How much electricity a home uses

"The average home" depends on which survey you open. This guide uses two federal publications and the ENERGY STAR certified-product lists downloaded October 10, 2026. Each measurement keeps its own year, its own unit, and its own label.

The utility average, 2025

EIA-861's Average Bill file for 2025, released October 7, 2026, puts U.S. residential usage at 874.3 kilowatt-hours a month. Times 12, that is 10,491.6 kilowatt-hours a year. The same row is 17.23¢ per kilowatt-hour and $150.68 a month, across 144,800,940 customers. Customers here are utility customers, not housing units. A building with two meters can be two customers. An apartment on a master meter may sit inside someone else's residential customer count. The 874.3 figure is sales divided by customers.

States sit far from that average. California is 493.5 kilowatt-hours a month, the lowest in the file. Hawaii is 514.6. Maine is 533.2. Louisiana is 1,224.9, the highest. Mississippi is 1,183.8. Tennessee is 1,180.4. A national average applied to a California bill overstates usage. Applied to a Louisiana bill, it understates usage. The state pages use the state row from the same file.

Price and usage move the bill in opposite directions often enough to matter. California's 31.35¢ and 493.5 kilowatt-hours produce a $154.73 average bill. North Dakota's 11.82¢ and 1,069.8 kilowatt-hours produce $126.40. Hawaii's 40.40¢ and 514.6 kilowatt-hours produce $207.89. Alabama's 16.09¢ and 1,145.4 kilowatt-hours produce $184.31. The high bill in Alabama is a usage story in this file. The high bill in Hawaii is a price story. Both sentences are about 2025 averages.

RECS is all fuels, and it is 2020

The Residential Energy Consumption Survey table CE1.1 is titled as summary annual household site consumption and expenditures in the United States, totals and intensities, 2020. The file used here was revised in March 2024. The sheet also notes an original data release in March 2023. For all homes, the table lists 123.53 million housing units, 9,481 trillion Btu of site energy, 76.8 million Btu per household, and expenditures of $1,884 per household ($232.76 billion in total). Site energy in that table is every fuel used at the home. Electricity is one fuel inside that total.

The 76.8 million Btu figure is site energy for 2020 households. EIA-861 2025 electricity at 10,491.6 kilowatt-hours a year is 10,491.6 times 3,412 Btu, about 35.8 million Btu, using EIA's standard 3,412 Btu per kilowatt-hour. That arithmetic shows the scale of the electricity average in Btu. The 35.8 uses a 2025 customer average. The 76.8 uses a 2020 household survey. They are different years and different units of observation, so one is not a slice of the other. This guide quotes the totals CE1.1 publishes. The summary table reports all site energy. End-use shares for heating, water heating, and appliances are a different RECS table.

The expenditure of $1,884 is all fuels in 2020. The EIA-861 2025 electric bill of $150.68 a month is $1,808.16 a year for electricity alone, at the national average. The two dollar figures sit close together and still describe different things. One is 2020 and all site energy. The other is 2025 and electricity revenue per customer. A household that paid the 2025 electric average and also bought gas or propane paid more than $1,808 for energy. The gas series used on the heating tool is a price per Mcf, which is a price, not a household gas bill.

Certified appliances are product lists

ENERGY STAR publishes certified-product datasets. Where the dataset has an annual kilowatt-hour field, the page uses the median of the models returned on October 10, 2026. The median refrigerator on the residential refrigerator list is 345 kilowatt-hours a year, across 4,853 models. The median freezer is 415, across 671 models. A clothes washer is 110, across 413. A dryer is 608, across 674. A combination washer-dryer is 136, across 12 models, and the sample size is printed with the figure so the 12 stays visible. A dishwasher is 239, across 761. A dehumidifier is 340, across 559. A room air conditioner is 532, across 570. A room air cleaner is 152, across 247. A television is 184, across 184. A heat-pump water heater is 1,181 kilowatt-hours a year, across 598 models, using the electric-usage field.

Refrigerator type breaks, keeping groups with at least 40 models, are bottom-freezer 556 (1,669 models), compact cooler 135 (127), compact refrigerator 246 (1,744), cooler 177 (53), freezerless and single-door 288 (294), side-by-side 640 (123), and top-freezer 363 (838). Upright freezers are 438 (500). Compact freezers are 244 (162). A side-by-side at 640 kilowatt-hours is the median of the side-by-side models on that list.

At the 2025 U.S. average of 17.23¢, 345 kilowatt-hours for the median certified refrigerator is about $59.44 a year. The dryer median of 608 kilowatt-hours is about $104.76. The heat-pump water heater median of 1,181 is about $203.49. Those products answer a product question. A home owns particular models, the lists overlap categories, and certified models are the models that qualified. The appliance tool also has a watts-times-hours box for a nameplate you can read.

What to use for your own house

Use the kilowatt-hours on the last twelve bills if you have them. The sum is your year. Compare it with 10,491.6 as the 2025 national customer average, and with your state's monthly figure times 12 as the state customer average. Texas is 1,110.3 a month, about 13,323.6 a year. California is 493.5 a month, about 5,922 a year. If your bills sit far from the state average, the state average is still the average. Your house is one house.

A few more 2025 monthly averages, so the national 874.3 has company: New York 586.3 kilowatt-hours, Vermont 591.5, Michigan 634.8, Washington 944.5, Arizona 1,030.0, North Carolina 1,044.1, Kentucky 1,094.2, and Tennessee 1,180.4. The low end of that list is the Northeast and a few other lower-usage states. The high end is the South. Washington's 944.5 sits near the national average even though its price, 13.17¢, is well under 17.23¢, which is why its average bill is $124.41 rather than $150.68. Tennessee's 1,180.4 kilowatt-hours at 13.22¢ produces $156.03, close to the national bill with a different mix of price and usage. Those pairs are the Average Bill file. They describe a state's customers.

Use a certified-product median when the question is what the models on this ENERGY STAR list consume in the test the dataset reports. Use the tariff or the EIA cents, labeled, when the question is what those kilowatt-hours cost. The cost-to-run pages price each median at 17.23¢ and link to the calculator so you can replace the rate with a utility rate. The kilowatt-hours came from the product list. The cents came from EIA, or from the number you typed. A year of bills is still the best picture of one address. The 10,491.6 kilowatt-hour national figure, the state monthly average times 12, and a certified-product median answer three different questions, and each one is useful when it keeps its label. California at about 5,922 kilowatt-hours a year and Louisiana at 1,224.9 a month are both in the same 2025 file as the national 874.3. Start with the state that matches the meter on the bill.