Though Connecticut residents use less electricity than the national average, they pay the second highest rate in the nation according to data from the U.S. Energy Administration analyzed by Home Energy Club.
According to Home Energy Club, the average Connecticut resident pays $176 per month for electricity, a figure 30 percent higher than the national average. Nationally, the average electric customer pays $135 per month.
Connecticut’s average electricity bill is $203 per month, just $10 less than the average bill in Hawaii, which, due to its remote location, relies on imported petroleum, leading to increased prices.
On average, Connecticut residents use approximately 20 percent less electricity than the national average, 716 kilowatt-hours (kWh) against the national monthly average of 899 kWh. However, Connecticut’s rates are 64 percent higher than the national average, 24.61 cents per kWh against the national average of 15.04 cents.
According to Home Energy Club, Connecticut residents spend 2.4 percent of their income on electricity bills. As a result, the state ranked as the 15th most unaffordable for energy costs.
Home Energy Club’s analysis of state energy prices and median incomes found a regional pattern where Northeast and West Coast states have higher electricity bills but, because they generally have higher median incomes than other regions of the country, costs are more manageable.
In the Northeast, Connecticut, Maine, and Pennsylvania are slight outliers to this trend. At 2.4 percent of income, Connecticut’s electric costs were the highest in the Northeast region. With electricity costs at 2.3 percent of median income, Maine and Pennsylvania were tied for second highest prices in the region.
The remaining Northeast states had electricity costs between 2.1 percent and 1.4 percent of median income.
According to Home Energy Club’s data analysis, electricity prices across the country grew roughly 5 percent between 2014 and 2020 and then jumped by 21.5 percent between 2020 and 2023.
Per the Energy Information Administration, Connecticut’s prices only somewhat follow this trend. Between 2014 and 2020, Connecticut’s electricity rates, on average, grew less than 5 percent, even falling by roughly 3 percent between 2015 and 2016.
However, despite the state’s higher-than-average electricity rates, prices did not rise between 2020 and 2023 at the same rate as across the nation. Between 2020 and 2021, electricity rates actually fell by 4.2 percent. In 2022 and 2023, they increased by roughly 15 percent each year.
According to Home Energy Club, regional differences can drive differences in electricity costs, with infrastructure age, transmission costs, population density, and regulations often playing a role.
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This is ludicrous that seniors that are on a fixed income have to pay an additional $1300 to $1500 a year in public benefits to support our government mistakes of stopping nuclear and handing over a monopoly to NEversource . So when is our Governor and representatives going to do something? this is PURA mismanagement. Something smells rotten. Can someone answer ?
Hello and Good morning – Thanks for reading Inside Investigator and for writing in. We have a few deep-dive investigations that may be helpful if you haven’t seen them already:
The Authority: PURA chair secretly issues decisions under secretary’s name: https://insideinvestigator.org/the-authority-pura-chair-secretly-issues-decisions-under-secretarys-name/
Unplugged: The $7 billion tax in your electric bill: https://insideinvestigator.org/unplugged-the-7-billion-tax-in-your-electric-bill/
Also, if you search “PURA” in the search bar, you will see another dozen or so articles with updates from the past six months that should help. Let us know if you have any other questions!
Hi! Ok, so what can us CT residents do? Do we contact our Congressional reps or just CT state reps? Pura? Who? I live with my parents, all of us are disabled, I have no income, they receive just SS. Our utilities are tied into our rent. Our rent just had to go up $175/mth to cover the hikes!! We don’t see the bills and only learned today about the fee that basically penalize people who pay their bills! Who can we talk to? If enough of us make noise at the right people, could that help? Thank you for reading and any suggestions.