Home electricity prices rose 4.9% in a year, and Hawaii’s jumped 25.4%

The average U.S. household paid 18.31 cents per kilowatt-hour for electricity in July 2026, up 4.9% from a year earlier, while Hawaii’s residential rate jumped 25.4% over the same twelve months — the steepest increase of any state. The figures come from the Energy Information Administration’s monthly price update, released September 24, 2026, which tracks retail electricity costs across every state and the District of Columbia.

Ohio and Maryland posted the next-largest increases, at 15.2% and 14.8%, well behind Hawaii but still far above the national pace. The all-sector average price, which blends residential, commercial and industrial rates, rose a smaller 4.4%, landing at 14.99 cents per kilowatt-hour.

Residential Prices Up 4.9%, the All-Sector Average Up 4.4%

EIA’s own accounting shows the increases were not concentrated in a handful of outlier states. Forty-four states and the District of Columbia saw their per-kilowatt-hour revenue rise compared with the previous July, while six states — Connecticut, New Mexico and Louisiana among them — actually saw prices fall. Connecticut’s decline was the sharpest, at 12.4%.

The July report is one installment of EIA’s Electric Power Monthly series, which publishes on a roughly monthly cycle and breaks out generation, fuel costs and pricing data by state; the July edition posted on September 24, with the next update due October 23. That cadence is why a single month’s swing, like Hawaii’s, shows up in the data almost as soon as it happens rather than months later.

Hawaii’s 25.4%, Ohio’s 15.2%, and Maryland’s 14.8%

A 25.4% jump in twelve months is unusual even by the standards of a state that already pays some of the highest electricity prices in the country. Hawaii topped EIA’s most recent full-year state price ranking at 38.00 cents per kilowatt-hour, more than four times North Dakota’s 7.93 cents, so a further quarter-plus increase lands on top of a rate that was already the nation’s highest before this latest run-up.

Ohio and Maryland’s increases, while smaller in percentage terms than Hawaii’s, still moved much larger customer bases and reflect a different pressure entirely — rising grid and capacity costs on the PJM Interconnection system that both states share, rather than the imported-fuel story driving Hawaii’s number. California, Massachusetts and Rhode Island remain the three most expensive states in absolute terms even after Hawaii’s spike, at 30.71, 26.56 and 25.65 cents per kilowatt-hour respectively, though none of them posted anything close to a double-digit year-over-year jump.

Oil Prices and the Iran Conflict, Hawaiian Electric Says

Hawaiian Electric has been telling customers since spring why their bills were about to climb. In an April 1, 2026 notice, the utility said an escalating conflict involving Iran that began February 28 pushed oil prices up roughly 50% within a month, and it warned that typical residential bills could rise 20% to 30% in the months that followed as the higher fuel costs worked through its rate structure. Vice President of Customer Service Rebecca Dayhuff Matsushima said “a more diverse and locally sourced energy portfolio is essential for Hawaii,” pointing to the state’s fuel dependence as the underlying vulnerability rather than the conflict itself.

The utility rolled the increases out by region rather than all at once, starting with Oahu in April and moving to Hawaii Island and Maui County in May and June — a staggered schedule that puts the full twelve-month effect on record only once each region’s July bill is counted against the year before.

A Grid Still Running Mostly on Petroleum

The structural reason a global oil shock hits Hawaii bills harder than almost anywhere else is generation mix, not geography alone. Most of the grid-delivered electricity generated in Hawaii comes from petroleum-fired power plants, EIA has noted, a fuel source that costs more than natural gas or coal even before a supply shock. Hawaii residents actually use less grid electricity than residents of any other state, EIA’s data shows, yet still pay the country’s highest bills because of what fuels the plants rather than how much power they draw.

That dependence is also why Hawaii’s number moves first and hardest whenever oil prices spike, and why a single geopolitical event thousands of miles away shows up in a Honolulu electric bill faster than in almost any other state’s. A state running mostly on natural gas or coal can absorb a global oil shock with barely a ripple in its rate case; a state running mostly on imported petroleum cannot, and the July data is the first full month in which that gap shows up as a twelve-month comparison rather than a company’s own forecast.

Hawaii’s dependence on petroleum generation has no parallel among the six states with falling prices, which is consistent with the pattern EIA’s data lays out: this year’s increases and decreases track fuel mix and regional grid pressure far more closely than they track anything about how much electricity a state’s residents actually use.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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