Top US power outage statistics

• US customers averaged 11 hours of power outages in 2024, nearly twice the annual average of the previous decade, EIA reported in December 2025.
• Major events such as hurricanes accounted for 80% of the hours without electricity in 2024.
• South Carolina customers averaged 53 hours of interruptions in 2024, the most of any state.
• The average customer’s longest outage grew from 8.1 hours in 2022 to 12.8 hours by mid-2025, J.D. Power’s survey found.
• Weather caused 80% of major US outages from 2000 to 2023, according to Climate Central’s analysis of federal reports.
• Hurricane Helene’s outages peaked at 4.6 million customers on September 27, 2024, and 96% had power back by October 8.
• Winter Storm Uri cut power to more than 4.5 million people in Texas in February 2021, some for as long as four days.
• Power interruptions cost the US economy about $44 billion a year in 2015 dollars, Berkeley Lab estimated in 2018.

How long do power outages last?

The average outage lasted 7.2 hours with major events and 2.1 hours without in 2024, counting utilities that report under the IEEE standard. EIA calls this measure CAIDI, the average number of minutes it takes to restore service after an interruption, and the gap between the two figures is the storm outages.

J.D. Power’s survey measures something different, the longest outage each customer experienced. In the first half of 2025, 45% of customers reported an outage.

If you live in the South, the survey found the longest outages averaged 18.2 hours, and the West came next at 12.4. Of the outages respondents reported, nearly half were due to extreme weather.

For you, that means an outage in a calm year runs about two hours on average, and a storm year can run far longer.

How many hours a year does the average customer lose?

EIA calls 2024 the year with the most hours without electricity in 10 years. The table gives each year’s average per customer for utilities that report under the IEEE standard. If you’re comparing a storm year with a calm one, the no-major-events columns are the baseline.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.1. Hours are EIA’s minutes divided by 60. IEEE-method utilities reported 79.3% of customers in 2024.

Without major events, the yearly average has stayed around two hours since 2013. Major events move the total, as in 2022, when customers averaged five and one-half hours.

EIA’s 2021 article put 2020 at more than eight hours, the most since it began collecting the data in 2013, and the table above, from the 2024 edition, lists that year lower. In 2019 customers lost 3.2 hours to major events and 1.5 hours otherwise.

EIA’s 2018 article reported 7.8 hours for 2017, against 8.4 in the 2024 edition. The older articles and the 2024 edition give different figures for the same years, so this page uses the 2024 edition throughout.

Customers also lose power often. The average customer had 1.5 interruptions in 2024. In years with no major events the count barely moves from year to year, as the last column shows.

Which states lose power the longest?

South Carolina customers averaged 3,136.5 minutes without power in 2024, or 52.3 hours, the most of any state.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3. Hours are EIA’s minutes divided by 60, and average outage is EIA’s restoration time per interruption.

A state’s total can swing from year to year. Connecticut went from 93.7 minutes in 2014 to 3,033.8 in 2020 and back to 152.8 in 2024.

Maine’s worst year in EIA’s series was 2017, at 2,492.6 minutes.

Find your state in these tables and read its second column against its third. The gap between them is how much of your outage time came from major events.

Which states lose power the least?

Arizona, South Dakota, North Dakota and Massachusetts each averaged under two hours without power in 2024.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Annual 2024, Table 11.3. Hours are EIA’s minutes divided by 60. The District of Columbia, which isn’t a state, is left out of the ranking.

South Dakota and Wyoming rest on a smaller sample of customers, as the last column shows.

What are the biggest US power outages?

Hurricane Helene left nearly 6 million customers in 10 states without power in September 2024, more than any other storm in the table below. DOE’s region-wide peak of 4.6 million is the most customers out at one time, so the two counts measure different things.

Source: DOE Hurricane Helene Situation Report #12, Utility Dive on Milton, American Public Power Association on Ian, Insurance Journal on Beryl and PowerOutage.us on Fern. Milton’s count comes from PowerOutage.us.

Hurricane Milton left 3.4 million Florida customers without power on October 10, 2024. Hurricane Ian’s peak of 2.7 million Florida customers in September 2022 was down 85% by October 4. More than 2.6 million Texas customers lost power for days after Hurricane Beryl, and fallen trees caused many of those outages.

Winter Storm Fern knocked out power to about 1.1 million customers at its peak on January 25, 2026. During Winter Storm Elliott in December 2022, Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority conducted rolling blackouts of more than 5 GW of load.

Uri and the 2003 Northeast blackout were counted in people, so they stay out of the table. FERC found that Uri cut power to more than 4.5 million people in Texas, and freezing and fuel problems caused 75.6% of the unplanned generator outages. The 2003 blackout left over 50 million people without power for up to four days.

How long did the biggest outages take to fix?

Five days after Helene’s peak, 1.2 million customers were still without power, and rural cooperative leaders warned some areas could need weeks.

By the Sunday after landfall, about 900,000 Duke Energy customers in the Carolinas were still in the dark. Georgia Power had restored 1.3 million customers, more than 95% of those affected.

CenterPoint expected 98% restoration by the end of July 17, 2024, nine days after Beryl struck southeast Texas on July 8. Florida Power and Light restored nearly 1.3 million customers within 24 hours of Milton leaving the state, about two-thirds of those affected. After Ian, Florida’s public power utilities restored 99.99% of customers able to take service within six days.

On Sunday evening, January 25, 2026, about 899,000 customers were without power after Fern, and Mississippi needed nearly two weeks to reach 98% restoration. FERC and NERC staff found no planned power outages in January in ERCOT or the Eastern Interconnection.

What causes power outages?

NERC ranked weather, excluding lightning, as the number one cause of transmission outages on extreme days in 2025. The table splits weather-related major outages into five types.

Source: Climate Central, Weather-related Power Outages Rising. Climate Central counts major outages as events that affect at least 50,000 customers or 300 megawatts, using federal OE-417 reports.

The US had about twice as many weather-related major outages in 2014 to 2023 as in 2000 to 2009. NERC still calls major weather events the greatest risk to reliability, though 2025 was generally temperate.

For what aging lines and rising demand mean for reliability, read about the strain on the power grid.

How much do power outages cost?

Berkeley Lab estimated that sustained power interruptions cost the US about $44 billion a year in 2015 dollars, 25% more than its 2006 estimate after adjusting for the dollar year. The figure covers sustained interruptions across all customer classes.

How we compiled these numbers

We took the national and state figures from EIA’s Electric Power Annual 2024, released October 16, 2025, and the outage counts from DOE and from utility and trade-group reports. The national history uses the IEEE-method series that EIA’s own headline figure uses. The state tables use EIA’s any-method series, which covers more customers, so figures such as South Carolina’s can differ slightly from EIA’s article.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s county outage dataset covered 92% of customers by 2022 and doesn’t reliably capture outages under 15 minutes. Customer counts are meters, and the Uri and 2003 figures are people.

We’ll update the tables, chart and title year when EIA publishes the 2025 data, and when NERC follows its June 24, 2026 State of Reliability report with the next edition.

How long a backup plan should cover

In a year with no major events, the average customer loses about two hours. After Beryl, CenterPoint’s target for 98% restoration was July 17, nine days after landfall.

For what a home battery can carry through a gap like the second one, see battery backup for home power outages, and for a short one like the first, see portable power stations for short outages. Find your state in the tables above, note how far its all-events hours sit above its no-major-events hours, and size your plan to that gap.

Top electric car charging cost statistics

• A 2026 Tesla Model Y Long Range RWD, rated at 25 kWh per 100 miles, costs about $4.59 to cover that distance at home at the US average price for January to July 2026.
• A 2026 Kia EV9 Long Range AWD, rated at 40 kWh per 100 miles, costs about $7.28 for the same distance.
• US households paid an average of 17.30 cents per kWh for electricity in 2025.
• July 2026 alone averaged 18.31 cents per kWh for US residential customers.
• EIA’s September 2026 outlook forecasts a residential price of 18.2 cents per kWh for 2026 and 18.6 for 2027.
• Public DC fast chargers averaged $0.53 per kWh in the first quarter of 2026, according to Paren.
• The average new 2024 vehicle gets 27.2 mpg in real-world driving, a record, according to EPA.
• J.D. Power’s 2026 owner survey found that 86% of typical EV charging happens at home.
• Electrify America says a Pass+ membership saves about 25% on charging.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car at home?

Home charging costs about $5.46 per 100 miles for a Nissan Leaf, which the EPA rates at 30 kWh over that distance. Across the seven 2026 EVs in the table it runs from $4.48 for the Tesla Model 3 to $7.28 for the Kia EV9 at the January to July 2026 US average price.

Source: EPA ratings from fueleconomy.gov for the Tesla Model 3, Tesla Model Y, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Nissan Leaf, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Chevrolet Equinox EV and Kia EV9, priced at the January to July 2026 US residential average from EIA. Costs are calculated from these sources.

The two Teslas sit at the low end of the table for energy use and the Kia at the high end.

A Nissan Leaf, with an EPA range of 288 miles, needs about $15.72 of electricity to cover it at the same price. A Ford Mustang Mach-E, rated at 320 miles, needs about $17.85.

J.D. Power’s 2026 owner survey found that EV owners spent an average of $63 on home charging in the past 30 days, up $5 from a year earlier.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car in your state?

From January to July 2026, US households paid 12.36 cents per kWh in North Dakota and 46.28 in Hawaii, the lowest and highest state prices in EIA’s table, so the same car costs different amounts to charge from place to place.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.B, with EPA ratings for the Tesla Model Y and the Chevrolet Equinox EV from fueleconomy.gov. Costs are calculated from these sources.

EIA says electricity prices vary by locality with the availability of power plants and fuels, local fuel costs and pricing regulations. Florida and Texas sit below the US average in the table.

