves the most customers there, using the counties every utility reports serving on EIA-861, and the counties are merged into one area per grid. The borders are approximate, and seven small grids do not win any county, so they are listed under the map instead. Grids that only generate power have no area. In April 2026 two Western Area Power Administration grids were folded into SPP West, and Black Hills Energy began reporting on its own. The newest EIA-861 filings still use the old codes, so the Black Hills utilities are placed with Black Hills and the rest with SPP West until newer filings appear. The line showing how a state's customers split across grids counts residential customers from the same filings.
  • Gaps. Missing months render gray on maps and as line breaks in charts. Prices and bills are never interpolated. The one filled value anywhere is the October 2025 CPI month described above, which affects only the inflation adjustment. Hawaii's gas figures (synthetic gas) and a few small states are sparse.

Download the data

Every figure on this site is served from static JSON files that anyone can fetch directly, with no key and no signup. They refresh with the snapshot each month.

The tables are positional arrays with a self describing columns key, so each file carries its own schema. The underlying sources are public federal data, so the derived files here are free to reuse. A credit back to this site is welcome but not required.

About the author

US Energy Cost Explorer is an independent side project by Eric Nussbaumer. I work professionally in energy, data, and technology, and I built and maintain this site on my own time. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by my employer, any utility, or any government agency.

Contact

Questions, corrections, and data suggestions are welcome at contact@energy-maps.com.