Data Source

All electricity price and generation data on RateWatt comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the statistical arm of the U.S. Department of Energy. The EIA collects mandatory surveys from electric utilities and power generators across all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

RateWatt's rendered figures draw from two EIA delivery series, with Form EIA-861 documented separately as source lineage:

• EIA Retail Sales of Electricity API: Annual- and monthly-frequency statewide price, revenue, sales, and customer observations by sector. This API series supplies RateWatt's state rate tables, rankings, downloads, histories, and period comparisons.
• EIA Electric Power Monthly (EPM) / State Electricity Profiles generation: Annual electricity generation by energy source (natural gas, coal, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, etc.) for each state. Generation surfaces use this series' own max year, never the retail-sales annual year by assumption.
• Form EIA-861 final annual files: Utility-level residential customers, sales, revenue, and average price. This extract feeds /providers/* pages and the utilities table on each state profile. EIA's current page lists 2024 final data updated December 3, 2025. RateWatt never treats a retail-sales statewide average as the Form 861 average of the utilities listed on the same page, and never compares a Form 861 utility price to the retail-sales national average as if they were the same survey.
• For deeper context, the U.S. Department of Energy publishes program-level reports, and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) publishes wholesale-market material. RateWatt does not ingest either source into the figures on this site.

Electricity Price Calculation

EIA defines average retail electricity price as revenue divided by sales. RateWatt stores the API's published price field alongside revenue and sales rather than recomputing or replacing it. The underlying relationship is:

Average Price (¢/kWh) = (Total Revenue in $) ÷ (Total kWh Sold) × 100

Prices are reported separately for three sectors: residential (homes), commercial (businesses), and industrial (manufacturing and large-scale operations). The all-sector average is a revenue-weighted blend of all three.

Energy Generation Mix

Generation mix percentages show the share of a state's total electricity generation that came from each energy source during the reporting year. Sources include:

• Natural gas (combined cycle, combustion turbine, steam)
• Coal (steam turbine)
• Nuclear
• Wind (onshore and offshore)
• Solar (utility-scale photovoltaic and thermal)
• Hydroelectric
• Other renewables (geothermal, biomass, wood, waste)
• Other non-renewables (petroleum, other gases)

Percentages are computed from net generation figures (gross generation minus station use) as reported in the EIA Electric Power Monthly.

Historical Price Trends

Price trend charts use the rolling annual window currently available in RateWatt's EIA retail-sales extract. Trend pages also compare recent monthly observations where all twelve calendar months are represented. All prices are nominal (not inflation-adjusted), and every page derives its displayed first and last year from the database rather than a typed date.

State Rankings

Rankings are computed directly from the EIA data: states are ordered by the metric in question (e.g., cheapest residential price, highest renewable share) with ties resolved alphabetically. Rankings reflect annual averages, not peak or off-peak rates.

Data Vintage

RateWatt uses the latest annual- and monthly-frequency periods returned by the EIA retail-sales API at the time of each database refresh for statewide price surfaces. Generation surfaces use the latest year present in the generation extract. Provider surfaces use the Form EIA-861 report year present in the entity table. An annual retail-sales API period is not described as the finalized detailed Form EIA-861 file. Annual comparisons use annual rows; recent-rate and seasonality surfaces use monthly rows. The frequencies and surveys are stored separately and are not mixed in rankings, national utility benchmarks, or full-window change calculations.

Limitations

• Prices are statewide averages, your actual rate depends on your specific utility, tariff class, time-of-use plan, and local distribution charges.
• Small utilities and cooperative utilities may have different pricing structures not fully captured in statewide averages.
• Generation mix reflects utility-scale generation only; rooftop solar and small distributed generation may be under-counted in some states.
• Data does not include transmission and distribution charges, taxes, or fees separately, these are included in the retail price averages.

Further federal energy references

The datasets below are not sources of any figure on RateWatt. Every price and generation number we publish comes from the EIA series described above. These are listed separately because readers researching a state's energy picture often want them, and because naming them as our sources would misstate where our numbers come from. Until 2026-08-02 several of them appeared on state, trend and energy-source pages under a heading that claimed exactly that; they were moved here and the claim on those pages narrowed to the EIA series.

• EIA State Energy Data System (SEDS), a longer-run state consumption and expenditure series that RateWatt does not currently ingest.
• EPA eGRID, the power-grid emissions database.
• EPA AVERT, the avoided-emissions tool.
• NREL solar resource maps and wind resource maps, showing generation potential by location.
• NRC reactor data, nuclear operating status.
• NARUC, the directory of state public utility commissions.
• EIA energy mapping system, an interactive federal energy map.

Data Accuracy Commitment

All electricity pricing and generation data on RateWatt is presented exactly as published by the EIA without editorial modification. Our processing pipeline extracts, transforms, and loads the raw EIA data into a structured format optimized for search and comparison. We do not adjust, estimate, or interpolate any values. If you find a discrepancy between RateWatt data and the original EIA source, please contact us at hello@ratewatt.com and we will investigate and correct any errors promptly.

Not Affiliated

RateWatt is not affiliated with the U.S. Energy Information Administration or any utility company. We are an independent portal that makes publicly available government energy data accessible in a searchable, comparable format.