Dave’s notes:
- These charts of US retail electricity prices are an update of the ones posted here: https://healthy-skeptic.com/
2022/08/16/electricity-prices/ . Today’s update adds prices for June 2022, which are quite alarming. The average residential price was 15.42 cents per kilowatt-hour, 11.3% higher year over year. Commercial prices were 12.9 c/kw-hr, 13.8% higher, and industrial prices were 8.96 c/kw-hr, 23.1% higher. - The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) publishes average retail electricity prices since 2001. The raw data is available here: https://www.eia.gov/
electricity/data/browser/#/ topic/7?agg=2,0,1&geo=g&freq= M&start=200101&end=202205& ctype=linechart<ype=pin& rtype=s&maptype=0&rse=0&pin=. - Fig. 1 displays the average US monthly retail price per kilowatt-hour of electricity. These values are plotted from the EIA data without modification. Note that the annual cycle of prices typically peaks in the summer or fall, and drops to a low point in January or February. Last winter the prices drop, but less than in a typical year. It will be interesting to see if have a similar rise then drop going into the coming winter, or if the energy markets are so disrupted that prices stay more elevated again.
- Fig. 2 displays the rate of change in the average monthly price, year over year. We are calculating this change from the monthly price data displayed in Fig. 1. There was a tiny decrease in the rate of increase for the industrial sector, increasing 23.1% increase in June, down from 24.4% higher in May. Residential prices increased by 11.3% in June vs 7.4% in May. Commercial prices increased by 13.8% in June vs 11.4% in May. The overall average increase in June was 14.1% year over year, the highest increase in monthly prices year over year in this data set.
