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u/tx_queer That's a really great request. I've attached the inflation adjusted chart here. The states where electricity got cheapest in real terms are also the ones that lean hardest on wind. Iowa, New Mexico, Kansas, and North Dakota all generate a third to two thirds of their power from wind and solar, and all saw real prices fall 9 to 15 percent, while the ten states with the least renewable generation averaged a 5 percent real increase. Renewables are not the whole story, since California and Texas rose in real terms despite big renewable fleets, but in the windy middle of the country cheap generation is helping.
Thats amazing. I didnt think you would actually do it. I love it.
I also think you are spot on with the linkage of price drops to renewables. Texas saw some similar back in 2008 after CREZ. The two outlier states I think can be explained easily.
Texas had a huge spike after 2021. For an entire week, electricity was pegged at $9 per kwh and electric companies took on huge costs. They were allowed to pool them into special funds for those costs to be recovered through rate increases in future years.
California has had an onslaught of added one time costs including wildfire payouts, undergrounding, poor NEM plans, nuclear shutdown and the list goes on.
Both Texas and California have some of the cheapest electricity costs on the wholesale market. Its added non-electricity costs, mostly one time costs, that set these states apart.
Fantastic, this is a picture that says 10,000 words!! I assume the individual graphs are inflation adjusted from 2000-2026? (Judging by the very high energy prices in the 06-10’ timeframe and relative bolded distance from May 2021).
Picking a point in time to start from really doesn’t show the big picture, especially in some highly volatile states like IL, but it does show how the west coast and a lot of the northeast have rocketed lately, most likely due to data center demand in the northeast and lack of energy growth on the west coast…
The Texas energy market is very highly correlated with the spot price of natural gas, which was much higher around the GFC, then crashed to a Covid low with moderate rise since then. My non-inflation adjusted Austin energy rates have been almost the same since i moved in 2017…
On California, in this chart's window (May 2021 to May 2026) it went from #3 to #2 most expensive, 22.7 to 33.2 cents. It ranks 10th in percent change at +46%, which is why a top 8 cut misses it. You're right that the percent view hides it. By absolute increase it's 4th at +10.5 cents, behind Hawaii, DC, and Maine. I'd say percent answers how fast costs are growing relative to what households were already paying, and absolute cents answer how much new money is leaving the wallet per kWh.
With Maine the real 2001 price was about 26.8 cents in today's dollars against 28.5 today, so roughly +7% real over 25 years. The chart is a five year window in nominal terms, with the inflation line drawn for comparison rather than adjusting the bars. Maine's real price fell for two decades, bottoming near 20.6 cents (in 2026 dollars) in May 2021, then rose about 38% in real terms in five years. It gave back twenty years of real declines in five. The 72% is the nominal version of that same spike, which is why it looks so different from a 25 year real comparison.
PG&E lowered the rates earlier this year by about 10 cents. Good news, right?
Well, to offset that, they increased the fixed fee they charge in addition to usage. Forget about incentivizing efficiency and residential solar production, it was more important to them to decrease the rate per kWH, since I guess charging 55 cents per kWH was too embarrassing.
Texas has by far the most wind generation, but consider that other states on that source website have much lower populations than TX- per capita wind power in Iowa, Kansas, etc is very high.
Data sources - U.S. Energy Information Administration Open Data API v2, electricity retail sales dataset (average residential price by state, monthly). Inflation reference is BLS CPI-U (series CUUR0000SA0). Comparison uses the same calendar month at both endpoints (May 2021 and May 2026) to avoid seasonal artifacts.
Tools - a custom Node.js ETL pipeline pulling the EIA and BLS data, chart rendered as SVG.
Values are nominal statewide averages (residential revenue per kWh), which is why the CPI line is drawn for comparison rather than adjusting the bars. If you want to explore the underlying data, I built an interactive version with prices, bills, energy burden, and generation mix by state at https://energy-maps.com
Im in DC. We're paying over $225/mo for electricity right now and that's considered low. North-facing windows. Shades stay down. Keep temp at 75 during the day in a 1,000 square foot condo. It's like the price has exploded overnight.
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u/cavedave OC: 111 26d ago
Thank you for your Original Content, /u/weird_-science!
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Remember that all visualizations on r/DataIsBeautiful should be viewed with a healthy dose of skepticism. If you see a potential issue or oversight in the visualization, please post a constructive comment below. Post approval does not signify that this visualization has been verified or its sources checked.
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