South Dakota Electricity

What South Dakota's Electricity Data Tells Us

Residential customers in South Dakota pay 12.86¢/kWh in 2024, spread across 433.5K metered households, placing the state 22% below the national residential average of 16.48¢/kWh. Commercial rates sit at 10.55¢/kWh while industrial buyers pay 8.28¢/kWh, reflecting the cost differentials that come from voltage level, load factor, and contract length across EIA Form-861 survey respondents. Annual residential sales total 5.2M MWh on roughly $664.9M in utility revenue, a useful yardstick for sizing local demand against the grid mix that serves it.

The generation mix is led by wind at 57.9% of in-state production, with hydro providing 22.1% and natural gas supplying 10.8%. Renewable fuels, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, collectively account for 81.6% of South Dakota's electricity output, a figure that matters because each renewable megawatt-hour displaces fuel costs that otherwise flow through to retail bills. A portfolio this clean typically carries lower marginal generation costs once capacity is built, though transmission upgrades can offset part of the saving.

Looking back across EIA records, residential prices in South Dakota moved from 11.47¢/kWh in 2016 to 12.86¢/kWh in 2024, a 12.1% shift over that window. Comparable-priced neighbors include Missouri, Kentucky, Montana, which gives a peer set for sanity-checking local quotes. For anyone negotiating a supplier contract, weighing an energy-efficiency upgrade, or modeling a household budget, the combination of current rate, multi-year trend, and generation mix offers a sturdier footing than any single data point on its own.