All-in cents per kWh versus the tariff energy charge

People quote "the rate" as one number. A residential bill usually contains a base energy charge, a fuel charge, several riders, a fixed monthly charge, and a tax. EIA Form EIA-861 publishes a different number: residential revenue divided by residential sales for a year. Both are cents per kilowatt-hour. They include different things and cover different periods, so each one needs its year and its label. This guide uses the 2025 final EIA-861 file, released October 7, 2026, and tariff sheets checked October 10, 2026.

What the EIA number contains

In Sales to Ultimate Customers, residential revenue is reported in thousand dollars and residential sales in megawatt-hours. Dividing revenue by sales and multiplying by 100 converts the ratio to cents per kilowatt-hour. The same revenue, multiplied by 1,000, divided by customers and by 12, is the average monthly bill. Sales times 1,000, divided by customers and by 12, is average monthly kilowatt-hours.

Duke Energy Carolinas in North Carolina is the worked example. The 2025 bundled row reports revenue of 3,144,752 thousand dollars and sales of 23,445,019 megawatt-hours. 3,144,752 divided by 23,445,019, times 100, is 13.41¢. Customers on that row are 1,961,108. Revenue times 1,000, divided by those customers, divided by 12, is $133.63. Sales times 1,000, divided by customers, divided by 12, is 996.2 kilowatt-hours. The U.S. residential row in the separate Average Bill file is 17.23¢, $150.68, and 874.3 kilowatt-hours, across 144,800,940 customers. State totals come from that Average Bill file as well. Adding utility rows would double-count places where one company reports bundled service and another reports delivery.

The annual average folds the fixed charge into the cents. A customer who uses very few kilowatt-hours pays more per kilowatt-hour than the average, because the fixed charge is spread over fewer units. A customer who uses a lot pays less per kilowatt-hour than the average, until a higher tier or a fuel adjustment pushes the other way. When a page prices an amount of energy at the EIA rate, it multiplies kilowatt-hours by the published cents and rounds once. The customer charge is already inside that product.

What a tariff energy charge contains

An energy charge on a tariff page is one line. Florida Power & Light's October 2026 peninsular RS-1 insert prints 7.865¢ of base energy for the first 1,000 kilowatt-hours and 8.865¢ above that. Those are the base energy lines, not the all-in prices. Conservation (0.148¢), capacity (0.052¢), environmental (0.345¢), storm protection (0.995¢), fuel (2.893¢ on the first block and 3.893¢ above it), and a transition credit of 0.040¢ sit on the same insert. The first block sums to 12.258¢. The tail sums to 14.258¢. The $10.52 base charge is extra. At 1,000 kilowatt-hours the lines produce $133.10, before gross receipts tax and franchise fees.

Quoting 7.865¢ as "FPL's rate" drops the fuel line and the riders that the insert itself adds. Quoting 14.62¢, the 2025 EIA bundled average for Florida Power & Light, as "today's energy charge" pulls in a year of fixed charges, taxes that landed in revenue, and every kilowatt-hour the company sold to 5,337,118 bundled customers, whose average use was 1,111.0 kilowatt-hours and whose average bill was $162.38. The calculator shows the October 2026 tariff total and the 2025 average as separate results.

Base schedules leave riders on other pages

Some official sheets print a base energy charge and point to separate fuel and rider schedules. Georgia Power Residential Service Schedule R-31, effective with bills rendered for June 2026, charges $0.4603 per day. Winter months, October through May, are 8.2116¢ per kilowatt-hour for every kilowatt-hour. Summer months, June through September, are 8.7738¢ for the first 650, 14.5738¢ for the next 350, and 15.0828¢ above 1,000. The sheet leaves out fuel cost recovery, environmental compliance cost recovery, the residential DSM schedule, the municipal franchise fee, and sales tax. A 30-day winter bill at 1,000 kilowatt-hours is $95.93 on the base schedule. Georgia Power's 2025 EIA bundled average is 16.28¢ and $161.13 a month, across 2,480,484 customers. The distance between 8.2116¢ and 16.28¢ is why the label matters. The lower number is a partial schedule. The higher number is 2025 revenue divided by 2025 sales.

Duke Energy Carolinas Schedule RS, North Carolina, effective January 1, 2026, is the same kind of document: $14.00 plus 12.2603¢ per kilowatt-hour on leaf 11. Fuel and the other riders live on other leaves and stay out of the $136.60 that 1,000 kilowatt-hours produces on the base schedule. The 2025 EIA average of 13.41¢ is labeled beside it.

Delivery-only cents

A third number shows up where delivery is reported apart from energy. Pacific Gas and Electric's 2025 delivery row is 24.60¢ per kilowatt-hour, $92.25 a month, 374.9 kilowatt-hours, and 3,317,112 customers. The bundled row for the same company is 37.52¢, $173.95, 463.7 kilowatt-hours, and 1,738,444 customers. The delivery price is the delivery portion EIA recorded. Ranking it against a bundled utility in another state treats a part as a whole. State pages keep delivery utilities in their own list.

Oncor's October 1, 2026 delivery tariff is more specific than the annual average. The PUCT report prices residential delivery at $4.06 fixed and $0.060295 per kilowatt-hour, and it prints bills of $34.21, $64.36, and $124.65. The 2025 EIA delivery average is 5.64¢ and $62.35. At Oncor's average use of 1,105.8 kilowatt-hours, a year-long 5.64¢ sits near the October volumetric charge plus the fixed amount spread over those kilowatt-hours. The retail price a customer pays a retail electric provider is a third figure, and it already includes delivery when it comes from Power to Choose.

How to say the number out loud

If the source is EIA-861, say the year and the service: "13.41¢ per kilowatt-hour, bundled, Duke Energy Carolinas, North Carolina, 2025." If the source is a tariff, say the schedule, the effective date, and what was left out: "Georgia Power R-31 base energy, winter, 8.2116¢, effective with June 2026 bills, excluding fuel and the riders named on the sheet." For a single comparison across states, use the Average Bill file. North Dakota is 11.82¢, Idaho 11.83¢, and Nebraska 12.05¢. Hawaii is 40.40¢, California 31.35¢, and Massachusetts 30.41¢. Those are 2025 residential all-in prices. They already include whatever each state's utilities put into residential revenue. They are the right column for a state ranking and the wrong column for a line item on next month's bill.

The methodology page lists every schedule in the calculator and the URL that was read. Large utilities that are priced from the EIA average, including several of the biggest, are labeled that way on the calculator.

A 1,000-kilowatt-hour checkpoint

The same 1,000 kilowatt-hours produces different dollars under each definition, and the labels keep the list honest. Peninsular FPL RS-1 for October 2026 is $133.10 before the taxes the insert excludes. Duke Energy Carolinas Schedule RS, base only, is $136.60. Seattle City Light's flat Seattle schedule for 30 days is $145.64. Nevada Power Schedule RS, effective October 1, 2026, is an $18.00 basic charge plus the printed total effective rate of 11.514¢, which is $133.14. That printed total already includes the universal energy charge of 0.039¢, so the charge is counted once. The local government fee, which the insert describes as 5 percent of the subtotal in Clark County at the time of the insert, sits outside that $133.14.

Those four totals are October 2026 or January 2026 schedules at one usage level. The 2025 EIA bundled averages for the same companies are different rows: Florida Power & Light 14.62¢, Duke Energy Carolinas in North Carolina 13.41¢, Seattle City Light 14.74¢, and the Nevada state average 13.26¢. Nevada Power is a utility inside that state, and the state row is its own figure. The bill calculator prints the tariff total and the EIA cents in separate boxes.