What Tennessee's Electricity Data Tells Us

Residential customers in Tennessee pay 13.18¢/kWh in 2025, across 3.1M metered households, placing the state 23.8% below the national residential average of 17.30¢/kWh. Commercial rates sit at 12.87¢/kWh while industrial buyers pay 6.74¢/kWh. These sector averages describe recorded revenue per kWh; this dataset alone does not establish why they differ. Annual residential sales total 45.3M MWh on roughly $6.0B in utility revenue. Sales and revenue are reported retail-series measures and should not be treated as a local load forecast.

Tennessee's industrial rate ranks 46 of 51 while its residential rate ranks 41, so the gap between what a factory and a household pay is narrower here than in most states. No single fuel reaches half of Tennessee's in-state generation. Nuclear leads at 39.2%, with coal at 24.1% close enough behind that the mix reads as a balance rather than a clear lead. It is the leading fuel in 4 states. Renewable fuels (solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and biomass) account for 13.1% of Tennessee's electricity output. These shares describe in-state generation, not a utility-specific customer bill.

Looking back across EIA records, residential prices in Tennessee moved from 10.41¢/kWh in 2016 to 13.18¢/kWh in 2025, a 26.6% shift over that window. States charging a similar rate include Nevada, Kentucky, Oklahoma, a useful peer set for a sanity check. Nuclear output is close to fuel-cost-insensitive once a reactor is running, so the rate above reflects capital and maintenance recovery far more than any fuel market. That makes Tennessee's figure unusually stable year to year and unusually sensitive to what happens at a single large plant. Read the number as a floor rather than a promise. A statewide average this far under the national figure is usually held down by a few large low-cost generators, and a household on the wrong side of a service-territory boundary in Tennessee can pay well above it.