Methodology

The site publishes one page for each respondent on the EIA-861 2025 frame, except behind-the-meter respondents and rows labeled as adjustments. That is 3,408 pages from a frame of 3,421. 1,441 of them reported residential customers.

The average price

Residential revenue in the sales file is in thousand dollars. Sales are in megawatt-hours. Cents per kilowatt-hour equals revenue divided by megawatt-hours, times 100. The average monthly bill equals revenue times 1,000, divided by customers, divided by 12. Average monthly use is sales in kilowatt-hours divided by customers divided by 12.

What is not blended

EIA labels each row bundled (energy and delivery), delivery, or energy. Distribution utilities on this site use bundled and delivery rows. Retail power marketers and community choice aggregators use bundled and energy rows. Texas wires companies that appear only in the delivery-companies file are labeled delivery. When both full service and delivery are large, the page shows both. It does not average them into a rate nobody pays.

The year-over-year split

Usage effect equals the change in monthly kilowatt-hours times the 2024 price. Price effect equals the change in price times 2025 monthly use. Those two dollars sum to the change in the average monthly bill. They describe the average customer in the filing, not your house.

State prices

July 2026 and July 2025 residential prices are Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.A. The 2025 state bill, use, and price are the EIA-861 average-bill file. A July price and a 2025 annual price are not substitutes for each other.

What was not retrieved

OpenEI Utility Rate Database: OPENEI_API_KEY is not set. Individual tariffs need verification. NREL ZIP-to-utility: NREL_API_KEY is not set. Utility-level monthly prices from EIA-861M were not ingested. The latest utility figure is the 2025 annual average. Final 2025 data were released October 7, 2026.

Rate cases are included only when this desk has read a commission, board, or company filing. The 2025–2026 cases for the highest-search utilities are cited on those pages, including Georgia Power's base-rate freeze. A utility with no cited docket is marked needs verification. That is not a claim that no case exists.

Refresh

python3 scripts/refresh_data.py downloads the public EIA zip files and Table 5.6.A if they are not cached, then rewrites the JSON under src/data/generated. Set OPENEI_API_KEY or NREL_API_KEY to record a live API check. The bulk EIA files do not need EIA_API_KEY. The default SITE_URL is https://whyismybill.com. Override it before npm run build if canonical URLs, the sitemap, robots.txt, and llms.txt should point somewhere else. Respondents with no 2025 residential customers are left out of the sitemap and marked noindex.

• EIA Form 861, 2025 final — Sales to Ultimate Customers, Delivery Companies, Average Bill, Dynamic Pricing, Frame, and Service Territory. EIA lists the 2025 final release date as October 7, 2026.
• EIA Form 861, 2024 — Prior-year sales and Texas delivery companies, used only for the year-over-year comparison.
• EIA Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A — Average residential price by state, July 2026 and July 2025, cents per kilowatt-hour.
• LIHEAP — Federal low-income home energy assistance. State contacts: https://www.acf.hhs.gov/ocs/map/liheap-map-state-and-territory-contact-listing
• EIA, prices and factors affecting electricity prices — Background on why retail electricity prices differ.
• EIA press release, January 13, 2026 — Short-Term Energy Outlook demand growth attributed to large computing facilities.
• EIA Today in Energy, data-center demand — Discussion of 2020–2025 demand growth and a higher-demand scenario.
• OpenEI Utility Rate Database — OPENEI_API_KEY is not set
• NREL Utility Rates API — NREL_API_KEY is not set

Worked source check: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861/