Electricity Rates by State

Home charging is cheap almost everywhere and it is not equally cheap anywhere. The average residential rate across the country used on this site is 16.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, but the spread behind that average is enormous: the lowest state in the table below is 11.1 cents and the highest is 41 cents, which is nearly a factor of four. For a driver covering 12,000 miles a year that difference is around 1139 dollars annually for identical driving in an identical car.

What does electricity cost per state, and what does that mean for charging?

Cost to fill assumes a 75 kWh usable pack and 90 percent charging efficiency, so the billed energy is around 83 kWh rather than 75. Cents per mile assumes 3.5 miles per kWh, which is typical for a mainstream electric crossover. Annual cost assumes 12,000 miles at that efficiency, which works out to about 3810 kWh billed.

Two observations before you use that table for anything. The first is that even the most expensive state in it beats petrol for most drivers, which is the comparison that actually matters and is worked through below. The second is that your own rate is probably not the state average, because the average blends utilities, rate classes and seasons, and because a time-of-use plan can move your effective charging rate further than moving state would.

Where is charging cheapest and most expensive?

The cheap end is dominated by states with substantial hydroelectric generation or low-cost thermal generation and relatively low delivery costs. The expensive end splits into two groups: island and remote grids where fuel has to be shipped, and dense north-eastern and Californian markets where delivery infrastructure, capacity costs and policy charges make up a large share of the bill. Neither group is changing quickly, so if you live in the expensive group the lever available to you is not the rate itself, it is when you use it.

How does a time-of-use plan change these numbers?

More than the state average does, and this is the single most useful thing on the page. Most utilities now offer a residential time-of-use tariff, and many offer one aimed specifically at electric vehicle owners. The structure is usually three bands: an on-peak window in the late afternoon and evening, an off-peak window overnight, and sometimes a super-off-peak window in the small hours or in the middle of a sunny day. Off-peak energy is frequently less than half the on-peak price.

Because a car charges overnight by default, an EV owner is almost the ideal customer for such a plan. Shifting the entire charging load into the cheapest band can take an effective charging rate from a state average of 20 cents down to 8 or 10 cents, which changes the annual figure in the table above by hundreds of dollars without any change to hardware or driving.

Two cautions. A whole-home time-of-use plan reprices everything, not just the car, so a household that cooks, does laundry and runs air conditioning through the on-peak window can end up worse off overall even while the charging itself gets cheaper. And a separately metered EV rate avoids that problem but usually requires a second meter, which is an installation cost of its own. Work your own numbers in the time-of-use savings calculator, and read how time-of-use rates work before you enrol.

How does this compare with petrol?

Cents per mile is the only fair unit, because it removes both the price per gallon and the price per kilowatt-hour from the argument and leaves the thing you actually buy, which is distance.

Set that against the cents per mile column in the state table. At the national average rate an electric crossover costs around 5 cents a mile. A 28 mpg petrol car at 3.75 dollars a gallon costs about 13.4 cents a mile. The electric car is roughly a third of the fuel cost, and the gap only closes in the very highest-rate states paired with a very efficient petrol car. The full grid across every rate and efficiency is on the cost per mile chart, and the side-by-side argument is in EV versus petrol fuel cost.

How does home charging compare with public fast charging?

This is the comparison that justifies an installation. Public DC fast charging commonly sits between 40 and 60 cents per kWh, sometimes with a session fee and often with idle fees after the session ends. Even the most expensive residential rate in the state table is below the cheap end of that range, and the national average is roughly a third of it.

For a driver covering 12,000 miles a year, the difference between charging at the national average residential rate and charging exclusively in public at 50 cents per kWh is well over a thousand dollars annually. An installation in the 900 to 1,600 dollar band therefore pays for itself inside two years for most daily drivers, which is the calculation the payback calculator exists to make concrete.

Where these numbers stop being reliable

Averages hide your utility

A state average blends every utility in the state, and in states with both municipal and investor-owned utilities the spread within the state can approach the spread between states. If you have a bill in front of you, use it. Add the supply component and the delivery component together and divide by the kilowatt-hours to get the rate that applies to you.