Plug an Equinox EV in at a Hawaii address and 100 miles costs about $14.38, against $3.84 in North Dakota.

J.D. Power’s owner survey found regional differences in spending too, with New England owners at $99 and Mountain-region owners at $36 over 30 days.

How much does it cost to charge an electric car at a public charging station?

DC fast chargers averaged 53.8 cents per kWh across the US in the second quarter of 2026, according to Paren’s quarterly report. The table prices that and other options for a Chevrolet Equinox EV, with the gas Equinox at EIA’s gasoline price for comparison.

Source: Georgia Power, PG&E, EVgo, Electrek on Tesla Supercharger pricing, Paren, Q2 2026 and EIA weekly gasoline prices, with EPA ratings for the Chevrolet Equinox EV and the Chevrolet Equinox. Costs are calculated from these sources. The Georgia Power, PG&E, EVgo and Tesla rows each describe one plan, network or city.

At the Paren average, DC fast charging an Equinox EV costs about the same per mile as running the gas Equinox.

Electrek reports that at peak hours at Los Angeles Superchargers, non-Tesla drivers pay about $0.60 per kWh and Tesla owners $0.45. A $12.99 monthly membership gives non-Tesla EVs the Tesla rate.

Electrify America says DC fast prices depend on the charger’s location, your plan and the energy delivered, and its Pass+ membership saves about 25%. Its page gives no flat per-kWh price.

EVgo lists Level 2 charging at $0.28 per kWh in select locations and adds a $2.99 fee to sessions started with a credit card.

Hawaii was the most expensive state for fast charging in that quarter, as it is for home electricity.

Is charging an electric car cheaper than buying gas?

Driving 100 miles costs about $5.65 in the Equinox EV and about $16.54 in the gas Equinox, going by the EPA’s side-by-side ratings at the January to July 2026 home average and EIA’s September 28 gasoline price. EPA’s Automotive Trends Report puts the average new 2024 vehicle at 27.2 mpg in real-world driving, close to the gas Equinox’s rating.

Those prices cover different periods, and gasoline has moved fast. EIA’s weekly series had regular at $4.085 on August 24, 2026 and at $4.465 five weeks later.

Home electricity rose from 12.55 cents per kWh in 2016 to 17.30 cents in 2025. Regular gasoline went from $2.143 to $3.097 a gallon over the same years.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, EIA, Electric Power Annual, Table 2.4 for 2015, EIA regular gasoline annual prices, and 2026 EPA ratings for the Chevrolet Equinox EV and the Chevrolet Equinox. Prices are nominal dollars. Costs are calculated from these sources.

The gas Equinox’s cost per 100 miles peaked in 2022, when regular averaged $3.951 a gallon.

We computed each cost by multiplying an energy rate by a price. For electric cars that’s the EPA energy rating times the price per kWh, and for the gas Equinox it’s the price per gallon divided by its miles per gallon. The history table holds the 2026 ratings fixed and varies the prices, so it shows what each year’s prices would have cost a 2026 car. Electricity is an average over a span of months and gasoline is a single week, which is why the comparison at the top of this section names both dates.

For more on the vehicles themselves, see the pages on electric vehicle sales, early electric cars and natural gas vehicles in the US.

How much electricity does it take to charge an electric car?

A Tesla Model Y Long Range RWD uses 25 kWh of electricity per 100 miles under its 2026 EPA rating. A kilowatt-hour is the energy your bill charges for, and a kilowatt is how fast a charger delivers it.

Level 1 charging adds about 5 miles of range per hour, according to the Department of Energy. Level 2 adds about 25 miles per hour. DC fast charging adds 100 to 200+ miles per 30 minutes.

Some energy is lost on the way to the battery. fueleconomy.gov’s EV technology page says battery charging efficiency is often 84% to 93%. A peer-reviewed measurement study found one-way losses of 12% to 36% in its test setups.

EV battery size is a different number again. KBB lists the Hyundai Ioniq 5 at 84 kWh. The EPA rating works out to 95.4 kWh over that car’s 318-mile range. Check which figure a review or your car’s screen is quoting before you compare prices.

How can you pay less to charge an electric car?

The hour you plug in changes the price on a time-of-use plan. PG&E’s EV2-A plan charges 23 cents per kWh in summer from midnight to 3 p.m. Between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. the price reaches 54 cents.

Georgia Power’s Overnight Advantage plan lists 2.1859 cents per kWh from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. On summer weekday afternoons the on-peak price is 29.7868 cents. The page gives per-kWh rates and doesn’t say whether other charges apply, so the plan’s price on your full bill may differ.

Ask your utility whether it offers an EV or time-of-use plan, and compare its overnight price with your current rate. Drivers who also want power during outages can read our page on home battery backup.

What EIA’s outlook says about home power and gasoline in 2027

EIA’s September 2026 outlook forecasts a US residential price of 18.2 cents per kWh for 2026 and 18.6 for 2027. It forecasts retail gasoline at $3.84 a gallon in 2026 and $3.35 in 2027. The next outlook is due October 6, 2026.

To price your own car, take its energy use per 100 miles from the Find a Car page on fueleconomy.gov and multiply by the cents per kWh on your power bill, which gives your cost for that distance in cents.

Top photo: Mariordo (Mario Roberto Durán Ortiz), CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top household electricity statistics

• US homes bought 1.51 trillion kWh in 2025, 37.3% of all retail electricity sales.
• In 2022, Louisiana customers bought 14,774 kWh against 6,178 kWh in Hawaii, the highest and lowest of any state.
• About 89% of US homes used air conditioning in 2020, up from 57% in 1980.
• Devices that draw power around the clock add up to 5% to 10% of residential electricity use, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) says.
• EIA forecasts an average residential price of 18 cents per kWh for 2026, up about 37% from 2020, Utility Dive reports.
• Per-person home electricity use fell 5% between 2010 and 2020 after rising about 3% a year from 1960 to 2010.

How many kWh does a house use?

The answer shifts with the source. EPA’s calculator uses 12,194 kWh per home for 2022, from 1,541 billion kWh spread across 126.4 million homes. EIA’s FAQ puts the same year lower, at 10,791 kWh per utility customer, and its energy explainer says the average household uses about 10,500 kWh a year.

EPA divides by homes, while EIA’s sales figure divides by the customers that utilities bill. When you compare your house with an average, check which count it came from, and which year.

Daily use is the number a battery gets measured against, whether it’s a Powerwall or a portable power station for home backup. One 13.5 kWh Powerwall holds about half a day of an average home’s use, in nominal capacity. If you’re sizing backup power, the page on a home battery backup system covers what a battery can run.

What is the average kWh usage per month?

The average US home used 863 kWh a month in 2024, or about 28 kWh a day. Homes use far more electricity in some months than in others. US homes bought 168.0 billion kWh in July 2025 against 97.3 billion in April, in EIA’s preliminary monthly data.

Each row below is a total for all US homes together, so read the table for the shape of the year.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.1 (2025 values are preliminary).

July’s total was about 1.7 times April’s, so if your July bill runs far above your April bill, that matches the national pattern. The end-use table further down shows how much of a year’s use goes to cooling and heating.

Which states use the most electricity?

Louisiana’s residential customers used the most electricity in 2024, 1,201.8 kWh a month on average. Hawaii’s used the least, and Hawaiian Electric builds its typical residential bill around 500 kWh a month on Oahu, Hawaii Island and Maui and 400 kWh on Lanai and Molokai.

The table lists the ten states at each end of the ranking, with each one’s price and average bill.

Source: EIA, 2024 Average Monthly Bill, Residential (Table 5A, Form EIA-861).

Low use doesn’t mean a low bill. Hawaii uses less than half what Louisiana does and still pays the bigger bill, as the price column shows.

These are electricity purchases, so a home that runs on its own rooftop solar shows up as using less. EIA’s FAQ shows the size of the effect in Hawaii, where a 2020 survey put household use at 7,976 kWh against 6,446 kWh purchased.

How do home type and size change the number?

In EIA’s 2020 home survey, the largest homes used 15,475 kWh, more than twice the 6,800 kWh of the smallest. The survey reports energy in Btu, so the tables here convert it to kWh.

Source: EIA, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Table CE2.1, converted at the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh.

Find your square-footage band in the table and you have a rough benchmark for your own bill. For scale, the median single-family home completed in 2025 had 2,142 square feet.

Type matters as much as size. A detached house uses about twice what an apartment in a large building does, and a mobile home uses about as much as a detached house.

Source: EIA, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Table CE2.1, converted at the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh.

What uses the most electricity in a home?

Air conditioning is the biggest single use, at 19% of home electricity in 2020, with space heating and water heating at 12% each. Lighting and refrigerators come next.

Source: EIA, Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, Table CE4.1, Table CE5.1a, Table CE5.1b and Table CE5.3a, converted at the standard 3,412 Btu per kWh. Shares are of 4,453 trillion Btu, the survey’s electricity total, and the last row is what the listed uses leave over.

EIA’s earlier survey put cooling at a similar share, 18% of household electricity use in 2015.

New homes lean electric. Among single-family homes completed in 2025, 56% were fueled with electricity. In the South, 63% had a heat pump. The page on electric heat pumps shows how those machines work.

A drafty house pushes up the heating share, and the guide to the sources of home heat loss shows where the heat escapes.

Small loads add up too. ENERGY STAR certified refrigerators are about 9% more efficient than models that only meet the federal minimum, and an ENERGY STAR electric clothes dryer saves about $210 in energy bills over its life. The devices that stay on all day are covered in what energy waste costs.

Charging an electric car is the newest load. Homes that charged an electric vehicle at home used 2,363 kWh a year for it in 2020, and the Department of Energy’s worked example is a car that uses 27 kWh per 100 miles.

