How Many kWh Does a Home Use Per Day? Average by State
By Yasir Siraj · Last updated 4 November 2026
The average American home buys about 28.8 kWh of electricity a day. That is 875 kWh a month, averaged over the twelve months to August 2026. But almost nobody is average. Households in Louisiana buy about 39.8 kWh a day, while in California the figure is about 16.7.
Those are not guesses. They come from what utilities in each state actually sold to their residential customers, as reported to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). Strictly, each figure is per residential electricity customer, which in practice means per home. The table below has every state. After it I go through why the gap is so wide, and how to work out your own daily number from a bill.
Average kWh per day in every state
Average electricity bought per residential customer, twelve months September 2025 to August 2026, all 50 states and DC. Highest use first.
| # | State | kWh a day | kWh a month | Compared with US average |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Louisiana | 39.8 | 1,211 | +38% |
| 2 | Tennessee | 39.0 | 1,186 | +36% |
| 3 | Mississippi | 38.5 | 1,170 | +34% |
| 4 | Alabama | 37.5 | 1,140 | +30% |
| 5 | Texas | 36.6 | 1,114 | +27% |
| 6 | Kentucky | 36.2 | 1,101 | +26% |
| 7 | Florida | 36.1 | 1,097 | +25% |
| 8 | Georgia | 35.5 | 1,080 | +23% |
| 9 | North Dakota | 35.4 | 1,076 | +23% |
| 10 | Oklahoma | 35.4 | 1,076 | +23% |
| 11 | South Carolina | 35.2 | 1,070 | +22% |
| 12 | Virginia | 35.1 | 1,066 | +22% |
| 13 | Arkansas | 34.7 | 1,056 | +21% |
| 14 | West Virginia | 34.7 | 1,056 | +21% |
| 15 | Arizona | 34.6 | 1,054 | +20% |
| 16 | North Carolina | 34.3 | 1,044 | +19% |
| 17 | Missouri | 34.2 | 1,039 | +19% |
| 18 | South Dakota | 32.3 | 983 | +12% |
| 19 | Nebraska | 31.5 | 957 | +9% |
| 20 | Maryland | 31.4 | 955 | +9% |
| 21 | Indiana | 30.5 | 929 | +6% |
| 22 | Washington | 30.5 | 927 | +6% |
| 23 | Delaware | 30.5 | 927 | +6% |
| 24 | Nevada | 29.9 | 908 | +4% |
| 25 | Idaho | 29.8 | 907 | +4% |
| 26 | Kansas | 29.2 | 887 | +1% |
| 27 | Ohio | 28.4 | 864 | −1% |
| 28 | Iowa | 27.9 | 848 | −3% |
| 29 | Oregon | 27.7 | 843 | −4% |
| 30 | Pennsylvania | 27.5 | 836 | −4% |
| 31 | Montana | 27.2 | 826 | −6% |
| 32 | Wyoming | 26.9 | 817 | −7% |
| 33 | Utah | 25.8 | 785 | −10% |
| 34 | Minnesota | 24.5 | 745 | −15% |
| 35 | Connecticut | 23.1 | 703 | −20% |
| 36 | Illinois | 22.9 | 697 | −20% |
| 37 | Colorado | 22.3 | 679 | −22% |
| 38 | New Jersey | 22.2 | 674 | −23% |
| 39 | Wisconsin | 21.9 | 665 | −24% |
| 40 | New Mexico | 21.5 | 653 | −25% |
| 41 | New Hampshire | 21.1 | 643 | −27% |
| 42 | District of Columbia | 20.9 | 635 | −27% |
| 43 | Michigan | 20.7 | 631 | −28% |
| 44 | Massachusetts | 19.8 | 603 | −31% |
| 45 | Vermont | 19.4 | 590 | −33% |
| 46 | Alaska | 19.3 | 588 | −33% |
| 47 | New York | 19.3 | 586 | −33% |
| 48 | Rhode Island | 18.2 | 552 | −37% |
| 49 | Maine | 17.3 | 528 | −40% |
| 50 | Hawaii | 16.9 | 514 | −41% |
| 51 | California | 16.7 | 507 | −42% |
| United States | 28.8 | 875 |
EIA residential sales and customer counts, twelve months to August 2026. Each state's residential electricity sales over those twelve months are divided by its average number of residential customers over the same months, then by twelve, to give kWh a month; a day is that figure × 12 ÷ 365. The same figures appear on each state page and in the average electric bill by state ranking.
Why some states use so much more
Look at the top of the table and you will see mostly Southern states. Look at the bottom and you will see California, Hawaii, Alaska and most of the Northeast. Two things explain most of that, and both are about what a home uses electricity for.
Heating. Across the US, about a third of homes (34%) use electricity as their main heating fuel. In the states at the top of the table it is the majority: 64% in Alabama, 62% in Louisiana, 60% in Tennessee, 56% in Mississippi and 51% in Texas. In California it is 20%, in New York 16% and in Maine 10%. Most homes there heat with natural gas, fuel oil or propane, and none of that shows up as electricity.
