Key Findings
  • U.S. residential electricity averaged 17.3 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, up from 13.15 cents in 2020, a 31.6% nominal increase in five years.
  • Adjusted for inflation, electricity is now more expensive in real terms than in any year since 1995, ending a long stretch (1996–2024) where real prices stayed below today's level.
  • The all-time low for real (inflation-adjusted) electricity prices in this 66-year series was 2002; prices have trended up in real terms in most years since.
  • Over the same 2020–2025 stretch, gasoline rose faster in nominal terms (+42.9%) than electricity (+31.6%), meaning EV charging costs have grown more slowly than gas prices over the last five years.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6 (Cost of Fuels to End Users); gasoline comparison from this site's own gas-prices-over-time.html, same EIA source family
Contents
  1. Introduction
  2. Year-by-Year Prices
  3. Key Price Points
  4. Real vs. Nominal Prices
  5. What This Means for EV Charging Costs
  6. Data Sources

01 Introduction

U.S. residential electricity averaged 17.3 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2025, continuing a run-up that has accelerated since 2020. Unlike gasoline, which swings sharply from year to year with crude oil markets, electricity prices move more gradually, shaped by fuel costs for power generation, infrastructure investment, and state-level utility regulation. But that gradual movement adds up: this article presents the complete annual U.S. residential electricity price history from 1960 through 2025, in both nominal and inflation-adjusted terms, using the U.S. Energy Information Administration's Monthly Energy Review series.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review (July 2026 edition), Table 1.6: Cost of Fuels to End Users in Real (1982-1984) Dollars

This series is the same EIA data family used throughout this site's gasoline price coverage, which makes it possible to compare how electricity and gasoline costs have actually moved relative to each other, a question that matters directly for anyone comparing the cost of charging an EV to the cost of buying gas.

02 Year-by-Year Prices

The table below lists the U.S. average residential electricity price for every year from 1960 through 2025, in nominal cents per kilowatt-hour, alongside the same figure in real (inflation-adjusted) 1982–1984 dollars as published directly by the EIA. Nominal prices are calculated by re-applying the EIA's own Consumer Price Index figure for each year to its published real-dollar value.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data. Nominal values calculated as: real value (1982-1984 dollars) × (CPI for that year ÷ 100), using the CPI-U index published in the same table.
YearNominal ¢/kWhYearNominal ¢/kWh
19602.60¢19612.60¢
19622.60¢19632.50¢
19642.50¢19652.40¢
19662.30¢19672.30¢
19682.30¢19692.20¢
19702.20¢19712.30¢
19722.40¢19732.50¢
19743.10¢19753.50¢
19763.70¢19774.10¢
19784.30¢19794.60¢
19805.40¢19816.20¢
19826.90¢19837.20¢
19847.15¢19857.39¢
19867.42¢19877.45¢
19887.48¢19897.65¢
19907.83¢19918.04¢
19928.21¢19938.32¢
19948.38¢19958.40¢
19968.36¢19978.43¢
19988.26¢19998.16¢
20008.24¢20018.58¢
20028.44¢20038.72¢
20048.95¢20059.45¢
200610.40¢200710.65¢
200811.26¢200911.51¢
201011.54¢201111.72¢
201211.88¢201312.13¢
201412.52¢201512.65¢
201612.55¢201712.89¢
201812.87¢201913.01¢
202013.15¢202113.66¢
202215.04¢202316.00¢
202416.48¢202517.30¢
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data, 1960-2025. Nominal cents/kWh calculated from the table's real (1982-1984 dollar) values and CPI-U index as described above.