How has household electricity use changed over time?

Use per customer climbed from 8,978 kWh in 1984, peaked in 2010 and has drifted lower since.

Source: EIA, Historical state data, Form EIA-861, 1990 to 2009 file and 2010 and later file. Each figure is residential sales divided by residential customers.

EIA’s per-person numbers turn at the same point. Residential sales per person fell 5% between 2010 and 2020, to 4,437 kWh in 2020, after rising about 3% a year over the half century before.

Louisiana’s line stays high through the whole span, and Hawaii’s slopes down. Hawaii’s figures count purchases, so rooftop solar lowers them.

Total retail electricity sales, which include business and industry, kept growing. They grew 0.2% a year from 2010 to 2019 and then 1.1% a year from 2019 to 2025, LBNL found, and the faster growth came largely from commercial and industrial customers.

What does the average house pay for it?

The average bill for a US home was $142.26 a month in 2024, at 16.48 cents per kWh. LBNL found that the average residential bill was 2.4% of household spending in 2025. The report’s March edition measured total residential electricity costs against personal spending instead and got 1.25% for 2025, a figure EEI, the trade group for investor-owned utilities, passed along as 1.25 percent of household spending.

EIA’s 2023 analysis put the average monthly residential bill at $137 in 2022, up from $121 in 2021, before inflation.

EIA forecasts the 2026 average residential price at 18 cents per kWh, up about 37% from 2020, Utility Dive reports. At 18 cents a kWh, every 100 kWh your home uses costs $18.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy found that one in four low-income households spend over 15% of income on energy bills.

Where these numbers come from

We computed per-customer use by dividing EIA’s residential sales by its residential customers for each year. Monthly figures divide that by twelve. Daily figures divide it by the 366 days of 2024, which was a leap year, and come to about 28 kWh whichever way you count the year. We converted EIA’s home survey from Btu to kWh at its standard factor.

The 2025 monthly figures are EIA’s preliminary estimates, and EIA hasn’t published a 2025 customer count, so the annual figure stays at 2024. Survey-based figures describe 2020, the newest year with a published end-use breakdown, and EIA will publish 2024 consumption by end use in spring 2027.

How to find your own kWh number

Your bills already hold the answer. Add up a full year of kWh, divide by the months and compare that monthly average with your state’s row in the table above and with the size band that fits your home.

If you come out well over, start with cooling. Heating and water heating come next in the end-use table.

Top photo: 277volts, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Cost of electricity per kWh by state, ranked

The ranking uses EIA’s Electric Power Monthly estimate of the average residential price in July 2026. EIA calculates the price by dividing revenue by sales, so it includes taxes and fees, and EIA calls the July values preliminary. Prices are usually highest in the summer, so a July figure runs above a yearly average. The table is refreshed after each EIA release, and the next one, with August data, is scheduled for October 23, 2026.

The table is ordered by price, with the US average in the last row.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.6.A, data for July 2026, preliminary. Missouri and New Mexico tie at 16.09 cents. The change columns are arithmetic on EIA’s figures.

Connecticut is the one large drop. Its regulator approved an interim decision to cut residential rates from May 1, 2026, including 4.3 cents per kWh for the average Eversource customer, by turning a public benefits charge into a credit that is scheduled to run through at least September.

Louisiana had the lowest price in July, but North Dakota had the lowest for January through July 2026, at 12.36 cents. The state at the bottom of the ranking depends on the period you pick.

The five most expensive states

Hawaii, California, Maine, Massachusetts and New York rank one through five in the July 2026 table.

1. Hawaii

Hawaii also tops the year-to-date ranking. Its customers averaged 46.28 cents per kWh from January through July 2026, against 41.08 cents a year earlier.

EIA says Hawaii’s prices are high mainly because most of its electricity is generated with petroleum fuels that have to be imported. Hawaiian Electric reports that 36.8% of the power it generated in 2025 came from renewables.

2. California

California’s year-to-date price was 33.25 cents per kWh for January through July 2026, second only to Hawaii. If you live there, your rate can include wildfire costs. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the state’s three large investor-owned utilities were authorized to include $27 billion in wildfire-related costs in retail prices from 2019 to 2023.

3. Maine

Maine’s July price was nearly a sixth higher than a year earlier. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s review of 2025 price changes lists storm-cost recovery and regional transmission costs for Maine, where Central Maine Power’s storm surcharge rose to 2.5 cents per kWh in 2025 from 1.8 cents in 2024.

4. Massachusetts

Massachusetts households used 570 kWh a month in 2024, about two-thirds of the US average, and still ran up the fourth-highest bill at $167.20. EIA said in May 2025 that residential prices in New England, where they were already high, could increase more than the national average.

5. New York

New York’s July price was nearly a seventh higher than a year earlier. New Yorkers used 571 kWh a month in 2024, the fourth lowest of any state, and their average bill was $139.53.

The five cheapest states

Louisiana, Nevada, Utah, North Dakota and Tennessee sit at the bottom of the July 2026 table. A low price doesn’t guarantee a low bill. Louisiana’s customers use more than twice as much grid electricity as those in Hawaii or California, and EIA estimated their average bill at $142 a month in 2024, nearly equal to the national average.

Average monthly electric bill by state

The average US household paid $142.26 a month for electricity in 2024, and Hawaii’s customers paid the most at $212.12. The table shows the ten states at each end of the ranking.

Source: EIA, Electric Sales, Revenue, and Average Price, 2024 data, Table 5A. Ranks run from 1 (highest bill) to 51 (lowest) across 50 states and DC. Figures are for 2024, the latest full year in this EIA report.

Price and bill don’t rank the same. Alabama’s customers used 1,143 kWh a month in 2024, against 863 kWh nationally. Their average bill of $173.50 ranked third, even though their price of 15.18 cents per kWh was below the US average of 16.48 cents.

EIA says Southeastern customers use more electricity because of summer air conditioning. An earlier EIA estimate, built from preliminary monthly data, put the 2024 US average bill at $144 and found the six smallest bills all in the Rocky Mountain region, and the final data in the table are slightly lower.

How the US average price has changed since 2001

The US average residential price was 17.30 cents per kWh in 2025 and 8.24 cents in 2000, so it has more than doubled in nominal terms.

Source: EIA, Monthly Energy Review, Table 9.8. Prices are in nominal dollars.

Adjusted for inflation, the picture is flatter. EIA found that the average residential price rose by less than 1% from 2013 to 2023 in inflation-adjusted terms.

EIA’s September 2026 Short-Term Energy Outlook forecasts 18.2 cents per kWh in 2026 and 18.6 cents in 2027. For prices abroad, see electricity prices in other countries.

What pushed prices up in 2025

Natural gas delivered to power plants rose 36% in 2025 from its record low in 2024, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory counted gas as a driver of retail price changes in 21 states, with wholesale prices rising most in New England and New York.

In the PJM grid region, LBL found that retail prices rose 3.1 cents per kWh in DC and 2.0 cents in New Jersey between 2024 and 2025. LBL says that is in part due to higher PJM capacity auction prices.

PJM’s auction for the 2028/2029 delivery year cleared every zone at its $325 per MW-day cap. Utility Dive reported that the results reflected about 2 GW more forecast demand, largely from data centers, and that ratepayers should see little change in their electric bills when that delivery year starts on June 1, 2028.

Utilities requested or were granted $29 billion in rate increases in the first half of 2025, according to the advocacy group PowerLines.

Utilities are also spending more on the wires to your door. EIA’s analysis of utility filings found that distribution spending has passed spending on transmission and production.

The studies cited here cover 2025, so they don’t explain each state’s July 2026 change.

Rising demand, including data center electricity use, and aging wires sit behind some of these increases, and our look at why the US power grid is under strain covers how AI demand and old equipment are straining it. If you want a plan for outages, the page on whole home battery backup systems covers what they cost.

How utilities and retail choice change what you pay

Your utility’s role depends on your state’s market. In regulated markets, utilities are typically vertically integrated monopolies that generate, transmit and distribute electricity for their customers. In restructured markets, utilities that serve retail customers are only responsible for delivering electricity and other companies generate it.

EIA describes the split this way. In some states commissions fully regulate prices, and in others generators’ prices are unregulated while transmission and distribution prices stay regulated.

Many states restructured from the 1990s onward to create competition and lower costs. Retail choice sits on top of that. It lets customers buy electricity from competitive retail suppliers, and EPA says it isn’t widely available in most parts of the country. In Texas, about 85% of electricity consumers can choose their retail provider, including those in Dallas and Houston.

Even where you can choose, distribution and transmission, which make up nearly 40% of the average electric bill, are still recovered through rate regulation.

How to find your own rate on your bill

Your latest bill shows the total you owe and the kilowatt-hours you used. Divide the total by the kilowatt-hours and you have your all-in price per kWh, the same math EIA uses for the table. EIA’s 2024 US average works out the same way, $142.26 for 863 kWh, listed at 16.48 cents per kWh.

Compare your result with your state’s row in the table, and remember the table shows July, a summer month. If your price is close to your state’s but your bill is high, the difference is how much you use, and our look at how much energy the US wastes shows where it goes.

A heat pump needs a far lower COP to break even in Florida than in Michigan, so the answer turns on your state’s gas and electricity prices.

