Research period:
Research question
Among the 51 US state and DC jurisdictions reporting commercial electricity sales to the EIA, which carry the highest 2025 commercial retail prices, and how does the commercial-sector spread compare to the residential-sector spread?
Methodology
This ranking is computed from RateWatt's stored 2025 annual-frequency EIA retail-sales period. It is a statewide commercial benchmark, not a business tariff.
Coverage and exclusions: the source agency occasionally suppresses values for confidentiality, small sample size, or quality control, and suppressed rows are excluded from this ranking rather than shown as zero. A source revision appears here only after RateWatt ingests and republishes the affected stored period; this page makes no refresh-timing promise.
Data provenance: RateWatt stores the EIA price, sales, revenue and customer fields by state, sector and period. The displayed year comes from the newest annual-frequency period present in that stored series.
Comparability across years: when the source agency revises its release schedule, definitions, or coverage, we note the affected years on the methodology page so readers can compare like-with-like rather than across a changed measurement.
Editorial governance: RateWatt is the organization responsible for this page. Reported corrections are checked against the cited EIA series and documented under the editorial policy.
Every ranking value is rendered from the stored annual rows and can be compared with the downloadable dataset and cited EIA series.
See the methodology page for the complete data-update process, source vintage, and field definitions.
Top 10 US States by 2025 Commercial Electricity Price (EIA)
Live data: reflects the current dataset
- 1. Hawaii: 36.37
- 2. California: 26.36
- 3. Rhode Island: 23.46
- 4. Connecticut: 23.11
- 5. Massachusetts: 23.08
- 6. Alaska: 22.32
- 7. New York: 21.07
- 8. Maine: 20.96
- 9. District of Columbia: 20.41
- 10. New Hampshire: 20.16
Commercial Electricity Sales Volume Among the Highest-Priced States (2025, EIA)
The same top-priced states ranked by 2025 commercial sales volume (MWh), price and consumption move largely independently
- 1. California: 113,517.224
- 2. New York: 71,884.773
- 3. Massachusetts: 24,600.887
- 4. Connecticut: 11,480.705
- 5. District of Columbia: 7,221.194
- 6. New Hampshire: 4,148.85
- 7. Maine: 4,028.39
- 8. Rhode Island: 3,617.043
- 9. Hawaii: 2,814.791
- 10. Alaska: 2,654.26
The ranked top 10
Every row below reflects the current 10-record dataset. Reload the page after new data is processed to see the latest values.
| # | State | Cents per kWh | Sales (MWh) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | 36.37 | 2,814.791 |
| 2 | California | 26.36 | 113,517.224 |
| 3 | Rhode Island | 23.46 | 3,617.043 |
| 4 | Connecticut | 23.11 | 11,480.705 |
| 5 | Massachusetts | 23.08 | 24,600.887 |
| 6 | Alaska | 22.32 | 2,654.26 |
| 7 | New York | 21.07 | 71,884.773 |
| 8 | Maine | 20.96 | 4,028.39 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | 20.41 | 7,221.194 |
| 10 | New Hampshire | 20.16 | 4,148.85 |
Source: U.S. EIA retail-sales API · 2025 annual-frequency commercial average revenue per kWh · Not an individual business tariff
Findings
Top entity in the ranking
The top-ranked record in this dataset is Hawaii, with a value of 36.37 on the Cents per kWh column. The full top-10 set is rendered in the table above. Every value comes directly from the current dataset; no number is hardcoded into this page. The ranking and its adjacent computed prose read from the same stored rows, so they stay internally aligned with the displayed source period.
Distribution shape
The gap between the top-ranked record (36.37) and the 10th-ranked record (20.16) characterizes how concentrated the top of the distribution is. Where the top value is many multiples of the median value of the visible set, the population is highly concentrated, a small number of entities accumulate the bulk of the measured quantity. Where the top and bottom of the visible set are close together, the distribution is relatively flat across the top end. The full distribution beyond this top-10 cut is summarized in the aggregate context section below and explored in the linked entity profiles.
Aggregate context
Across the full population behind this ranking, here are the summary statistics: how many records exist in total, the sum of the ranking metric across all qualifying records, and the mean per-record value. The methodology page documents the exact filter applied (records with null or zero values on the ranking metric are excluded). This aggregate row is computed from the same dataset that powers the ranking above.
Source provenance
The records in this ranking come from the U.S. Energy Information Administration retail-sales API's 2025 annual-frequency commercial series. RateWatt normalizes the stored state rows and displays their source period; it does not promise a publication-to-page refresh interval. The methodology page documents the source URL, vintage boundary and preparation steps.
Why this ranking matters
Rankings like this one let a reader scan a population quickly and identify outliers, concentrations, and patterns that warrant deeper investigation. The detail pages linked from each entity in the table above give the full per-entity context: time-series history where available, related metrics from adjacent tables, and links onward to the underlying source records. The methodology page explains how an entity earns inclusion in the dataset and how the ranking column is computed at the source.
What this analysis cannot tell us
Commercial retail electricity prices reflect the weighted average paid by commercial customers, offices, retail, schools, hospitals, small manufacturers, and do not represent any single business's tariff. Commercial rate structures often include demand charges, time-of-use schedules, and capacity-related components that the simple per-kWh price does not capture. Many large commercial customers procure energy through retail competitive markets in deregulated states; their effective price may differ substantially from the utility default rate that drives the EIA state average. This figure is a market benchmark, not a procurement quote.
Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration, Retail Sales of Electricity, annual-frequency commercial series, EIA retail-sales data browser