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No State’s Residential Electricity Prices Rose Faster Than Illinois’: Up 28 Percent in a Year, Per the Federal Table

EIA's own state table: Illinois average residential electricity went from 18.58 to 23.85 cents per kilowatt-hour, May 2025 to May 2026 - a 28 percent jump, the largest of the fifty states and DC, while the national average rose 6. Every sector paid more. The table doesn't say why, and neither do we.

No state’s households saw electricity prices climb faster over the past year than Illinois’. The federal Energy Information Administration’s own state table puts the average residential price at 23.85 cents per kilowatt-hour in May 2026, up from 18.58 a year earlier — a 28 percent jump, the largest of the fifty states and the District of Columbia. The national average rose 6.2 percent.

EIA’s May 2026 state price table, parsed in full · prices are sector averages per kilowatt-hour, not bill totals

The measure here is the average retail price of electricity — what a sector paid per kilowatt-hour on average across the state, as reported in EIA’s monthly table. It is not a bill total: how much a household actually pays depends on usage, delivery charges and plan. And the comparison is one month against the same month a year earlier — May to May — the most current complete figures the table offers, not a full-year average. With those boundaries stated: Illinois’ jump leads the nation, and it is not close to typical.

U.S. total +6.2%Illinois+28.4%Hawaii+26.7%District of Columbia+24.3%Virginia+15.4%Maryland+14.6%Ohio+14.2%Change in average residential price per kWh, May 2025 to May 2026, per EIA. Solid bar: Illinois.
Where residential prices jumped most The six largest one-year changes in average residential price per kilowatt-hour among the fifty states and the District of Columbia, May 2025 to May 2026, from EIA’s Table 5.6.A. Only Hawaii — long the nation’s most expensive power — comes close to Illinois’ rate of increase.

Every sector paid more, households most of all

The residential jump — 18.58 to 23.85 cents — is the headline, but the same table shows the increase reaching every class of Illinois customer: average commercial prices went from 12.39 to 15.36 cents per kilowatt-hour (+24 percent), industrial from 8.92 to 10.2 (+14 percent). A year ago Illinois households paid a little above the national average; in May 2026 they paid 23.85 cents against a national 18.44.

The long arc, from a different federal ledger

For history, a second federal series: the Bureau of Labor Statistics has priced electricity for the Chicago metro area since 1978. That series shows Chicago-area power averaging about 11 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2000, 15 in 2014 and 17.1 in 2024 — decades of slow drift, not jumps. Two cautions travel with it: the BLS and EIA measures are built differently and are never compared against each other on this page, and the Chicago-metro series stops in December 2024, so it cannot describe the past year — that is exactly why the EIA state table leads this piece. For the national present, BLS’s U.S. city-average series puts electricity at 19.8 cents in June 2026.

What this table does not say

Why Illinois leads is the fight, and this table takes no side in it: it prices the outcome and is silent on causes. Rate cases, transmission costs, capacity markets and surging demand from computing all have advocates pointing at them; none of that can be read off a price table, and this page makes no claim about which is responsible. The demand-side story we have measured ourselves is the build-out of data centers — Chicago’s own permit file shows $492 million in reported data-center construction since 2015 — and the national fight over them is, at bottom, a fight about electricity.

How we counted

  • The state table: EIA’s Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A — average retail price of electricity by state and sector, May 2026 against May 2025, in cents per kilowatt-hour — downloaded July 30, 2026 and parsed in full: all fifty states plus the District of Columbia. Illinois’ residential change ranks first of the 51. EIA figures can be revised in later editions.
  • What the price is: a sector-wide average per kilowatt-hour, revenue divided by sales — not a bill, not a specific utility’s rate, and not adjusted for usage differences between states.
  • The window: one month against the same month a year earlier, the newest complete pair in the table. A single-month comparison can carry month-specific effects; it cannot be read as a full-year average.
  • The history series: BLS average electricity prices via FRED — the Federal Reserve’s public data service — and its keyless CSV download: Chicago-Naperville-Elgin (series APUS23A72610, November 1978 through December 2024, where it ends) and the U.S. city average (APU000072610, through June 2026). The BLS and EIA measures are constructed differently; no number from one is compared against the other anywhere on this page.
  • What this is not: an explanation of why prices rose, a forecast, or a bill calculator. It is a reading of two federal price ledgers, with Illinois ranked against every other state on the newest one.

Computed by KCM Desk from EIA and BLS price records; published July 30, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.

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