Top heat pump vs furnace statistics

• ENERGY STAR requires gas furnaces to reach 95% AFUE in the South and 97% in the North.
• In 8 of the 19 sample states, a best-available heat pump costs less to run than a 95% gas furnace, using EIA’s 2025 state electricity prices.
• DOE puts the average life of a gas furnace at 21.5 years.
• Heat pumps in DOE’s cold climate field tests delivered a median COP of 1.9 when the outdoor temperature was 0 to 5°F.
• AHRI members shipped 3,644,596 heat pumps and 3,247,426 gas furnaces in 2025.
• Gas central furnaces were the main heating equipment in 53.26 million US homes in 2020, against 16.13 million with a heat pump.
• On the 2023 US average grid, a high-efficiency heat pump emits about 70 lb of CO2 per million Btu delivered, against 123 lb for a 95% gas furnace.
• The federal 25C credit paid up to $2,000 a year for a heat pump, and it isn’t allowed on equipment placed in service after December 31, 2025.

Is a heat pump cheaper to run than a gas furnace?

Gas heat rose faster in price than heat-pump heat. Between 2016 and 2025 the cost of a million Btu of delivered heat from a 95% efficient gas furnace climbed 52.7%, against 37.9% for a best-available heat pump, by the table’s calculation.

COP is the heat a machine delivers per unit of electricity, and how a heat pump works is covered on its own page. The table uses two ratings. One is HSPF2 7.5, the federal minimum for a split-system heat pump. The other is HSPF2 11, the best available model in DOE’s purchasing example, and dividing a rating by 3.412, the Btu in a watt-hour, gives the seasonal COP.

Source: EIA, Electric Power Monthly, Table 5.3, EIA, residential natural gas price, EIA, heat content of natural gas and EIA, Btu conversions. Costs are calculated from these figures in nominal dollars, with natural gas at 1,036 Btu per cubic foot for every year.

In the table, the high-efficiency heat pump cost less than the furnace in two of the ten years, and the entry-level one cost more in all ten.

To check your own house, multiply your power rate in cents per kWh by 2.93 to get dollars per million Btu at a COP of 1, then divide by the heat pump’s COP. Compare that with your gas price per million Btu divided by your furnace’s AFUE. The COP at which the two match is your break-even COP.

How does a heat pump compare with an electric furnace?

EIA counted 13.82 million US homes with an electric central warm-air furnace as main heating equipment in 2020.

In the table above, electric furnace heat costs more than twice as much as even a minimum-efficiency heat pump’s in every year. A heat pump typically needs about half the energy that other electric home-heating sources do, EPA says.

Which states favor a heat pump on running cost?

A heat pump at the best-available rating beats a 95% gas furnace on running cost in Florida, Georgia, Texas, Washington, Arizona, Virginia, Oregon and Tennessee, and the furnace stays cheaper in the rest of the table, going by EIA’s 2025 gas prices and the electricity prices below.

The last column is the seasonal COP a heat pump needs to break even with the furnace in that state. Compare it with the seasonal COP on a heat pump’s spec sheet, or work one out from its efficiency rating the way the running-cost section explains.

Source: EIA Electric Power Monthly Table 5.6.B, February 2026 issue (2025 values preliminary), EIA average residential natural gas price by state and EIA heat content of natural gas. Costs are calculated from these figures for 19 selected states. States without a 2025 EIA gas price, Maine among them, are left out.

Michigan is the hardest case for a heat pump on running cost, and Florida the easiest. In Michigan the furnace is cheaper to run than both heat pumps in the table, and in Florida both heat pumps cost less than the furnace.

The American Gas Association, a gas industry trade group, finds gas cheaper in more places than this table does. Its January 2024 analysis says gas is cheaper to heat with in 41 out of 50 states when ENERGY STAR furnaces are set against ENERGY STAR heat pumps. NREL’s modeling of the whole housing stock found that 62% to 95% of households would see lower bills with a heat pump, but that count includes homes now heated with oil, propane and electric resistance.

For homes that burn gas, NREL’s lead author said that more than half would see a financial benefit, and the study’s median annual bill change for gas homes ranged from up $70 to down $380.

How much does a heat pump cost to install compared with a furnace?

Consumer Reports members surveyed in 2023 paid a median $8,348 to buy and install a heat pump, against $6,221 for a gas furnace.

Source: Consumer Reports, Heat Pump Buying Guide, updated March 2026, American Gas Association, January 2024, DOE FEMP, residential air-source heat pumps, DOE, consumer furnace standards rule and ENERGY STAR, when to replace.

The two sets of install prices agree on heat pumps and disagree on furnaces. The Consumer Reports median for a heat pump falls inside AGA’s range, and its gas furnace median sits well above AGA’s high end. The table names AGA because it’s a gas trade group.

A whole-home heat pump that replaces both the air conditioner and the heating system costs more. Rewiring America puts a whole-home install at $17,000 to $23,000. The range is for a 1,500 to 2,500 square foot home.

That figure covers two systems, so it isn’t a furnace-versus-heat-pump price.

The federal 25C credit paid up to $2,000 for a heat pump, and it’s not allowed on equipment placed in service after December 31, 2025. State and utility rebates aren’t covered here, so ask your installer which ones apply at your address.

Which lasts longer, a heat pump or a furnace?

A gas furnace lasts longer, on the estimates available. DOE estimates the average gas furnace lasts 21.5 years, while Consumer Reports says a heat pump generally wears out after 10 to 15 years.

DOE’s own cost model for air-source heat pumps assumes 15 years of life. None of these is a measured lifespan for heat pumps, so treat the gap as a planning range.

ENERGY STAR advises considering a replacement once a furnace is more than 15 years old and once a heat pump or air conditioner is more than 10.

How does a heat pump perform in cold weather?

DOE’s field tests of cold climate heat pumps found a median COP of 1.9 at 0 to 5°F. Across the temperature bins below 30°F the medians ranged from 1.6 to 2.7.

At that COP, heat from a heat pump costs about $26.69 per million Btu at the 2025 US average electricity price, against $15.59 for a 95% gas furnace. That figure is for one temperature bin in the field tests, so it isn’t a seasonal average.

EPA says air-source heat pumps are now more effective in colder climates, which it puts at 5°F and colder. The field tests used prototype cold climate units at a limited number of sites and left out periods with auxiliary heat or defrost, so your results depend on the model and the house.

Which one produces less CO2?

On the 2023 US average grid, a heat pump rated HSPF2 11 emits about 70 lb of CO2 per million Btu of delivered heat. A 95% gas furnace emits 123 lb per million Btu.

Source: EPA eGRID2023 summary tables and EPA Greenhouse Gas Equivalencies Calculator. Figures are calculated from grid CO2 and combustion CO2 only. The furnace figure is EPA’s 0.0053 metric tons of CO2 per therm, converted to pounds and divided by the 95% efficiency.

The grid you’re on changes the answer. A minimum-efficiency heat pump emits more than the furnace on four grids in the table, among them RFC Michigan and MRO East. A high-efficiency unit emits less than the furnace on every grid except MRO East.

The table is a snapshot of the 2023 grid average. NREL modeled heat pumps over a 16-year life with several future grid paths, and Canary Media reported emissions cuts in every one of the 48 contiguous states.

The same modeling put the average household cut at 36% to 64%. AGA says a gas home can have a footprint 19% lower than an ENERGY STAR heat pump home, and its page doesn’t give a method.

Heat pump vs air conditioner

A heat pump cools a house in summer the way an air conditioner does and heats it in winter, and ENERGY STAR says heat pumps also provide cooling in the summer months.

Under DOE’s 2023 standards a split-system heat pump must reach 14.3 SEER2, while a split-system air conditioner needs 13.4, or 14.3 in the Southeast and Southwest. EIA’s 2020 survey counted 82.69 million US homes with central air conditioning, a figure that includes central heat pumps, and 21.43 million with window or wall units.

Source: AHRI, December 2020 statistical release, AHRI, December 2021 statistical release, AHRI, December 2023 statistical release and Contracting Business, AHRI’s December 2025 report. Units shipped by AHRI members each year.

Heat pumps outsold gas furnaces in 2020 and in each year from 2022 to 2025, and trailed in 2019 and 2021, going by AHRI’s shipments. In 2025 heat pumps were 47% of cooling equipment sales, RMI reports.

If your air conditioner or furnace is the next thing to fail, ENERGY STAR says that in most zones a heat pump can be installed as a drop-in replacement for either one.

When does a dual-fuel heat pump and furnace make sense?

A dual-fuel system pairs a heat pump with a gas furnace and switches between them at a set outdoor temperature. NREL’s housing-stock model describes the switchover temperature or balance point, where the system stops the heat pump and starts the furnace.

In that model, adding a dual-fuel heat pump cut total site energy use across the US housing stock by 9.3%. That’s a saving in energy use, and the figure says nothing about dollars or emissions.

The cold-weather section shows the logic for the switch. At the field median COP, heat from a heat pump costs more per million Btu than heat from the gas furnace in the tables above, so the furnace takes over below the switchover temperature.

A Minnesota case study paired a cold climate heat pump with an existing 80% efficient gas furnace and found it cost-neutral against the furnace alone. A reduced electric rate helped, because it lets the utility switch the home to gas at peak times. The study also projected emissions to rise in year one and fall below the baseline over the equipment’s life.

DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are developing a heat pump that can run at the same time as a gas furnace, but it’s an R&D project and not a product you can buy.

Where these numbers come from

The cost of delivered heat is calculated from EIA’s average residential prices. For gas, the price per thousand cubic feet is divided by the gas’s heat content, 1,036 Btu per cubic foot in the national history, and then by the furnace’s AFUE.

For heat pumps, the electricity price is multiplied by 293.08 kWh per million Btu, which is a million divided by 3,412 Btu per kWh, and then divided by the seasonal COP. State figures use EIA’s preliminary state electricity prices, and the emissions figures leave out upstream emissions and grid losses.

Your break-even COP before the next replacement

Your own bills settle it. Take the power rate in cents per kWh and the gas price from your bills, and work out the COP at which the two costs match. A heat pump whose seasonal COP is above that number costs less to run than your furnace at those prices.

