Ask any homeowner what they pay per kilowatt-hour. You’ll get a blank stare or a number that’s wrong.
That number — the “average rate” — hides a stack of charges that vary by utility, season, time of day, and how much you use. Your actual cost per kWh is a formula, not a number. And that formula is buried in regulatory filings that were never meant for you to read.
This matters because every solar decision starts with “how much am I paying the monopoly for grid power?” Get that wrong and your payback estimates, your battery sizing, your entire plan is built on garbage data. The utility knows your real rate. They just don’t make it easy for you to find it.
A residential electricity bill is not one price. It’s a stack of charges that get multiplied together. Here’s what’s hiding on that bill every month:
Per-kWh charges (vary by tier and time of day):
Fixed monthly charges:
Taxes:
The all-in effective rate for a single tier:
effective_rate = (usage + transmission + distribution + PCA
+ regulatory_items + state_passthrough + programs)
× (1 + combined_tax_rate)For a TOU (time-of-use) plan, you have different rates for off-peak, mid-peak, and on-peak — each with its own stack of charges. A single bill might have 3 different effective rates depending on when you used the power. Three rates, one bill, and no clear way to know which is which.
You’d think someone would have a clean database of residential electricity rates. Nobody does. And there are reasons for that.
Every utility has its own tariff structure with its own naming conventions. PGE calls it “Schedule 7.” Pacific Power calls it “Schedule 4.” They don’t break down charges the same way. There is no national standard. Convenient for them. Terrible for you.
There are roughly 3,000 electric utilities in the United States. Many offer multiple rate schedules. The total number of distinct residential tariff structures is in the tens of thousands — and they change every year through regulatory filings that nobody outside the industry reads.
In 14 states, customers can choose their electricity supplier. That means there isn’t even a single “official” rate for a given address — there are dozens of competing offers with different structures, promotional rates, and contract terms. Good luck comparing them.
Utilities are required to publish their tariffs, but “publish” means uploading a PDF of a regulatory filing. Formats vary wildly. Some are machine-readable; most are not. Updates are buried in docket filings that only lawyers and regulators read.
The best nationwide data comes from federal EIA filings. It covers all 50 states and all utilities. But EIA only reports average revenue per kWh — total revenue divided by total sales. One number. It tells you nothing about time-of-use tiers, fixed vs. volumetric charges, seasonal variation, individual components, or taxes.
Here’s what actually exists publicly:
| Data Level | Available? | Useful for Your Rate? |
|---|---|---|
| National averages | Yes, easy | No |
| State averages | Yes, easy | No |
| Utility averages | Yes, medium effort | No |
| Full tariff structures | Partial, fragmented | Yes, but hard to get |
| Nationwide structured tariff DB | No | Doesn’t exist |
The few companies that aggregate tariff data (Arcadia, Genability/ArcadiaX, RateAcuity) cover most large utilities but still miss roughly 20% — particularly small co-ops and municipal providers. And they’re paid services, not open data.
The monopoly has structured rate data for every customer class. You get a bill and an “average” that tells you nothing. That’s not an accident. That’s how monopolies operate — they control the information.
If you’re figuring out whether solar makes sense or how to optimize a system you already built, you need your actual rate. Not an average. Not a guess. Your real number.
For payback calculation: You need the all-in effective rate including every adder and tax. The gap between the “headline rate” and the actual rate can be 30-40%. That’s the difference between a 7-year payback and a 5-year payback. The monopoly prefers you use the wrong number.
For TOU optimization: If your on-peak rate is 1.7x your off-peak rate, battery storage that shifts consumption has a real dollar return. But you need the actual tier rates to model it.
For energy monitoring: Real-time cost tracking needs decomposed rates per tier. An average rate can’t drive smart load management or prove your system is delivering.
Stop guessing. Stop letting them hide your real rate behind averages and PDF filings.
Since no public database gives you what you need, you work backwards from your actual bill. Four steps:
The result: instead of guessing your rate is “about 15 cents,” you know your off-peak rate is $0.1598/kWh, your mid-peak is $0.2087/kWh, and your on-peak is $0.2682/kWh — validated against your actual bill to within 1%.
Run your numbers. Two minutes. No salesman. Get your free energy audit and see what the monopoly doesn’t want you to know about your own electricity costs.
The electricity pricing problem isn’t a bug — it’s a feature. The system was designed for one-way power flow from the monopoly to you, with the monopoly holding all the information. They know exactly what every charge is, how it’s calculated, and what you’re really paying. They just don’t make it easy for YOU to know.
As more American homeowners add solar, batteries, and smart loads, that information asymmetry becomes a weapon used against you. Every solar payback calculation you run with the wrong rate is money left on the table — or worse, a decision you didn’t make because the monopoly’s “average” made it look borderline.
Your bill has all the information. You just need to know how to read it. And once you do, the math speaks for itself.
See also: Know Your Numbers | 200W Starter System | Energy Lab | About / Energy Audit | Incentives
DATA SOURCED FROM: U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) electricity rate data, state Public Utility Commission filings, OpenEI utility rate database, commercial tariff aggregator coverage research (Arcadia, Genability/ArcadiaX, RateAcuity), 2026.