Electricity rates by state in 2026: what you're really paying

Louisiana leads the country at 12.44¢/kWh, roughly a third below the national average. Tennessee follows at 13.12¢. Georgia comes in at 14.60¢. The bottom of the rate table clusters in the South and the interior West, where cheap natural gas, legacy coal, and federal hydropower still set the marginal generation price. Texas averages 14.8¢ but varies widely by retail plan since the state is fully deregulated.

At the other end: Hawaii at 39.89¢/kWh, California at 33.75¢, Massachusetts at 31.51¢, Rhode Island at 31.30¢, and Alaska at 26.57¢. The gap between Louisiana and Hawaii is a 3.2x multiplier on every kilowatt-hour consumed. A refrigerator that costs $72 a year to run in Baton Rouge costs $231 in Honolulu. Same fridge, same usage, different state.

Between those extremes, most states fall in the 14 to 22¢ range. Florida sits near 15.8¢. Illinois is around 17¢. New York averages about 24¢. The complete state rate table shows where every state falls.

Hawaii's rate is structural. The islands import petroleum and liquefied natural gas for generation because there is no pipeline infrastructure, no domestic coal supply, and limited grid interconnection between islands. Nearly every BTU of generation fuel arrives by tanker. That logistics chain puts a floor under the rate that no amount of renewable buildout has lowered yet.

California at 33.75¢ reflects a different combination of pressures: wildfire liability costs passed through to ratepayers, aggressive renewable portfolio standards requiring grid infrastructure investment, and the highest utility construction labor costs in the lower 48. PG&E alone has raised rates roughly 47% since 2020. The state's time-of-use rate structure means peak-hour pricing can exceed 60¢/kWh in some service territories, though off-peak TOU windows can pull the effective rate significantly lower for households that shift usage.

Massachusetts and Rhode Island face New England's natural gas pipeline constraint. In winter, gas that would fuel power plants gets diverted to home heating, pushing wholesale electricity prices up during exactly the months when households are also running space heaters. That bottleneck has persisted for over a decade with no infrastructure fix in sight.

Alaska at 26.57¢ is another isolation story: remote diesel generation for many communities, limited interconnection between the Railbelt grid and the bush, and a sparse population that spreads fixed grid costs across fewer ratepayers.

The 5.4% year-over-year national increase is not one cause. Five overlapping forces are driving it, and they compound differently depending on where you live.

Grid aging.Seventy percent of US transmission lines are over 25 years old, according to the DOE. Utilities spent $50.9 billion on distribution infrastructure in the most recent reporting year. Every dollar of that capital spending gets recovered through rates. Fortune's February 2026 cover story on $1,000 electric bills traced much of the current bill shock to ratepayer-funded grid replacement hitting bills before the reliability benefits arrive.

Data center demand. Data centers consumed 4% of US electricity in 2025. The Department of Energy projects that share to double by 2030 as AI training and cloud computing scale up. When a 300 MW facility connects to a regional grid, the transmission and generation capacity to serve it must be built or contracted. The cost of that buildout gets spread across all ratepayers in the territory. Virginia, Texas, and parts of the Midwest are seeing the sharpest load growth from this sector.

Tariffs on equipment. Steel and aluminum tariffs increased the cost of transformers, conductors, and mounting hardware across the utility supply chain. Industry procurement reports show distribution transformers that cost $4,000 in 2021 now running $18,000 to $25,000. Those costs flow through to rates on a 2 to 4 year lag as utilities complete capital projects and file for rate recovery.

Extreme weather. Climate-driven grid hardening, including burying lines, upgrading poles, and adding flood and fire barriers, now represents a measurable share of utility capital budgets nationwide. After Hurricane Ida, Entergy Louisiana requested $3.2 billion in storm recovery costs. Ratepayers in the service territory are repaying that through a surcharge on every bill for the next 15 years. A Grist region-by-region breakdown documented similar dynamics playing out across the Gulf Coast and Southeast.

Broader inflation.Utility labor, fuel, and materials carry the same inflationary pressure as every other sector. Natural gas, the fuel that sets the marginal electricity price in most hours of the year, is up significantly from its 2020 lows. The EIA's wholesale price index for electricity-generating fuels has increased 28% since 2019.

Rates are abstract until you multiply them by an appliance. A 1,500-watt space heater run 8 hours a day for a 30-day winter month uses 360 kWh. That is $45 in Louisiana, $65 at the national average, and $144 in Hawaii. The appliance is identical. The behavior is identical. The bill diverges by more than 3x.

The pattern holds across every appliance in the house. A central air conditioner pulling 3,500 watts for 6 hours on a summer afternoon uses 21 kWh. That costs $2.61 per day in Louisiana, $3.11 in Texas, $3.79 at the national average, and $8.38 in Hawaii. A clothes dryer running a 5,000-watt cycle for 45 minutes uses 3.75 kWh per load, which is $0.47 in Louisiana and $1.50 in Hawaii. For high-draw, frequently used appliances, the state rate is the single largest variable in the annual cost.

A household that moves from Houston to Hartford sees the rate nearly double, from about 14.8¢ to 28.7¢. Nothing changed about the house or the appliances. The meter just started spinning in a different state. If your electric bill has spiked recently, the cause is often a combination of rate increases and one or two appliances drawing more than expected. Isolating the appliance and running the math at your actual state rate is the fastest way to find the answer.

The national average is a starting point. Your state's rate, which you can look up on the state rate pages, is the number that actually determines the bill. Plug in your rate and an appliance below to see what it costs to run.