Where your house loses heat matters too, and the page on how homes lose heat walks through the leaks. The page on US energy waste by sector breaks down where it goes, and the page on what a geothermal heat pump costs covers ground-source systems.

When your furnace or air conditioner fails, get one quote for a gas furnace and one for a heat pump. Then compare each heat pump’s seasonal COP, which the running-cost section shows how to work out from its efficiency rating, with your break-even COP.

Top photo: Tony Webster, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Top heat pump statistics

• Heat pumps heated 48% of new single-family houses completed in 2025, up from 23% in 2000.
• AHRI members shipped 3,644,596 air-source heat pumps in 2025, 11.6% fewer than in 2024.
• EIA’s 2020 survey counted 16.13 million US homes with a heat pump as their main heating equipment.
• The average US residential electricity price was 17.30 cents per kWh in 2025, up from 16.48 cents in 2024.
• NREL’s analysis found that 62% to 95% of US households would see a drop in their energy bills with a heat pump, depending on its efficiency.
• Heat pump sales in 21 European countries rose 13% in 2025, to 2.9 million units.
• ENERGY STAR certified geothermal heat pumps use 61% less energy than a standard model.
• Heat pump water heaters made up 4% of US residential electric water heater sales in 2023, according to ENERGY STAR data that RMI cites.

What is a heat pump and how does it work?

Like a refrigerator, a heat pump uses electricity to carry heat from one place to another, and EPA says it typically uses about half the energy of other electric home-heating sources.

An air-source unit pulls heat from the outside air into your house in winter. A geothermal unit pulls it from the ground, where soil about 30 feet down stays between 50°F and 59°F all year. Across most of the US, that’s warmer than winter air and cooler than summer air.

The ratio of heat delivered to electricity used is called the coefficient of performance, or COP. A machine’s COP changes with the weather, and the cold-weather section below gives the measured numbers.

What does a heat pump look like?

A mini-split heat pump is mounted directly onto an interior wall or ceiling with an accompanying outdoor unit, according to ENERGY STAR, and it needs no ductwork.

A geothermal system adds a loop of buried pipe, which DOE says can run vertically or horizontally underground.

What types of heat pump systems are there?

EPA calls air-source heat pumps the most common choice and the ductless mini-split the most affordable and adaptable type.

Geothermal heat pumps use the ground’s steady temperature instead. ENERGY STAR says certified models save nearly $830 a year and more than $9,500 over 15 years against a standard model, and geothermal heat pump installation costs have their own page.

How efficient is a heat pump?

Heat pump labels carry two seasonal ratings, HSPF2 for heating and SEER2 for cooling, both counted in Btu per watt-hour. In the Federal Energy Management Program’s northern-states example, a heat pump rated HSPF2 7.5 uses 11,551 kWh a year for heating and cooling, and the best available model uses 7,394 kWh.

Because a kilowatt-hour holds 3,412 Btu, dividing an HSPF2 rating by 3.412 gives its seasonal COP.

Gas furnaces use a different yardstick, and the cost section below explains it. The page on energy waste in the US breaks down how much gets wasted and where it goes by sector.

How does a heat pump do in cold weather?

A conventional heat pump’s heating capacity drops below its rating once outdoor air falls under 40°F, and only a fraction of it remains in the teens.

DOE says cold climate heat pumps operate with greater capacity and efficiency at outdoor temperatures below 32°F. In DOE’s field tests of cold climate prototypes, the median COP was 1.9 at 0 to 5°F once defrost and backup-heat periods are set aside.

ENERGY STAR certifies cold climate models by testing them down to 5°F. Mitsubishi Electric markets an outdoor unit that offers year-round warmth even at -13°F, and that is the maker’s own claim.

How many US homes have a heat pump?

EIA’s 2020 survey found 16.13 million US homes using a heat pump as main heating equipment, plus 1.06 million using a ductless one, out of 123.53 million homes.

Natural gas central furnaces were the main equipment in 53.26 million homes in 2020, more than three times the heat pump count.

Source: EIA, 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, Table HC6.6. The share column is calculated from that table.

If you live in a hot-humid climate, 28.4% of homes heated mainly with a heat pump in 2020, against 3.7% in the coldest climate group.

Electricity was the main heating fuel for 42% of US households in 2024, and natural gas for 47%. That’s a broader measure than heat pumps, because it counts electric resistance heat too.

New houses tell a faster story. Heat pumps went into 483,000 of the 1,005,000 new single-family houses completed in 2025, against 490,000 that got forced-air furnaces.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Characteristics of New Housing, Type of Heating System Used in New Single-Family Houses Completed.

The split by region is wide. In 2024, the National Association of Home Builders found that 82% of new homes started in the South Atlantic had a heat pump as their primary heating system, against 7% in the East North Central. About 54% of all new homes started that year used electricity as the primary heating fuel, against 41% for natural gas.

Do heat pumps outsell gas furnaces?

Manufacturers shipped 12% more heat pumps than gas furnaces in 2025, RMI reports, 3.6 million units against 3.2 million.

Source: AHRI year-end shipment releases. The 2019 and 2020 rows come from the December 2020 release, 2021 from the December 2021 release, 2022 and 2023 from the December 2023 release, and 2024 and 2025 from the December 2025 release as reported by Contracting Business.

Furnaces led in 2021, when AHRI counted 4,008,894 gas furnaces against 3,916,766 heat pumps. Heat pumps led in 2020 and in every year from 2022 to 2025. AHRI’s counts cover US shipments from its member manufacturers, so they say nothing about installations.

RMI says a change to new refrigerants in 2025 may have contributed to higher 2024 heat pump shipments as manufacturers rushed to ship older-refrigerant systems. Through April 2026, heat pump shipments were up 1.2%, to over 1.3 million units, Utility Dive reported.

In Europe, France led 2025 with 528,000 heat pumps sold, and Germany’s sales grew 50%. The European Heat Pump Association counts 29.3 million in use across the 21 countries it tracks.

What does a heat pump cost to run?

At 2025 US average prices, a heat pump rated HSPF2 11 delivers heat for about $15.73 per million Btu. A gas furnace rated 95% AFUE delivers it for $15.59, and AFUE is the share of the fuel’s heat that ends up as space heat instead of being lost.

Source: Calculated from EIA electricity prices, EIA natural gas prices, EIA Btu conversion factors and the AFUE minimums in ENERGY STAR’s furnace criteria. The HSPF2 levels are the examples in the efficiency section above.

If you heat with gas, a heat pump needs a seasonal COP of about 3.25 to match a 95% furnace on fuel cost at the 2025 gas price. Resistance heat costs more than three times as much as a heat pump at that COP.

At the median cold-weather COP of 1.9 from DOE’s field tests, the same math puts a heat pump at about $26.69 per million Btu, above every furnace row.

Bill savings depend on what a home burns now. In a simulation by NREL and LBNL researchers, air-conditioned homes that heat with oil or propane, or with electric resistance, saw median savings of $300 to $650 a year, Canary Media reports. For gas-heated homes, median annual bills ranged from a $70 increase to a $380 decrease.

How we priced the heat

We started from EIA’s 2025 US residential averages of 17.30 cents per kWh for electricity and $15.34 per thousand cubic feet for natural gas. We converted with 3,412 Btu per kWh and 1,036 Btu per cubic foot, then divided the electricity cost by a COP for heat pump rows and the gas cost by AFUE for furnace rows. The 80% row is our assumption for an older furnace, since ENERGY STAR sets 95% and 97% minimums for certified gas models. Prices are US averages, so local rates move every row.

What does a heat pump cost to install?

Rewiring America prices a whole-home system at $17,000 to $23,000. That range is for houses of 1,500 to 2,500 square feet, and the median in the nonprofit’s own model is $19,500.

If your electrical panel is full, ask whether a quote includes an upgrade. An LBNL paper puts the cost of replacing electrical service equipment such as panels at $1,000 to $30,000 and finds that heat pumps generally add less than their rated electrical demand to a home’s peak. The finding draws on 957 sub-metered homes and 9,093 Vermont homes with cold climate heat pumps.

What is a heat pump water heater?

A heat pump water heater applies the same trick to a hot water tank, and DOE says it can be two to three times more efficient than a conventional electric water heater. PNNL’s Building America Solution Center gives the same range, and ENERGY STAR also calls the product a hybrid electric water heater.

The water heater is responsible for about 17% of the total energy use in the average home, DOE’s building science site says.

What to ask before you buy a heat pump

Ask the installer for the model’s COP in the coldest weather your winters reach, and compare it with the cold-weather numbers above.

Where your house loses heat sets how much heat pump you need, and the page on heat loss in the home lists where it escapes, from air leaks to leaky ducts.

Top photo: PeterEastern, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons, cropped.

Heating and cooling make up 52% of a home’s total energy use, EIA found, so those leaks show up directly on your bill every month. Space heating alone is the largest single piece of that, 46% of total energy consumption in single-family homes in 2015. Every leak below cuts into that slice of your bill.

Air leaks let conditioned air escape

Warm air rises and pushes out through gaps at the top of a house, an attic hatch, a recessed can light, a gap around a flue. Cold air gets pulled in low down, around sill plates and rim joists. Building scientists call this the stack effect, and it pulls hardest on the coldest days, exactly when a house needs to hold on to its heat.

The EPA models the fix on a typical 1,700-square-foot house built between 1970 and 1989. Its target is a 25% cut in total air infiltration from sealing gaps around the attic and foundation, plus around windows and doors, on a modeled house that starts out with 23% of its duct system air already leaking.

Combined with adding insulation, sealing air leaks can cut 15% off your heating and cooling costs, or 11% off your whole bill. How much of that lands in your pocket depends on your climate zone, from 5% in the warmest zones up to 16% in the coldest.