Seasonal and tiered structures

Many residential tariffs are tiered, so the marginal kilowatt-hour that charges your car costs more than the average kilowatt-hour on your bill. Adding 250 kWh a month for charging can push a tiered account into a higher block, which makes the true marginal cost of charging higher than any average suggests. Others are seasonal, with summer rates well above winter ones.

Fixed charges are not part of this

Monthly service charges, meter charges and minimum bills do not change when you add a car, so they are correctly excluded from a per-kWh comparison. The exception is a separately metered EV tariff, where a second meter brings its own fixed charge that has to be weighed against the cheaper energy.

Rates move

Tariffs are filed and revised, fuel adjustment clauses move quarterly in some jurisdictions, and policy charges get added and removed. The figures here are a planning anchor and a way to compare one state with another, not a forecast. Treat any dollar figure derived from them the same way.

Making the rate work for you

Three practical steps, in order of return. Enrol in whichever off-peak or EV tariff genuinely fits your household, then enforce the schedule on the charger rather than relying on memory, then measure it. A unit that reports energy per session, such as the Emporia 48 amp charger or the ChargePoint HomeFlex, turns the tariff from a theory into a number you can check. For whole-house visibility, an Emporia Vue 3 energy monitor shows the car against every other circuit, which is also how you find out that the water heater costs more than the car does.

Once the tariff is set, the remaining lever is efficiency rather than price, and that is mostly driving rather than hardware. The charging losses in this page's arithmetic are real but small. The difference between 2.2 and 3.9 miles per kWh is not small at all, and it is the reason the cents per mile column varies more by car than the rate column varies by state for most households.

Common questions

How much does it cost to charge an EV at home?

At the national average residential rate of 16.5 cents per kWh, filling a 75 kWh pack from empty costs around 13.75 dollars once charging losses are included. Nobody charges from empty at home in practice, so a realistic daily cost for an average 37 mile commute is closer to two dollars. Annual cost for 12,000 miles at 3.5 miles per kWh lands near 630 dollars.

Which state has the cheapest electricity for charging?

On average residential rates, North Dakota is the lowest in this table at 11.1 cents per kWh, with Utah, Washington, Nebraska and Wyoming close behind. Hawaii is the highest at 41 cents. The gap between the extremes is roughly 1139 dollars a year for the same 12,000 miles of driving.

Is a time-of-use rate plan worth it for EV charging?

Usually yes if the household load is concentrated in the evening and the car charges overnight, because off-peak energy on an EV plan is often less than half the on-peak price. It can cost you money if the house has a large daytime load, since a whole-home plan reprices everything and not just the car. Check the plan structure before enrolling rather than after.

Why is the cost higher than pack size multiplied by the rate?

Because you pay for energy at the meter and the battery receives less of it. Losses occur in the wall unit, in the vehicle’s AC to DC conversion and in thermal management of the pack. This site applies a consistent 90 percent efficiency figure, so a 75 kWh pack draws around 83 kWh from the wall. It is a small correction that is easy to leave out and makes payback maths look better than it is.

Do these rates include delivery charges and taxes?

They are average residential prices, which normally reflect the all-in cost per kWh across generation and delivery for typical residential customers in the state. Your own bill may separate supply from delivery, and adding those two line items together is the honest way to find your real rate. Fixed monthly charges are not part of a per-kWh figure and do not change with charging.

How does home charging compare with public fast charging?

Home charging is typically a third to a half of the cost per kWh of public DC fast charging, which commonly sits between 40 and 60 cents per kWh before session or idle fees. That gap is the entire financial argument for installing a home circuit, and it is why an installation costing 1,200 dollars frequently pays for itself within two to three years for a daily driver.

Getting your own panel and load numbers ready for an electrician? The EV Home Charging Install Planner is the paid version of these pages: 8 printable worksheets you fill in with your own numbers, plus the full PDF, $29.