- The EIA separately tracks a "transportation" electricity rate class distinct from residential—and in 27 of the 29 states that report both, utilities bill less per kWh for transportation than for residential service.
- The gap is largest in Massachusetts (20.1 cents/kWh less) and California (15.2 cents/kWh less); nationally, transportation-class electricity averages 3.7 cents/kWh less than residential.
- Only 50 utility accounts nationwide are billed under this rate class, moving 1.6 billion kWh a year—these are large-scale buyers (charging networks, transit fleets, depots), not individual EV owners paying at a plug.
- This utility-tariff gap does not mean public charging is cheaper than plugging in at home—charging network markup, demand charges, and per-session fees sit on top of it and are not captured in this data.
01 What Is the "Transportation" Rate Class?
Every year, the U.S. Energy Information Administration collects retail electricity pricing from every utility in the country and publishes it broken out by customer sector: residential, commercial, industrial, and—since EV adoption grew large enough to matter—transportation. The transportation sector in this data means electricity utilities sell under a rate schedule for transportation-related uses: public EV charging station operators, electrified transit systems, and large EV fleet-charging depots.
EIA Form EIA-861, Annual Electric Power Industry Report, Table 4: Average Retail Price by Sector (2024), and Table 9: Utility Bundled Retail Sales, Transportation Sector (2024)This is genuinely useful data, but it answers a narrower question than "is public charging cheaper than home charging?" It only tells you what utilities charge the businesses and agencies that operate charging infrastructure—not what those businesses then charge you at the plug. The gap between the two can be large, and this article is explicit about which one this data actually measures.
02 Residential vs. Transportation Rates by State
Only 29 states (including D.C.) report a distinct transportation-sector rate in the 2024 EIA-861 data; the rest have too few qualifying utility accounts for EIA to publish a rate without disclosing individual businesses' pricing. Among the states that do report, the transportation rate is lower than the residential rate in 27 of 29—sometimes by a wide margin.
EIA Form EIA-861, Table 4 (2024). Data withheld (".") for states with insufficient reporting utilities to protect individual company pricing.| State | Residential (¢/kWh) | Transportation (¢/kWh) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | 29.35 | 9.22 | −20.13 |
| California | 31.97 | 16.79 | −15.18 |
| Connecticut | 28.75 | 17.77 | −10.98 |
| Texas | 14.94 | 4.35 | −10.59 |
| New York | 24.43 | 14.70 | −9.73 |
| Ohio | 15.99 | 7.32 | −8.67 |
| New Jersey | 19.34 | 11.11 | −8.23 |
| U.S. Total | 16.48 | 12.75 | −3.73 |
The pattern is strongest in states with high residential rates driven by grid modernization costs, transmission constraints, or renewable-portfolio compliance costs (Massachusetts, California, Connecticut). In those states, the transportation rate schedule—typically negotiated for large, predictable, often off-peak loads—sits well below what a household pays per kWh.
03 What the Gap Means in Cost Per Mile
Converting these per-kWh rates to a cost-per-mile figure, using the 35 kWh/100-mile fleet-average EV efficiency benchmark used elsewhere on this site, shows the scale of the gap in terms a driver would actually experience.
Calculated: rate (¢/kWh) × 0.35 kWh/mile ÷ 100. EV efficiency benchmark consistent with this site's ev-vs-gas-car-fuel-cost analysis.| State | Residential $/mile | Transportation $/mile | Residential Annual (12K mi) | Transportation Annual (12K mi) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Massachusetts | $0.103 | $0.032 | $1,233 | $387 |
| California | $0.112 | $0.059 | $1,343 | $705 |
| Texas | $0.052 | $0.015 | $627 | $183 |
| U.S. Total | $0.058 | $0.045 | $692 | $536 |
Estimate your vehicle's driving cost using official EPA fuel economy data.
Use the Calculator04 Why This Isn't "Public Charging Is Cheaper"
It would be easy to misread this data as evidence that public EV charging is cheaper than charging at home. It isn't—or at least, this data cannot tell you that, and everyday experience with public charging network pricing suggests the opposite is often true at the plug. Three things this data does not capture stand between the utility's transportation-class rate and what a driver actually pays at a public charger:
- Network markup. Charging network operators (the businesses buying power at the transportation rate) charge drivers a retail price that covers their own margin, hardware costs, credit-card processing, and software—on top of what they pay their utility.
- Demand charges. Commercial and transportation electricity tariffs often include separate "demand charges" based on a site's peak power draw, which can be substantial for DC fast chargers and are not reflected in the simple cents-per-kWh figure in this data.
- Session and idle fees. Many public charging networks bill per-minute rather than per-kWh, or add idle fees for vehicles left plugged in after charging completes—pricing structures this utility-level wholesale data has no visibility into.
What this data does show, reliably, is that the underlying wholesale cost of electricity for transportation-related uses is not inherently more expensive than residential power in most states—in fact it's usually cheaper. Whatever price gap exists between home charging and public charging in practice is added on top of this utility rate, not explained by it.
05 The States Where It Runs the Other Way
In 2 of the 29 reporting states, the transportation rate is actually higher than residential—the reverse of the national pattern. Utah is included below as the closest the data gets to exact parity, though it technically still favors transportation by a fraction of a cent.
EIA Form EIA-861, Table 4 (2024)| State | Residential (¢/kWh) | Transportation (¢/kWh) | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wisconsin | 17.18 | 18.36 | +1.18 |
| Arkansas | 12.32 | 13.23 | +0.91 |
| Utah | 12.22 | 12.07 | −0.14 (near parity) |
The EIA data doesn't break down why individual states or utilities land on one side or the other—that depends on each state's rate-setting process and the specific utilities and load profiles reporting into the transportation category, which is beyond what this table can explain on its own.
06 Data Sources
- U.S. Energy Information Administration: Form EIA-861, Annual Electric Power Industry Report, Table 4: Average Retail Price by Sector, 2024. eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861
- U.S. Energy Information Administration: Form EIA-861, Table 9: Utility Bundled Retail Sales, Transportation Sector, 2024. eia.gov/electricity/data/eia861