The attic and walls lose heat without enough insulation

Walls and rim joists make up more than 40% of a house’s total exterior envelope area, the Department of Energy notes, so thin or gapped insulation there covers a lot of surface. The trade group representing insulation manufacturers estimates that 90% of US homes are under-insulated, though that figure comes from an industry source with a stake in insulation sales.

How much insulation a house needs depends on climate zone. Under the 2021 building energy code, ENERGY STAR’s retrofit guidance calls for R30 to R60 in the attic depending on the zone. Find your own zone in the table below and see whether your attic already clears it.

Source: ENERGY STAR, “Insulation R-Values”, based on the 2021 International Energy Conservation Code.

Windows lose heat through the glass and the frame

A window loses heat straight through the glass by conduction, and around a loose sash or frame by air leakage. The glass side is rated by U-factor, which for windows on the market ranges from about 0.15 to 1.1. The lower the U-factor, the less heat moves through the glass, and a single pane of old glass sits at the leaky end of that scale.

Standing next to an old single-pane window in winter feels colder than the room’s thermostat setting would suggest. That’s radiant heat loss, the cold glass pulling warmth from a body nearby even before any air moves.

Swapping out a window like that for an ENERGY STAR certified one can cut your household energy bills by an average of up to 13% nationwide. A separate Department of Energy resource guide puts the range at 6% to 13% in utility bill savings for the same switch. More than 85% of windows sold in the US are ENERGY STAR certified, so a lot of the easy replacement gains are already banked into homes built in the last decade or so.

Ducts lose conditioned air before it reaches a room

In a typical house, 20% to 30% of duct system air leaks out before it heats or cools a room, through loose connections and gaps at the plenum. That leakage alone can cut a system’s efficiency by as much as 20%. Even a newly installed furnace or heat pump still loses 10% to 30% of its output to duct leakage, so the fix is in the ducts, not the equipment.

If your ducts run through an unconditioned attic or crawlspace, that lost air is heating or cooling a space you never use, on your dime. A 2.5-ton air conditioner moves 1,000 cubic feet of air a minute through the ducts, easy math for what leakage costs in cooling terms. With 20% duct leakage, it misplaces about 6,000 Btu an hour, roughly half a ton of cooling, before that air ever reaches a room.

Technicians test duct leakage against ANSI/RESNET/ICC Standard 380, and size a full duct replacement to the industry’s Manual D standard, which now has its own section on how leaks change a system’s performance.

Aerosol duct sealing, a technology Lawrence Berkeley National Lab licensed out for commercial use, seals 70% to 90% of duct leaks with a 10-year warranty without opening up walls or ceilings.

Floors and basement walls lose heat too

An uninsulated basement wall can be responsible for up to a third of an average home’s heat loss on its own, according to a Department of Energy-funded Building America study from 2003, revised in 2007. Basement walls sit behind the finished part of a house, so they’re an easy place to skip. A basement or crawlspace with bare concrete or block walls in your own house fits that same up-to-a-third estimate for heat leaking out.

A cold floor over an unheated crawlspace works the same way a cold window does, pulling heat out of the room above it long before anyone touches the thermostat. The floor above an unconditioned crawlspace or basement needs the same climate-zone range ENERGY STAR gives for attics, from R13 up to R38, shown in the table above.

What sealing and insulating are worth on a real bill

The federal Weatherization Assistance Program has run these fixes on real, low-income households since 1976, a useful check on the estimates above. Participating households save $372 or more a year on average, and the program now reaches about 32,000 homes annually. It has helped more than 7.2 million families since it started, real households whose bills back up the modeled numbers above. Skip the sealing and insulating in your own house, and you’re leaving something close to that $372 a year on the table.

A thermostat setback costs nothing and works before any sealing or insulation happens. Lowering the thermostat 7 to 10 degrees for eight hours a day can save up to 10% on annual heating and cooling costs. Sealing and insulating are the same fixes behind Energy Collective’s look at where household energy goes to waste. Once the easy leaks are sealed, a geothermal heat pump is the next lever worth pricing out for the equipment itself.

The US wasted 65.8% of the primary energy it consumed in 2024, or 62.27 of 94.6 quadrillion Btu, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s annual energy flow chart. Most of that loss happens before a fuel or a kilowatt reaches your meter, as heat that never turns a wheel or lights a room. That share hasn’t moved much in years, even after a decade of cheaper LED bulbs and tighter appliance rules.

How much energy the US wastes

Total US energy use splits into two buckets on that LLNL chart. One bucket is energy that does something, like running a motor or heating a room. The other is energy that’s rejected along the way, mostly as waste heat from burning fuel and generating power. In 2024, only 32.34 quadrillion Btu counted as useful energy services, the other 34.2% of the total.

A year earlier, in 2023, the chart put total consumption at 93.6 quadrillion Btu with 65.7% rejected, almost identical to 2024’s share. Whatever you paid for gas, electricity or heating oil that year, roughly two out of every three Btu never reached a light, a motor or a furnace vent as useful heat.

Behind that flat total, the generation mix shifted. Natural gas supplied a record 34.3 quadrillion Btu in 2024, and renewables supplied a record 8.7 quadrillion Btu. Coal fell to a record low of 7.9 quadrillion Btu. None of that moved the rejected share.

Where the wasted energy goes, sector by sector

Power plants and vehicles reject more energy than anywhere else in the system. Converting fuel to electricity lost 19.21 of 32.77 quadrillion Btu in 2024, a 58.6% loss rate. That works out to roughly 41% conversion efficiency for the average US power plant, a different number than a plant’s capacity factor, which tracks how much of its yearly potential it delivers. See the capacity factor breakdown for that number by source.

Picture the heat and exhaust pouring out of a tailpipe, gasoline you paid for at the pump that never turned a wheel. Transportation runs almost entirely on combustion, which is why LLNL attributes its loss to an assumed 21% end-use efficiency for engines and drivetrains. That leaves 22.35 of 28.29 quadrillion Btu rejected in 2024, a 79% loss rate, the highest of any sector.

Industry and buildings reject a smaller share of what they use. The table below breaks out each sector’s 2024 loss rate, from industry down through homes and businesses. At home, less of what you pay for in electricity and gas leaks away as heat than what leaves as exhaust from your car.

Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 2024 US Energy Flow Chart

Is US energy efficiency improving

By some measures, yes. US energy intensity, the amount of energy it takes to produce a dollar of GDP, fell from 5.03 to 4.05 thousand Btu per dollar between 2015 and 2024, a drop of about 19.5%, according to EIA. Energy use per person fell too, from 295 to 278 thousand Btu over the same years. If your home has swapped in an LED bulb, a more efficient furnace or an electric heat pump, that’s part of the same trend, even though the national rejected-energy share hasn’t followed it down.

Why bigger efficiency gains haven’t moved the total

LED bulbs and better appliances deliver real, measured savings, but they’re small next to the two categories that dominate rejected energy, transportation and power generation. LEDs saved an estimated 1.1 quadrillion Btu in 2017, about $12 billion in avoided energy costs that year, according to the Department of Energy’s solid-state lighting forecast. Transportation alone rejected 22.35 quadrillion Btu in 2024. Those numbers come from different years and aren’t a direct comparison, but lighting is a small slice of a total that transportation fuel and power-plant conversion losses dominate.

Even DOE’s most optimistic case falls short of that total. That scenario projects cumulative LED savings of 78 quadrillion Btu and about $890 billion in avoided costs from 2017 to 2035. Rejected energy alone topped 62.27 quadrillion Btu in 2024, more than DOE’s entire 18-year projection combined. Whatever you’ve swapped to LEDs at home, the national total barely moves, because lighting is a sliver of a system where cars and power plants do the rejecting.

A 2013 estimate from Energy Collective, citing a 2008 study, put US efficiency at 42%. LLNL’s 2024 chart puts useful energy at 34.2% of total consumption, lower than that decade-old figure.

LED lighting is the easy win worth taking

At the bulb level, the payoff is real. ENERGY STAR-certified LEDs use 90% less energy than incandescent bulbs, a gap wide enough that EPA retired the dedicated ENERGY STAR light bulb label because it’s no longer possible to buy an inefficient bulb for most household uses. More than 3 billion ENERGY STAR certified bulbs have sold in the US since the label launched in 1997.

If you still have an old incandescent bulb somewhere in the house, swapping it for one of those LEDs is the way to use less power for the same light.

The federal floor is rising too. A new Department of Energy standard raises minimum bulb efficacy from 45 to more than 120 lumens per watt, a separate action from the incandescent phase-out already in force, and takes effect in 2028. DOE projects it will save $1.6 billion a year and $27 billion cumulatively over 30 years.

Over that same span, the agency expects it to cut 70 million metric tons of CO2. That’s a floor every bulb sold after 2028 has to clear, so the swap in your house eventually happens automatically, whether you shop for it or not.

Adoption still has room to run. As of 2020, LEDs made up about 48% of installed lighting units in the US, meaning the other 52% of fixtures were still due for the swap, the most recent figure DOE has published. If your own home hasn’t swapped every fixture yet, the data says you have company.

Buildings already run more efficiently than transportation or industry

Residential and commercial buildings together used 27.6% of US end-use energy in 2023, or 36.9% of total US energy once you count the electricity-generation losses baked into every kilowatt-hour the grid delivers to them, according to EIA. Even so, homes and businesses reject a smaller share of what they use than transportation or industry does. Residential and commercial use both rejected 35% of their energy in 2024, well below transportation’s 79% and industry’s 51%.

