About Electricity Cost Guide
Every appliance-cost answer on the internet seemed to use the same trick: one national electricity price, one guessed wattage, and a confident headline number. But across the 51 jurisdictions the EIA publishes, residential electricity runs from 12.72¢ per kWh in Louisiana to 48.00¢ in Hawaii — a 3.8× spread that makes a national-average answer wrong the moment you read it.
Electricity Cost Guide does the opposite. Every calculator starts from the U.S. Energy Information Administration's published residential rate for your state — the same data series utilities, researchers and journalists use — then applies the simple, checkable physics of watts × hours × price. No mystery constants, no "average household" hand-waving.
The result: a number you can actually trust for "should I run the space heater or turn up the furnace?", "is this old garage fridge costing me real money?", and "what will an EV do to my bill?"
What Electricity Cost Guide covers
The site prices 22 appliances across heating and cooling, kitchen and laundry, and living and major loads — from a portable space heater and a window air conditioner to a dishwasher, a chest freezer and home EV charging. Each has its own calculator, its own stated assumptions, and its own source list, and each state has a page showing the same appliances priced at that state's rate.
Who it's for
Anyone deciding between two ways of doing the same thing: running a space heater for an hour or turning the furnace up, replacing a decade-old refrigerator or living with the running cost, charging an EV overnight versus at a public charger, or shifting laundry to a cheaper hour. The point is not to produce a bill estimate — it is to price the decision.
How it's maintained
- Rates re-pulled from EIA with each monthly Electric Power Monthly release; every page stamped with the data period.
- Appliance figures limited to ENERGY STAR, DOE, and EnergyGuide published data — sources listed on each page.
- The current figures use the July 2026 Electric Power Monthly, and the refresh runs on a monthly schedule so the site never quotes a stale month.
- The full formula and constants are documented on the methodology page.
Contact
Corrections, requests, feedback: hello@electricitycostguide.com