Eighteen thousand and five hundred households responded to the U.S. Department of Energy’s extraordinarily comprehensive 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey. Some of the results just made available on residential electric bills I find most interesting:
Residential electric bills vary significantly by region. No surprise that the average in the sunny south is the highest, at $129 monthly. And that the average in the whopping west is the lowest, at $101 monthly. The midwest and northeast averages are in the middle, at $108 and $112 monthly, respectively.
Residential electric bills also vary significantly by income. For example, in the northeast, the average electric bill was $83 monthly for households with annual income of ten to twenty thousand dollars. In contrast, the average electric bill was $149 monthly for households with annual income of a hundred and fifty thousand dollars or more.
The type of home makes a big difference too. The average electric bills for households living in a single-family detached house were $133 monthly in the northeast, $122 in the midwest, $145 in the south, and $118 in the west. But for households living in apartment buildings with five or more units were $81 in the northeast, $64 in the midwest, $80 in the south, and $65 in the west.
Similarly, home size makes a big difference. For example, in the west, the average electric bill when a home is less than a thousand square feet was $64 monthly. In contrast, the average bill when a home is more than three thousand square feet was $143.