That 35% figure is one of LLNL’s fixed modeling assumptions for how efficiently buildings use the energy delivered to them. The lab doesn’t remeasure it every year, so it can’t say on its own how fast the US building stock is improving. A lot of what a building wastes leaves as heat. If you want to know where that heat escapes a house, there’s a page on that too.

What the lightbulb standard means for your own bulbs

Transportation and power plants remain the two places most of the waste happens, since transportation rejects more energy than any other sector and runs almost entirely on combustion. Moving cars from combustion to electric drivetrains does not eliminate that loss. It relocates the loss from the tailpipe to the power plant, where average conversion efficiency is only about 41%.

The lightbulb standard is the one policy here with clear, sourced numbers on both sides of the change. It takes effect in 2028 and applies to every bulb sold after that date, so the upgrade happens the next time an old bulb burns out, with no separate purchase decision required. DOE projects that single change will save $1.6 billion a year once every bulb sold meets the new floor. You’ll see your share of that saving in your own electric bill, starting with the next bulb you replace.

The ground loop, not a volcano

That’s the job of an actual geothermal power plant, the kind that taps deep, naturally hot rock in places like Iceland or Northern California. A home system, more accurately called a ground-source heat pump, runs on something simpler. Dirt and rock a few feet under the frost line stay close to the region’s average annual air temperature, whether it’s January or July.

A sealed loop of high-density plastic pipe, filled with water or a water-antifreeze mix, runs down into that zone and back up to a heat exchanger. In winter, fluid cooler than the house but warmer than the outside air comes up from the ground, and the heat pump concentrates that warmth and pushes it inside. In summer the process runs backward. Heat gets pulled out of the house and dumped into the ground, so the compressor does far less work than an air-source unit fighting a frigid night or a scorching afternoon.

Four ways to bury the loop

How the loop gets installed depends mostly on how much land there is and what’s underneath it.

Horizontal loops get buried in trenches 4 to 6 feet deep, and they’re often the least expensive option when there’s enough open yard for one, according to EnergySage.

Vertical loops go into boreholes drilled 150 to 250 feet deep per ton of heating and cooling capacity. They cost more, since drilling is expensive, but they work on small lots where a horizontal trench field has no chance of fitting.

Pond or lake loops submerge coiled pipe in a pond or lake at least a half-acre wide and 10 to 12 feet deep, with the pipe coiled at least 8 feet below the surface so it won’t freeze. Where a homeowner already has a pond like that, running a loop through it skips the trenching or drilling the other options need.

Open-loop systems pull groundwater from a well and run it through the heat exchanger before it returns to the aquifer through a second well or an approved discharge point. Where there’s an adequate well, it can cut excavation costs compared with a horizontal or vertical loop, but it only works where local water rights and groundwater quality allow it, and plenty of jurisdictions restrict or ban it outright.

How efficient these systems run

ENERGY STAR certifies closed-loop water-to-air geothermal systems at a coefficient of performance, or COP, of at least 3.6. Open-loop systems have to reach a COP of 4.1 or higher. In plain terms, a COP of 3.6 means the system delivers 3.6 units of heat for every unit it consumes.

The Department of Energy says a well-built system moves between three and five times the energy it consumes between the ground and the house. That’s also why geothermal can use 25% to 50% less energy than an air-source heat pump, even though it costs more to install.

What installation costs

That range swings a lot in practice. EnergySage flags a real installation in Massachusetts that hit $78,000 in 2023, well above the typical high end.

Vertical drilling costs more per foot than a horizontal trench, and rock underneath a lot costs more to drill through than soil. A larger home needs more capacity, which means deeper wells or a bigger horizontal field. Retrofitting an older home often means new ductwork at the same time as the heat pump and loop, a cost Carrier lists as one of its main price drivers. Leaky, undersized ducts are also a major source of home heat loss on their own, loop or no loop.

The federal tax credit is gone

The 30% federal tax credit for residential geothermal, Section 25D, is not available for any property placed in service after December 31, 2025, and it doesn’t come back after that. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed July 4, 2025, repealed Section 25D along with Section 25C, which had covered air-source heat pumps and other efficiency upgrades.

Homeowners who got a system running before the end of 2025 can still claim the 30% credit on Form 5695 with their 2025 return. Anyone installing one now pays full price at the federal level. The IRS defines “placed in service” as the installation being complete and operating, not just paid for or under contract.

The law did carve out one workaround. Commercial-grade geothermal systems are now exempt from a rule that used to block leasing them to homeowners, so some installers are shifting toward leased systems instead of owned ones with a credit attached.

What’s left federally are the HEAR and HOMES rebate programs, which pay out based on income or on measured energy savings and, as of September 2026, are available in some states with more coming. The DSIRE database tracks whatever state and utility programs are running where you live.

Payback, and what moves it

DOE’s own consumer guide puts payback at about 5 to 10 years in energy savings. EnergySage’s version of that same guidance puts it closer to 10 to 15 years. Either estimate can be right, depending on the house.

What fuel you’re replacing matters. Swapping out propane or heating oil, both expensive per unit of heat, pays back faster than swapping out cheap natural gas. Your local electricity rate matters too, since the system’s entire operating cost is electric. And with the federal credit gone, every project now takes meaningfully longer to break even than it would have with the 30% credit knocking a third off the upfront cost.

When an air-source heat pump is the better call

Ground-source systems aren’t the right answer for every house. A standard air-source heat pump installed whole-home runs an average of $15,393 before incentives, with a national range from about $8,000 in New Mexico to $33,000 in New York. The equipment is no bigger than a central air conditioner and a furnace, and there’s no loop field to size against the shape of your lot.

Cold-climate air-source units have also closed a lot of the performance gap. Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships found that replacing electric resistance heat with a cold-climate heat pump saves about 3,000 kWh a year, worth about $459. Swapping out oil heat instead saves more, 6,200 kWh, worth about $948.

The easiest geothermal sale is a homeowner already burning propane or oil, with either the yard for a horizontal loop or the budget for vertical drilling. Add a plan to stay in the house long enough to see the payback through, and it’s an easy case to make. Take away any one of those conditions and an air-source heat pump usually wins.

A small urban lot without room for a loop field forecloses geothermal on its own. A house on a slab that needs new ductwork anyway erases part of geothermal’s advantage. Someone who might sell in five years won’t be the one collecting a payback that takes a decade or more to arrive.

The math could still shift back. HEAR and HOMES rebates are available in some states, with more coming as of September 2026, and a state rebate stacked on a leased system can bring payback closer to where the federal 30% credit used to put it.

• Tesla Powerwall 3 for most homes that want the whole house backed up
• FranklinWH aPower 2 for keeping central AC and a water heater running in an outage
• Enphase IQ Battery 5P and 10C for homes that already have Enphase microinverters
• Generac PWRcell 2 for homes already on Generac equipment
• EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra for starting small and scaling up to whole-home backup
• EcoFlow Delta Pro 3 with Smart Home Panel 2 for backing up the circuits you pick without a full installed battery system

EcoFlow prices on this page are the maker’s US store price in September 2026. These brands discount often, so the price moves. The four installed batteries are priced by installer quote.

What a home battery backup costs in 2026

The average home battery system on EnergySage’s marketplace cost $15,650 before incentives in the first half of 2026. Where you live changes how much a home battery costs, with a typical system averaging anywhere from $10,274 in Arkansas to $18,414 in Wyoming. Equipment makes up 50% to 60% of the total, so 40% to 50% of the bill goes to everything other than the hardware.

Quotes are easiest to compare by cost per kWh. Across the top 10 brands EnergySage tracks, that figure runs from $342 to $3,505 per kWh. In EnergySage’s 2026 ranking, the Powerwall 3 averages $998 per kWh and the FranklinWH aPower 2 averages $1,177. The two EcoFlow picks are sold as hardware, at $4,189 for the Delta Pro 3 kit and $4,199 for the Delta Pro Ultra base unit, EcoFlow’s US store prices in September 2026.

Homeowners who buy a battery in 2026 get no federal tax credit. The 30% Residential Clean Energy Credit, Section 25D, isn’t available for property placed in service after December 31, 2025. Leasing works differently. A company that owns a battery and leases it to you, or sells you its output, can still claim the business credit under Section 48E, because the new 48E deadlines for solar and wind don’t apply to storage and the law didn’t ban leased systems. The credit belongs to the company, so ask any lease provider whether it shows up in your price.

California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program pays per watt-hour of storage. As of September 2026, the general-market rate for home batteries steps down through funding tranches from $0.50 to $0.20 per Wh as money is claimed. The Equity budget pays $1.10 per Wh, and the Equity Resiliency budget pays $1.00 per Wh to customers in high fire-threat areas or those hit by Public Safety Power Shutoffs.

Massachusetts and Hawaii pay by the kilowatt instead. National Grid’s ConnectedSolutions program in Massachusetts pays $275 per kW of your battery’s average performance from June 1 to September 30, which comes to about $1,200 a year for a typical battery. The rate is locked for your first five summers. In Hawaii, the Battery Bonus program closed to new participants on July 1, 2024. Hawaiian Electric’s current program, Bring Your Own Device Plus, pays $400 per kW you commit, with no cap, and low- and moderate-income customers get another $400 per kW. BYOD Plus adds a monthly export credit, though NEM and NEM Plus customers don’t get it.

How much battery your home needs

The average US home used 10,791 kWh of electricity a year, or about 899 kWh a month. Divided by 365, that’s about 29.6 kWh a day, or roughly 1.23 kWh an hour. A single Powerwall 3 holds 13.5 kWh, a bit under half of an average day. Two FranklinWH aPower 2 units at 15 kWh each cover a full average day with a little to spare.

