South Dakota Electricity

What South Dakota's Electricity Data Tells Us

12.86¢/kWh is what a typical residential customer in South Dakota pays for electricity in 2024, spread across 433.5K metered households, placing the state 22% below the national residential average of 16.48¢/kWh. On the commercial side, the rate is 10.55¢/kWh, and industrial power costs 8.28¢/kWh, reflecting the cost differentials that come from voltage level, load factor, and contract length across EIA Form-861 survey respondents. Residential customers consumed 5.2M MWh over the year, translating to roughly $664.9M in revenue for utilities, a useful yardstick for sizing local demand against the grid mix that serves it.

South Dakota's power comes primarily from wind, which accounts for 57.9% of in-state generation, with a secondary role played by hydro at 22.1%, while natural gas adds another 10.8%. Add up every renewable category, solar, wind, hydro, geothermal, and biomass, and you get 81.6% of South Dakota's generation, 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. Looking for peers at a similar rate? Missouri, Kentucky, Montana are close matches. 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.