The average U.S. household paid 18.34 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity it used in June, according to the federal government’s own tally of what utilities actually billed customers. That figure is 5 percent higher than the same month a year earlier, and residential customers absorbed a bigger increase than either businesses or factories did.…

American households paid a median of $1,065 for water and sewer service over the past year, according to a new industry report, a bill that rarely gets its own line item the way rent or groceries do. In Maryland, the same report found a typical monthly water and sewer bill of $245, the highest of…

Electricity has quietly become the household bill nobody can shop around, and the government’s own price data now backs that up in hard numbers. Comparing Consumer Price Index figures from July 2021 to July 2026, the cost of residential electricity climbed faster than rent, gasoline or the weekly grocery bill — the four largest recurring…

Six months after the United States and Israel launched military strikes against Iran, the war’s economic fallout has moved well past headlines about the Strait of Hormuz. It has landed in the household budget: at the gas pump today, and in the heating bill this winter. A new analysis from the association representing the state…

Electric bills have become a bigger line item for lower-income households than they were even a few years ago, and a new federal research update puts a specific number on how big. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working with the consulting firm Brattle Group, released a July 2026 update to its long-running study of retail electricity…

A new executive order signed this week puts foreign-made equipment inside America’s power grid under direct federal scrutiny, but it stops well short of reaching the wires and transformers that actually carry electricity into most homes. President Trump signed Executive Order 14420 on August 26, declaring a national emergency over the bulk-power system, the high-voltage…

A power auction most households never hear about just set a $16.1 billion price tag for keeping the lights on across a stretch of the country that runs from Chicago’s suburbs to the Virginia coast. PJM Interconnection, the grid operator that runs the wholesale electricity market for 13 states and the District of Columbia, finalized…

There is a federal program that helps lower-income households pay their heating and cooling bills, and in many states it can also step in during an energy emergency like a looming shutoff. It is called LIHEAP, and despite helping millions of families every year, plenty of people who qualify have never heard of it or…

Electricity has quietly become one of the fastest-rising household costs, climbing faster than overall inflation and pushing power bills higher for families already stretched. Unlike a grocery run you can trim or a purchase you can delay, the electric bill is close to non-negotiable — you cannot skip keeping the lights on and the house…

The California Climate Credit reaches a household by subtraction rather than by application. Money raised when large emitters buy allowances under the state’s Cap-and-Invest Program is routed back to residential utility customers as a line item on the bill, applied by the utility without a form, an income test, or an enrollment window. In 2026…