Electricity rates & appliance costs in North Carolina

Why electricity costs 15.16¢/kWh in North Carolina

Summer cooling dominates, with a growing solar fleet offsetting some daytime demand.

Vertically integrated regulated monopoly with no retail supplier choice; only a small northeastern corner sits inside PJM, and rates run below the national average.

At 15.16¢/kWh, North Carolina sits below the 18.3¢ U.S. average. That works out to $151.60 for every 1,000 kWh used — so a 1,500 W space heater costs $0.23 an hour to run, and a family heating with electric resistance instead of gas feels that difference in every winter month.

How North Carolina compares with neighbouring states

North Carolina ranks 36th of 51 jurisdictions by residential price, from Hawaii at 48.00¢ down to Louisiana at 12.72¢ — a spread of about 3.8× across the country. Identical appliance habits can therefore cost several times more in one state than another.

Across South Atlantic — the regional grouping the EIA itself uses for comparison — the average rate including North Carolina is 17.82¢/kWh, so North Carolina pays $2.66 less per kWh than that regional average. On a 1,500 W space heater running 6 hours a day, that gap alone is about $728.23 a month.

• Florida15.0¢
• South Carolina15.5¢
• West Virginia15.8¢
• Georgia16.3¢
• Virginia17.6¢
• Delaware18.5¢
• Maryland21.4¢
• District of Columbia25.2¢

What North Carolina households actually pay

A typical U.S. household uses around 30 kWh a day, about 900 kWh a month. At 15.16¢/kWh that is roughly $136 a month in electricity, or $1,637 a year. That is about $28 less per month than the same usage at the national average — a real saving on the same appliances.

Because the rate is a per-kWh price, the fastest savings come from the biggest loads: cutting a 1,500 W space heater from 6 hours a day to 3 saves about $21 a month in North Carolina. That is why the calculators here use your state rather than a national guess.

Reading your North Carolina utility bill

The EIA figure is a state average across utilities, not your tariff. Your bill shows your exact "price to compare" in ¢/kWh plus fixed customer charges, and sometimes tiered or time-of-use pricing. In a deregulated market you may also have chosen a retail supplier whose rate differs from the utility default.

The calculators use the published state average, which is the right basis for comparing appliances against each other. For a figure that matches your own bill, take the "price to compare" line and use it as your rate.