How to read your electric bill

A residential electric bill is a short list of measured quantities and a longer list of prices. The quantity that drives almost every charge is the kilowatt-hour. The prices are a fixed amount, one or more cents-per-kilowatt-hour lines, and sometimes a tax or a franchise fee on the subtotal. This guide walks through those pieces using the 2025 final EIA-861 averages and two tariffs read on October 10, 2026. Your meter, your rate class, and the sheet your utility has on file determine the next bill. The figures here show how to read the pieces.

The usage line

The kilowatt-hour is energy, not power. A 1,000-watt appliance running for one hour uses one kilowatt-hour. The bill's usage is the difference between two meter reads, adjusted if the utility estimated a read. EIA's national residential average for 2025, from the Average Bill file released October 7, 2026, is 874.3 kilowatt-hours a month across 144,800,940 customers. California's average in the same file is 493.5 kilowatt-hours. Louisiana's is 1,224.9. A bill for 1,000 kilowatt-hours is a convenient checkpoint because several Texas delivery reports print example bills at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kilowatt-hours. It is a round number, and it is a normal month in some states and a high month in others.

When you compare two bills, compare the kilowatt-hours before you compare the dollars. A higher bill with higher usage can be the same price per kilowatt-hour. A higher bill with the same usage is a higher price, a new fixed charge, or a tax that was absent from the earlier bill.

Fixed charge and energy charge

Most residential schedules start with an amount that stays the same as usage changes. Florida Power & Light's RS-1 insert effective October 2026 lists a base charge of $10.52. Duke Energy Carolinas Schedule RS for North Carolina, effective January 1, 2026, lists a basic customer charge of $14.00. Seattle City Light's residential flat rate effective January 1, 2026, is $0.3945 per day rather than a single monthly figure, so a 30-day bill carries $11.835 before energy. Georgia Power Schedule R-31, effective with June 2026 bills, uses a basic service charge of $0.4603 per day. On a 30-day bill that daily charge is $13.809 before any energy.

The energy lines are cents per kilowatt-hour, often split into a base energy charge, a fuel charge, and named riders. On the FPL peninsular insert, the first 1,000 kilowatt-hours collect 7.865¢ of energy, 0.148¢ conservation, 0.052¢ capacity, 0.345¢ environmental, 0.995¢ storm protection, 2.893¢ fuel, and a transition credit of 0.040¢. Those lines sum to 12.258¢. Above 1,000 kilowatt-hours the energy line is 8.865¢ and the fuel line is 3.893¢, and the same non-fuel riders and the same credit produce 14.258¢. A 1,000-kilowatt-hour peninsular bill on those lines is $10.52 plus $122.58, which is $133.10. The insert still leaves out gross receipts tax and local franchise fees. It also describes a $30 minimum base bill. The insert does not define which lines count as base electric service, so the calculator sums the printed lines and leaves that floor off.

All-in price

Divide the whole bill, before a separate tax you can identify, by the kilowatt-hours, and you get an all-in cents per kilowatt-hour for that month. The FPL example above is $133.10 divided by 1,000, or 13.31¢, and that still excludes the taxes the insert leaves off. EIA's all-in price is the same idea across a year and across every residential customer in the row: residential revenue divided by residential sales. For Florida Power & Light in 2025 that calculation is 14.62¢, with an average bill of $162.38 and average use of 1,111.0 kilowatt-hours, across 5,337,118 bundled customers. The 13.31¢ tariff checkpoint and the 14.62¢ annual average are both real, and they are different objects. One is a single usage level on an October 2026 insert, before tax. The other spreads a year of bills, including the fixed charge, across a year of sales.

The U.S. residential all-in price in the 2025 Average Bill file is 17.23¢ per kilowatt-hour, and the average bill is $150.68. At 874.3 kilowatt-hours, 17.23¢ produces about $150.66, which rounds to the published $150.68 once EIA's own rounding of the inputs is taken into account. When this site prices an amount of energy at the EIA rate, it multiplies that amount by the published cents and rounds once. The customer charge is already inside the average, so it is not stacked on top.

A base schedule is part of the bill

Duke Energy Carolinas in North Carolina shows the gap between a base schedule and an annual average. Schedule RS on the fifty-ninth revised leaf, effective January 1, 2026, is $14.00 plus 12.2603¢ per kilowatt-hour. At 1,000 kilowatt-hours that is $136.60. Fuel, energy-efficiency, DSM, and other riders sit on later leaves of the same tariff book. The 2025 EIA bundled average for that utility is 13.41¢, $133.63 a month, and 996.2 kilowatt-hours, across 1,961,108 customers. A base-schedule total near the annual average still leaves the riders on their own leaves. The calculator labels this total as a base schedule and lists the riders it leaves out.

Georgia Power's R-31 energy charges work the same way. In winter billing months, October through May, the base energy charge is 8.2116¢ for every kilowatt-hour. With the $0.4603 daily charge and a 30-day month, 1,000 kilowatt-hours is $95.93. Fuel cost recovery, environmental compliance cost recovery, the residential DSM schedule, the municipal franchise fee, and sales tax sit outside that total. The tariff's minimum bill includes some of those pieces, so the minimum stays off the base-schedule math.

Delivery is a section of the bill

In most of Texas the wires company and the retail seller are different. Oncor's PUCT rate report as of October 1, 2026, prices residential delivery at a $4.06 fixed amount ($1.48 customer charge plus $2.58 metering) and $0.060295 per kilowatt-hour. The report's own example bills are $34.21, $64.36, and $124.65 at 500, 1,000, and 2,000 kilowatt-hours. The formula here matches those three. EIA's 2025 delivery average for Oncor is a different number: 5.64¢, $62.35 a month, 1,105.8 kilowatt-hours, 3,545,814 customers. The retail electric provider's energy charge is outside both delivery figures. A Power to Choose price at 1,000 kilowatt-hours is an all-in disclosed average that already includes delivery. Adding an Oncor delivery total on top of a Power to Choose price counts the wires twice.

What to circle on your own bill

Circle the kilowatt-hours, the billing period in days, the fixed charge, each cents-per-kilowatt-hour line, and any tax computed after the subtotal. If the bill prints an average price, divide the subtotal by the kilowatt-hours and see whether it matches. In a competitive area, find the delivery section and the generation section and keep a statewide average in its own column. If the utility's name on the bill differs from the territory you expected, the EIA county list on the utility page is the place to start. Service territories in the 2025 file are counties, and a county listing means EIA recorded that county for the utility.

The bill calculator asks for kilowatt-hours, a month, and billing days. Where a schedule was checked, it prints the lines and the document URL. Where the estimate uses the annual average, it says so. Either result is something you can set next to the bill in your hand. The bill is the amount due.

A year of the same utility

Duke Energy Carolinas in North Carolina is a useful series because the bundled row is continuous. EIA-861 puts the residential price at 10.62¢ in 2015, 10.42¢ in 2016, 10.18¢ in 2017, 10.14¢ in 2018, 10.36¢ in 2019, 10.36¢ in 2020, 10.26¢ in 2021, 10.44¢ in 2022, 11.88¢ in 2023, 13.94¢ in 2024, and 13.41¢ in 2025. The average bill moved from $113.69 in 2015 to $137.16 in 2024 and $133.63 in 2025. Usage moved too: 1,070.5 kilowatt-hours a month in 2015, 949.9 in 2023, 996.2 in 2025. A chart of cents per kilowatt-hour alone hides the usage swing. The utility page prints the four columns together so a year with a higher price and lower usage is visible as both.