Standards · How we work

Editorial & Corrections Policy

RateWatt turns the U.S. Energy Information Administration's published electricity figures into state, ranking, and trend pages. This page explains how those pages are produced, the standards we hold them to, and exactly how to flag a number that looks wrong.

How Pages Are Produced

RateWatt's state, ranking, and trend pages are generated from documented public datasets published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), part of the Department of Energy. We download EIA's state electricity tables (Form EIA-861 retail price and sales data, and the State Electricity Profiles generation mix), load them into a structured database, and render each page from that database. The figures you see — residential, commercial, and industrial cents per kilowatt-hour, the generation mix by fuel, and multi-year price trends — come from EIA's numbers, not hand-typed and not estimated by us.

This is a data-publishing model: the same template renders every state consistently so that all 50 states and the District of Columbia are covered the same way. We are transparent that these data pages are produced programmatically from the source dataset rather than written one by one. The editorial work goes into the pipeline (how data is sourced, normalized, and computed), the methodology, and the written guides — not into hand-authoring near-identical state pages, which would add no accuracy and invite inconsistency.

Sourcing Standards

  • Primary sources only. Electricity prices and sales come from EIA's published Form-861 data; the generation mix comes from EIA's State Electricity Profiles. Both are official federal datasets, documented in our methodology.
  • Attribution in context. Each data page names its dataset and reference year near the figures, and links to the methodology that explains how rankings and derived metrics are calculated.
  • Derived values are labeled. Numbers we compute ourselves — price-gap multiples, national-average comparisons, renewable share, and rankings — are presented as our analysis of EIA data, distinct from EIA's published figures.
  • No invented data. Where a value is unavailable for a state, sector, or year, the page says so rather than filling the gap with an estimate.

Update Cadence

EIA publishes state-level electricity price data monthly, typically with a two-to-three-month lag, and finalizes annual figures the following year. We refresh our database when new EIA releases become available, adding the latest period while preserving prior years for trend comparison, and recompute year-over-year changes. Between releases the figures are stable because the source itself does not change. The reference year is shown on every data page.

Corrections Process

If a figure on RateWatt looks wrong, please tell us. Because our pages are generated from EIA data, a genuine error almost always traces back to either the source data or our processing of it — so this is how we handle a report:

  1. Report. Email us through the contact page with the page URL and the number that looks off.
  2. Verify. We compare the figure against EIA's published tables for that state, sector, and year.
  3. Fix at the source. If the value is wrong on our side, we correct it in the database and pipeline that generate the page — not just on the single page — so every affected page is fixed at once. If the figure faithfully reflects the EIA data, we explain that and, where useful, add context.
  4. Note it. Material corrections that change a published figure are reflected the next time the page rebuilds, with the data reference year shown so you can see which release a page is based on.

We aim to acknowledge data-error reports within a few business days.

Editorial Independence

RateWatt is an independent publisher and is not affiliated with the EIA, the Department of Energy, or any utility. Our guides and analysis are not influenced by advertisers; advertising, where present, is clearly distinguishable from editorial content and never determines which states or rankings we show. Our rankings are computed mechanically from EIA figures, so no state or utility can pay to move up — or down — a list.

Appropriate Use

RateWatt is for informational purposes only and does not constitute energy-procurement, financial, or legal advice. The prices we show are EIA's state-level averages across a whole sector — a useful benchmark for comparison, not a quote for any specific home, business, or utility plan, and not the rate on your bill. For decisions about a supplier, a plan, or a major energy purchase, confirm current rates with your utility or a licensed energy provider. See our disclaimer for details.