03 Key Price Points

1960s-early 1970s: falling real prices. In inflation-adjusted terms, electricity got steadily cheaper through the 1960s and into the early 1970s, from 8.78¢/kWh in real (1982-1984) dollars in 1960 down to about 5.63¢ by 1973, the lowest point in nearly 15 years, as generation efficiency improved and the sector expanded.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data

1974-1982: the energy-crisis run-up. Nominal electricity prices roughly tripled from 2.5¢/kWh in 1973 to 6.9¢ in 1982, tracking the broader 1970s energy crisis. Oil and natural gas were larger inputs to U.S. electricity generation at the time than they are today, which tied electricity prices to the same oil-market shocks that pushed gasoline from $0.39 to $1.30 a gallon over the same span.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data

2002: the all-time real-price low in this series. At 4.69¢/kWh in 1982-1984 dollars, 2002 marks the cheapest year for U.S. electricity, in real terms, in this 66-year record.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data

2021-2025: the sharpest real-price run-up since the 1970s-80s. Nominal prices rose from 13.66¢ in 2021 to 17.30¢ in 2025, a 26.6% increase in four years. In real terms, 2025's 5.37¢ (1982-1984 dollars) is the highest annual figure since 1995's 5.51¢, meaning every year from 1996 through 2024 saw lower real electricity prices than 2025 does now.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data

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04 Real vs. Nominal Prices

Nominal prices don't account for the shrinking purchasing power of the dollar, so a direct year-to-year comparison of cents-per-kilowatt-hour can be misleading over a 66-year span. The EIA's Monthly Energy Review publishes electricity costs already converted to real 1982-1984 dollars, alongside the Consumer Price Index used to do the converting, which is what makes it possible to reconstruct the nominal series in the table above and compare both views directly.

U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data
The real-price pattern doesn't match the nominal one. Nominal electricity prices have risen in almost every year since 1960 and never fallen back to an earlier level. Real (inflation-adjusted) prices tell a different story: they fell for over a decade after 1960, spiked through the energy-crisis years, drifted generally downward from the mid-1980s to a 2002 low, and have only meaningfully exceeded mid-1990s levels again in the last few years. The recent run-up is real, not just a byproduct of general inflation.
U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, Annual Data

05 What This Means for EV Charging Costs

Electricity is the "fuel" for an EV, so its price history matters for the same reason gasoline's does. Comparing the two over the last five years: U.S. average residential electricity rose 31.6% in nominal terms from 2020 to 2025 (13.15¢ to 17.30¢ per kWh), while U.S. average gasoline rose 42.9% over the identical window ($2.17 to $3.10 per gallon). Both costs climbed, but gasoline climbed faster.

Electricity: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6. Gasoline: U.S. Energy Information Administration, Regular All Formulations annual averages, as used in this site's gas price history.
A national average, not your rate. This article uses the EIA's long-running national-average residential electricity series to show the multi-decade trend. It is a different EIA data series than the state-by-state residential rates (EIA-861) used in this site's EV charging cost by state and EV vs. gas car fuel cost calculations, which reflect current rates rather than a historical time series. The two are complementary: this page shows how the national average got here; those pages show what it costs to charge today, in your specific state.

The direction of travel matters for anyone weighing an EV purchase on fuel-cost grounds alone: over the last five years, the cost of the "fuel" for an EV has grown more slowly than the cost of gasoline, even as both have risen. Whether that pattern continues depends on factors specific to each market: crude oil supply and demand for gasoline, and grid investment, generation mix, and regional utility regulation for electricity.

06 Data Sources

  1. U.S. Energy Information Administration: Monthly Energy Review, Table 1.6, "Cost of Fuels to End Users in Real (1982-1984) Dollars" (July 2026 edition). eia.gov
  2. U.S. Energy Information Administration: Regular All Formulations retail gasoline price annual averages, used for the gasoline comparison in this article and throughout this site's gas price history. eia.gov
Disclaimer. This article is for informational purposes only. All price data is sourced from the U.S. Energy Information Administration as cited. Figures are U.S. national annual averages for residential electricity and may not reflect rates in any specific state or utility territory; see this site's state-level EV charging articles for current state rates. Nominal values in the year-by-year table are calculated from the EIA's own published real-dollar figures and CPI index, not directly published by the EIA as nominal figures. Past price trends do not predict future prices.
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