Cooling. Central air conditioning uses a lot of electricity, and the South runs it for months. About two in three US homes (67%) have central air. In Tennessee it is 86%, in Texas 83%, in Alabama 81% and in Louisiana 76%. In New York only 29% of homes have it, and in Maine just 10%.
The states that use the most electricity tend to have both: electric heat in winter and central air in summer. Washington is a useful exception. More than half of its homes heat with electricity (55%), but only 30% have central air, and it sits in the middle of the table rather than near the top.
EIA, 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, state highlights for space heating fuel and air conditioning. These are shares of homes in 2020. EIA notes that differences between some states may not be statistically significant.
Why California and Hawaii look so low
Part of their low figure is real. Most California homes (64%) heat with natural gas, and only about half (54%) have central air. In Hawaii only 5% of homes heat with electricity, and EIA's survey could not publish a reliable figure for any other heating fuel there. But part of the low number is not about how people live, and it is easy to miss.
These numbers are electricity bought from the utility, not electricity used. EIA points out that a home with rooftop solar on a net-metered system buys less than it uses, because some of its power comes from its own roof (EIA FAQ). California has far more small-scale solar generation than any other state. In 2025 it accounted for 37% of all small-scale solar electricity generated in the US (EIA). Some of that electricity is used directly by the homes producing it, which reduces how much they need to buy from their utility. So a California home with panels may use a normal amount of electricity and still buy very little, and the state's average is pulled down by that.
Is my usage normal?
Compare yourself with your own state, not with the national figure. Using 35 kWh a day would be well above average in Massachusetts (19.8 kWh) and close to normal in Georgia (35.5 kWh). The things that push a home above its state's average are mostly predictable:
- Electric heat or an electric water heater, where most of your neighbors use gas.
- A bigger home or more people in it.
- An electric car charged at home. On EIA's figures, homes that charge one use about 6.5 kWh a day for it on average.
- A pool pump, hot tub or second refrigerator running all year.
And the season matters more than anything, so a single bill tells you very little. In Texas, households bought about 50% more electricity in August 2026 than in their average month across the twelve months, while April was about a quarter below that average. An electrically heated home has a second peak in winter. The figures on this page are twelve-month averages, so compare them with your own twelve-month average, not with one bill.
How to work out your own kWh per day
- Find the kWh on your bill. It is usually labeled "kWh used", "usage" or "consumption" for the billing period.
- Find the number of days in that billing period. It is printed on the bill, often next to the service dates. Billing periods are not always a calendar month, so the number of days changes from bill to bill.
- Divide the kWh by the days. A bill showing 930 kWh over 31 days is 30 kWh a day.
Dividing by the real number of days matters. The same 930 kWh over a 28-day period is 33 kWh a day, and comparing two bills without that step can make your use look like it jumped when the billing period was just longer. If your utility has a smart meter, its website or app may show your use day by day, which saves the arithmetic.
For a yearly picture, add up twelve months of kWh and divide by 365. That is the number to compare with the table above. To see what your usage means in dollars, the electricity bill calculator works out a monthly bill from your kWh and your state's rate.
Where a day's electricity goes
EIA's survey estimates how much electricity each appliance uses in a year, averaged over the homes that have one. The figures below are those yearly averages divided by 365, so they show an approximate daily average, not what every home uses every day:
| Appliance | kWh a day |
|---|---|
| Electric water heater | 7.4 |
| Electric space heating (main or secondary) | 6.8 |
| Electric vehicle charging at home | 6.5 |
| Air conditioning (yearly average) | 6.4 |
| Refrigerators (all in the home) | 2.3 |
| Lighting | 1.8 |
| TVs and connected devices | 1.7 |
EIA, 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, tables CE5.3a and CE5.3b: yearly kWh per household using each end use, divided by 365. Each row is averaged over a different group of homes, so the rows do not add up to a typical home's total. Air conditioning is a yearly average; on a hot summer day it is far higher.
Heating, cooling and hot water are the big three. If your daily number looks high, those are the first places to look. What uses the most electricity in a home goes through the full list, and the appliance calculator works out any single device from its wattage.
How I worked it out
I wanted to answer this question because a monthly electricity bill doesn't always tell you whether your home is using more electricity than it should. The same 600 kWh a month would be above average in California and about half the average in Louisiana. When I compared the latest EIA data across all 50 states and DC, homes in the highest-use state bought more than twice as much electricity as homes in the lowest, so I put the numbers together in one place to show people how their own daily usage compares.
The state figures use the same method EIA uses for its own average-use statistic: the electricity sold to residential customers in a state, divided by the number of those customers. I use the most recent twelve consecutive months EIA has published, so that winter and summer are both in the average, and divide by the average customer count over those months. A month becomes a day by multiplying by 12 and dividing by 365. The table updates itself when EIA publishes a new month.
As a check, the same calculation for 2022 gives exactly the figures EIA publishes for that year: 10,791 kWh for the average US customer, 14,774 in Louisiana and 6,178 in Hawaii (EIA FAQ). That is about 899 kWh a month nationally in 2022; the figure at the top of this page is for a more recent twelve months, and usage moves a little from year to year with the weather.