Updates and release calendar

What changes at each release

The site draws on several government releases, each on its own schedule. Knowing which one feeds a figure tells you how current it is and when it will change.

EIA Electric Power Monthly and EIA-861M: every month

EIA publishes state prices and a sample of large utilities about eight weeks after each month ends. The latest month here is August 2026¹, released on October 23, 2026; the next release, due November 24, 2026, adds September 2026.

When it lands, the latest-month price and bill on every state page move forward one month, the 12-month averages (now September 2025 to August 2026) drop their oldest month and add the newest, and the price rankings, the price-increase ranking and the monthly charts are rebuilt. The 152² utilities with pages that EIA samples monthly get new 12-month and latest-month figures. Monthly figures since January 2026 are preliminary: EIA can revise earlier months at any release, and our files take the revised values.

EIA-861: once a year

EIA's annual census of every utility is the source for utility prices, bills and usage, retail choice shares, outage minutes, net metering, time-of-use enrollment and smart meters. The current edition covers 2025 and was released on October 7, 2026. The next early release, expected in August 2027, covers 2026; final figures follow around October 2027.

At that release the annual figures on every utility page, the cheapest electric companies ranking, the bill and usage rankings and the outage ranking all move to the new year.

EIA generation and capacity: once a year

In-state generation by source (Form EIA-923) and power plant capacity (Form EIA-860) feed the generation mix on state pages and the renewable electricity ranking. The 2026 figures are expected in June 2027.

Short-Term Energy Outlook: every month

EIA's forecast of US average prices is updated monthly; the edition used here was released on November 10, 2026, and the next is due December 8, 2026. Forecasts are always labelled as forecasts, with their edition.

BLS Consumer Price Index: every month

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes the electricity index and average price for US cities. The current figures cover October 2026, released November 10, 2026; the next release is due December 10, 2026. It feeds the comparison with inflation in the electricity prices vs inflation insight.

Census American Community Survey: once a year

The ACS reports what households say they pay for electricity, with margins of error. The 2025 one-year figures were released on October 29, 2026; the 2026 figures are expected in September 2027, when the household bill distributions on state pages change.

EIA Residential Energy Consumption Survey: spring 2027

Figures on what uses electricity in a home, such as air conditioning and space heating shares, still come from the 2020 survey, a pandemic year, and are dated wherever they appear. EIA plans to publish consumption and spending from its 2024 survey in spring 2027; the home electricity use guide and the end-use charts will then move to 2024.

How updates work

When a release lands, we download the new files, rebuild the data, rerun every check against the agency's own tables and republish the pages whose figures changed. Texts built on ranks or directions, such as which state is cheapest, update with the data, so a leader named today can change next month. Pages show the release they use; dates such as "in 10 days" are computed in your browser, so nothing is rebuilt just because time passes. The data downloads are rebuilt at the same time, and the sources page lists each dataset's period and release date.