No state’s electricity revenue climbed faster this July than Hawaii’s, where utilities collected 25.4 percent more per kilowatt-hour sold than they did in July 2025. Ohio followed at 15.2 percent and Maryland at 14.8 percent, according to newly released federal energy data covering every customer that buys electricity, not households alone. The figures come from a broader measure than a typical residential bill, and understanding that distinction changes what the numbers actually describe.
The EIA’s All-Sector Price Measure, State by State
The Electricity Monthly Update, published by the Energy Information Administration on September 24, reports what it calls average revenue per kilowatt-hour for each state, calculated across every class of customer that buys power: residential, commercial and industrial combined. Nationally, that all-sector figure rose 4.4 percent from July 2025 to July 2026, to 14.99 cents per kilowatt-hour. State totals moved by far more than the national average in several cases, and Hawaii, Ohio and Maryland posted the three largest year-over-year increases in the country.
The report arrives monthly, with a roughly six-to-eight-week lag between the month it covers and the date it publishes, which is why July’s figures only became public in late September. Utilities themselves supply the underlying data to the federal government as part of routine reporting, rather than the agency surveying customers or estimating from a sample, which is part of why the report carries the weight it does as a national accounting of electricity costs.
Relief that waits to be asked for: A double-digit jump in what a state’s utilities collect per kilowatt-hour is the kind of cost that never shows up as an automatic discount on a property-tax bill or a heating-season expense. Both still require filing paperwork inside a window that can close before a household even hears about it. Read the heating and cooling assistance section in The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
Hawaii’s Rate Rose Faster Than Any Other State
Hawaii’s 25.4 percent increase stands well above every other state the report tracks. Hawaii has long carried the country’s highest electricity prices in absolute terms, since the state imports nearly all the fuel its power plants burn rather than drawing on a regional pipeline or grid the way most of the mainland does, and this July’s increase widened that existing gap rather than opening a new one. A shipping delay, a change in global fuel prices or a single plant outage can move Hawaii’s costs more sharply than in a state connected to a larger regional grid, since the islands cannot simply draw more power from a neighboring utility during a shortfall the way a mainland state often can.
Ohio and Maryland Follow With Double-Digit Increases
Ohio’s all-sector revenue per kilowatt-hour rose 15.2 percent over the same twelve months, and Maryland’s rose 14.8 percent, both several times larger than the 4.4 percent national increase. Neither state ranks among the country’s traditionally highest-cost electricity markets the way Hawaii does, which makes the size of their one-year increase more notable than their starting price level. The Electric Power Monthly report does not break down, state by state, how much of an increase traces to fuel costs, grid investment or one-time factors specific to a single utility, so the report establishes the size of the change without explaining every cause behind it. Both states sit inside larger regional power markets and regulatory systems that set rates through their own separate processes, so a filing approved by a state utility commission months earlier can still be working its way into monthly bills well after the fact, arriving in the same report as more immediate cost pressures like fuel prices.
Why “All-Sector” Doesn’t Mean a Household Bill
The Energy Information Administration defines revenue, in this context, as the total money a utility collects from all its sales, and the all-sector figure divides that total by all the electricity sold to every kind of customer in a state, not residential customers alone. A single large industrial customer signing or renegotiating a supply contract can shift a state’s blended average by more than a change in what households actually pay, and a state with a small residential customer base relative to its industrial one can see its all-sector number swing further than its household rate does in the same period. None of the three state figures in this report, in other words, is a stand-in for what a typical family’s electric bill did this July. The Energy Information Administration publishes a separate residential-only figure in the same report for households that want a number closer to their own bill; nationally, that residential average stood at 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour in July 2026, up 4.9 percent, a different percentage change than the 4.4 percent move in the all-sector figure, underscoring how the two measures can diverge even at the national level.
What Moved the National All-Sector Average
The 4.4 percent national increase in all-sector revenue per kilowatt-hour reflects the same mix of pressures the agency’s own explainer on what affects electricity prices lists for prices generally: fuel costs, the expense of building and maintaining power plants, transmission and distribution infrastructure, and the seasonal demand spike that comes with summer cooling. The Energy Information Administration’s Electric Power Monthly remains the most current federal accounting of how those pressures are landing state by state, and its next update will show whether Hawaii, Ohio and Maryland’s outsized increases persist into August. Because the report publishes monthly on a consistent lag, a household or a local reporter can track a specific state’s trajectory over several consecutive releases rather than relying on any single month to describe a full year’s trend.
State Utility Costs Climbing Faster Than the National Rate
A state posting a double-digit jump in what its utilities collect per kilowatt-hour is a state where a home’s overall cost of staying warm, cool and lit is moving in one direction, even before a single household checks its own bill against last year’s. Property taxes on that same home rarely move in the opposite direction to offset it.
The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit covers property-tax freezes and exemptions alongside the circuit-breaker credit that includes renters, plus separate help with heating, cooling and home-repair costs.
Compare the relief options against a home budget in The Senior Property Tax & Home-Cost Relief Kit.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. All state figures link to the federal report that published them.
