Summer Electricity Bills Don’t Have to Be This Crazy

Americans have come to expect shocking electricity bills, especially in the summer months. The latest data from the Electricity Price Hub makes clear: Households in every region of the country are seeing not just record high July bills, but also bills that are sharply higher than even just a few months before.

Some may see these trends and argue that utilities and regulators set rates, but bills are ultimately the result of consumer choices about how much electricity to use. But that narrative misses the mark for a simple reason: How utilities and regulators design rates influence both summer bill swings and how much electricity consumers use. Seasonal rates and other features of electricity pricing can exacerbate summer bill swings and inform customers’ decisions about whether certain electricity uses — even running the air conditioner on an extremely hot day — are worth it.

Where bills are up

The scale of this summer’s electricity bill increases is striking. Nationwide, the average household electricity bill was $90 per month, or 71% higher in July than it was in April of this year. Not only are bills up, they are up from a high base. The national average bill in April 2026 was higher than any previous April average in the Electricity Price Hub data, and 37% higher than the national average in April five years ago.

These trends are not just driven by a few states. There are households in every corner of the country experiencing sharp increases in their power bills this summer.

At the state level, average household bills have increased the most in New Jersey (up 163%), Nevada (157%), and Oklahoma (133%), but bills have at least doubled in 11 states and are up 1.5 times in 24 more.

In 19 different states, average household bills from major utilities at least doubled from April to July, adding between $72 and $214 per month to their average customers’ bills. In 12 of those states — including some in the Northeast, Mountain West, South, and Southeast — more than 40% of all households are served by utilities whose average bills have at least doubled this summer.

Rates and temperatures (often) rise together

Greater electricity use is a big part of what’s at play in these trends, but it’s not the whole story. Higher summer rates also contribute, in many cases. Rate design, market conditions, and regulatory processes can all cause electricity prices to change throughout the year.

Some utilities, for instance, have rates that vary seasonally, automatically adjusting in the summer months. Seasonal rates contribute to summer bill increases for eight of the 10 utilities whose average bill increased most from April to July. For three of those utilities, over half of the April-to-July increase was driven by seasonal rates. For another five, seasonal rates play a meaningful role, compounding usage-driven increases. For only two does the increase come back to usage alone.

Taken together, these findings suggest that summer bill shocks are not simply a function of warmer weather. In many cases, they also reflect deliberate choices about how utilities price electricity during the summer months.

Does it pay to save?

Even where higher usage is the primary driver of rising summer bills, the way utilities structure rates influences how much customers can save by using less electricity or shifting when they consume power.

Across the utilities with the largest April-to-July bill increases, there is considerable variation in how they calculate a customer’s monthly bill. All include a mix of fixed monthly fees and charges based on usage, measured in dollars per kilowatt-hour. But the balance between these components differs significantly, with fixed charges contributing from 4% to 23% of average bills over the past 12 months. Some utilities apply the same per kilowatt-hour rate year-round, while others increase rates in the summer. For some, the same rate applies to the total amount of electricity customers use in a month, while others have rates that increase for higher tiers of usage.

That means the design of residential rates also determines how much households actually benefit from using less electricity. Two households may receive similar-sized bills, but depending on how their utilities structure their rates, customers can see very different savings from cutting back.

The three New Jersey utilities in the top 10 illustrate one approach: They all have relatively small fixed customer charges, along with per-kilowatt-hour rates that vary both seasonally and by usage tier. For example, Jersey Central Power & Light’s distribution charge shifts from a single volumetric charge in the winter to a tiered structure in the summer, with usage above 600 kilowatt-hours priced at a higher rate. This structure contributes to sizable seasonal bill swings, but it also creates a strong financial incentive to limit summer usage.

The average household in JCP&L’s service area used more than 1,000 kilowatt-hours in July 2025. Had that household used 15% less electricity, it would have saved roughly $50 that month; a 25% reduction would have saved $82. At current rates, a 25% reduction in usage would cut the average bill by 28%, and every 4 kilowatt-hour reduction in usage over 600 kilowatt-hours saves a dollar.

Nevada Power takes a different approach. Its residential rate consists of a larger fixed customer charge — contributing 14% of total average bills over the last year — and a set of volumetric rates that do not vary by season or usage level. As a result, consumers have less of a financial incentive to reduce consumption. A household would need to reduce usage by roughly 8.4 kilowatt-hours to save a dollar, and cutting electricity use by 25% would reduce the bill by about 23% — meaningfully less than under JCP&L's structure.

The volatility problem

While seasonal variability in bills is expected and not on its face problematic, it is important to recognize that unpredictability and month-to-month volatility in power bills can compound energy affordability challenges. And although regulators cannot control the weather, the choices they make about rates influence the agency households have in managing their bills each month.

This then raises the question: Should utilities and regulators consider bill stability and its impact on affordability in setting rates? Staff for the Arizona Corporation Commission, which is currently considering requests from the state’s two investor-owned utilities to raise average household bills by around 15%, recently testified that “affordability and energy burden are not pertinent to ratemaking” — that they are, instead, “societal issues.” But that is exactly the wrong sentiment.

Affordability and bill stability both deserve to be explicit considerations in ratemaking, carefully weighed against other objectives and not dismissed or treated as an afterthought. Doing so may look different in different places and does not require prioritizing bill stability over all else. But where households are struggling to manage unpredictable power bills, regulators should be sensitive to those trends and lend greater weight to measures that boost households’ ability to manage usage and limit bills, should they choose to.

That may mean more effective and targeted energy efficiency and demand response programs and incentives for utilities to promote uptake. In some cases, it may call for better customer education on available rate schedules and ways to manage bills, and ultimately it may require more modern rate design. Whatever the response, stability is part of affordability. Wild bill swings add to the burden of record-high bills — a fact that utilities and regulators cannot afford to ignore.