The states where Americans pay the most — and least — for electricity

Where Americans live can make a striking difference in what they pay to keep the lights on, with typical monthly electric bills in some states more than triple those in others.

The latest figures from the U.S. Energy Information Administration put the national average residential electricity price at 17.24 cents per kilowatt-hour, up 6% from a year earlier, based on average residential prices and an assumed monthly household use of 900 kilowatt-hours, a common benchmark for a typical home.

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North Dakota has the lowest average residential rate in the country at 11.02 cents per kilowatt-hour, while Hawaii has the highest at 41.62 cents per kWh. 

But Hawaii’s island geography makes it something of an outlier, leaving California, Rhode Island, Massachusetts and New York among the clearest mainland examples of high electricity costs. Nebraska, Idaho, Oklahoma and Arkansas also rank among the cheapest states.

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Those differences are not spread evenly across the country. Many of the lower-cost states are clustered in the Plains and parts of the South, while some of the highest prices are concentrated in the Northeast and on the West Coast.

For households already strained by inflation, those differences can translate into a meaningful monthly burden, especially in places where heavy air conditioning or heating use pushes consumption higher. 

The wide gap reflects factors that go beyond politics, including fuel mix, weather, regulation, infrastructure costs and household energy use.

For consumers, however, the bottom line is simple: where they live can have a major impact on one of the few monthly bills they cannot easily avoid.