Counting major events, the average US customer had 1.4 interruptions totaling 5.6 hours in 2022, according to EIA. At 1.23 kWh an hour, 5.6 hours of average use comes to about 6.9 kWh, which one Powerwall 3 covers about twice over. EIA’s 2023 figure of about 2 hours across 1.3 interruptions leaves major events out, so it measures something different and can’t be set against the 2022 number.

A critical-loads setup backs up only the circuits you choose, which shrinks the power you need. A refrigerator runs at about 700 W and a half-horsepower furnace blower at about 800 W, per SizeMyHome’s appliance chart, so the pair needs 1,500 W, well inside the Delta Pro 3’s 4,000 W. A 2-ton central AC is the load that pushes you toward whole-home backup. It runs at about 3,800 W and needs about 5,800 W to start, so it nearly fills a 4,000 W plug-in system by itself, while the Powerwall 3’s 11.5 kW continuous rating covers even its starting draw.

Whole-home batteries versus plug-in battery backup

The difference is how much of your house runs at once. A whole home battery backup carries the full house at the same time, up to its power rating, which is 11.5 kW continuous for the Powerwall 3 and 10 kW for the aPower 2. Generac rates the PWRcell 2 for whole-home backup up to 200 amps, and Enphase batteries need an IQ Meter Collar to back up a full home.

A plug-in setup pairs a portable battery with a smart subpanel. EcoFlow’s Smart Home Panel 2 takes over 12 circuits and switches them to battery in 20 milliseconds, and the battery’s output caps how many of those circuits can run together. The panel still gets wired to your home’s main electrical panel, and EcoFlow’s store offers to connect you with a local electrician for that job. The Delta Pro Ultra gives you a path to whole-home backup without buying a full installed system on day one.

Home battery backup without solar works with either type. Every pick on this list charges from the grid, so panels are optional. If you have solar or plan to add it, the Powerwall 3 is the one with a built-in solar inverter, which lets a new array feed it DC power directly, and it can also run AC-coupled beside an existing inverter. The other installed picks connect on the AC side. For the basics of how these batteries store and release power, see battery energy storage systems.

If all you want is a fridge and a phone charger through a short outage, a portable power station on its own may cover it.

The best home battery backup systems

The best battery backup for home use depends on how much of the house you want running in an outage and how much installation you’re willing to pay for.

Source: maker spec pages and datasheets from Tesla, FranklinWH, Enphase (5P, 10C), Generac and EcoFlow (Delta Pro Ultra, Delta Pro 3 kit). Every Powerwall 3 figure except the warranty, plus the aPower 2’s per-kWh price, is from EnergySage. EcoFlow prices are the maker’s US store price in September 2026.

If you’re shopping for Powerwall alternatives, the FranklinWH aPower 2 holds more per unit, 15 kWh against Tesla’s 13.5, and Enphase matches FranklinWH’s 15-year warranty term in smaller modules.

Tesla Powerwall 3

Our pick for most homes that want the whole house backed up.

The Tesla Powerwall 3 earns the top slot on price and power. EnergySage’s marketplace data puts its typical installed cost at $13,473, or $998 per kWh, about 13% below the average battery sold there, and it runs 11.5 kW continuously from 13.5 kWh of storage. It charges from the grid if you don’t have solar, and its built-in solar inverter can take DC power straight from a new array.

The Powerwall 3 isn’t part of the CPSC recall announced November 13, 2025, which covers about 10,500 older Powerwall 2 units sold from November 2020 to December 2022 over a fire hazard.

The drawback is that Tesla publishes no US list price, so you won’t know your cost until you get quotes, and EnergySage’s state averages for a typical battery system range from $10,274 to $18,414.

• Usable capacity: 13.5 kWh
• Continuous power: 11.5 kW
• Warranty: 10 years
• Price: installer quote, $13,473 typical installed

FranklinWH aPower 2

Best if your central AC and water heater have to keep running when the grid is down.

FranklinWH built the aPower 2 to carry heavy loads like AC and water heaters through an outage, and EnergySage names it the battery with the highest peak power in its 2026 ranking. Each unit holds 15 kWh and runs 10 kW continuously, with bursts to 15 kW for 10 seconds and 25 kW for one second. You can link up to 15 units on one aGate for 225 kWh, the highest ceiling on this list, and the warranty runs 15 years or 60 MWh of throughput.

FranklinWH doesn’t publish a price, and EnergySage’s data puts the aPower 2 at $1,177 per kWh, about 18% more than the Powerwall 3’s $998.

• Usable capacity: 15 kWh
• Continuous power: 10 kW
• Max stack: 225 kWh
• Warranty: 15 years or 60 MWh
• Price: installer quote, about $1,177 per kWh in EnergySage’s data

Enphase IQ Battery 5P and 10C

For homes that already make power with Enphase microinverters.

Both Enphase batteries here carry their own microinverters and connect on the AC side. The IQ Battery 5P holds 5 kWh and delivers 3.84 kW continuously, which lets you build up capacity in 5 kWh steps. The IQ Battery 10C holds 10 kWh at 7.08 kW in one box. Both carry a 15-year or 6,000-cycle warranty with at least 60% of capacity left at the end, tied with FranklinWH for the longest term here. Full-home backup takes an added IQ Meter Collar.

Enphase publishes no limit on how many batteries you can stack and no prices, so the size and cost of a big system depend on how an installer designs it.

• Usable capacity: 5 kWh or 10 kWh
• Continuous power: 3.84 kW or 7.08 kW
• Warranty: 15 years or 6,000 cycles
• Price: installer quote

Generac PWRcell 2

A fit for homes that already run a Generac standby generator or PWRmanager.

Rated for whole-home backup up to 200 amps, the Generac PWRcell 2 comes from the same lineup as Generac’s standby generators and PWRmanager. Each cabinet holds 9 kWh in the base M3 setup, and two cabinets reach 36 kWh. Continuous output runs from 5.2 kW on the M3 up to 11.5 kW. Generac rates a PWRcell 2 combined with AC-coupled solar at up to 26.5 kW of backup power.

The PWRcell 2 tops out at 36 kWh, the lowest published limit among the installed batteries here and far under FranklinWH’s 225 kWh, which makes it a poor fit for multi-day backup in a large home.

• Usable capacity: 9 to 36 kWh
• Continuous power: 5.2 to 11.5 kW
• Warranty: 10 years or 7.56 MWh
• Price: installer quote

EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra

Suited to buyers who want to start with one unit and build toward whole-home backup later.

Of the whole-home-capable batteries here, only the EcoFlow Delta Pro Ultra has a price on the maker’s own store. The base unit costs $4,199 on EcoFlow’s US store in September 2026, and it holds 6.144 kWh. Adding battery packs takes it to 90 kWh with 15 of them. One inverter puts out 7.2 kW continuous and 10.8 kW peak, and more inverters stretch the range to 21.6 kW.

It charges from the grid or a generator and pairs with EcoFlow’s Smart Home Panel 2. EcoFlow calls it the only portable power station certified to both UL1973 and UL9540.

Its 5-year warranty is the shortest among the whole-home-capable picks, against 10 years for the Powerwall 3 and 15 for the aPower 2.

• Usable capacity: 6.144 kWh, up to 90 kWh
• Continuous power: 7.2 kW per inverter
• Warranty: 5 years
• Price: $4,199, EcoFlow’s US store price in September 2026

EcoFlow Delta Pro 3 with Smart Home Panel 2

The pick for backing up the circuits you care about most, with no whole-home install.

This EcoFlow Delta Pro 3 with Smart Home Panel 2 kit pairs a portable battery with a subpanel that takes over 12 circuits you pick and switches them to battery in 20 milliseconds when the grid drops. The battery holds 4.096 kWh to start and grows to 36 kWh with three units and six extra batteries. It charges from the wall without solar. The kit costs $4,189, plus an electrician to wire the panel to your main panel, which EcoFlow’s store can arrange.

At 4,000 W continuous, it can’t run a central AC alongside much else, since a 2-ton unit alone runs at about 3,800 W.

• Usable capacity: 4.096 kWh, up to 36 kWh
• Continuous power: 4,000 W
• Price: $4,189 for the kit

Battery backup versus a generator

A generator costs less to install. Angi puts typical installed costs at $1,512 to $8,803, with a national average around $5,157, and its whole-house tier of 22 to 48 kW at $5,000 to $18,000. EnergySage’s battery average is $15,650. The two figures come from different sources, so the comparison is rough, but the average battery system costs about three times the average generator install.

The generator keeps costing money after that. Angi estimates a 15 to 20 kW unit costs $90 to $220 a day to run, with annual fuel at $2,000 to $21,000 for natural gas or propane and $3,000 to $20,000 for diesel. A battery burns no fuel and refills from the grid or your solar once power is back.

A generator wins on runtime, since it keeps going for as long as it has fuel. A 13.5 kWh Powerwall 3 lasts about 11 hours at the average home’s 1.23 kWh an hour, longer if you cut back to critical loads or stack more batteries.

What would change the answer

At 30%, the federal credit that ended with 2025 would be worth about $4,700 on the $15,650 average system. That’s money a 2026 buyer now pays out of pocket. If you lease, the company that owns the battery can still claim Section 48E, and it’s up to the lease terms whether any of that reaches you.

State and utility programs can close part of the gap. In Massachusetts, the typical $1,200 a year from ConnectedSolutions adds up to about $6,000 over the five summers with a locked rate. In Hawaii, committing 5 kW from a 15 kWh battery to BYOD Plus earns $2,000 at $400 per kW, and Hawaiian Electric’s own example puts that setup’s export credit at about $52 a month.

Base Power is a Texas-only option that installs and keeps ownership of a 39.2 kWh battery at your home for a $695 install fee plus $19 a month, and you buy your electricity from Base at its own rate. It makes its money sending that battery’s power to the grid during peak demand.