About EnergyProfile

Why EIA state energy data deserves a public-facing home

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) is the federal source for state-level electricity rates, generation mix, and energy consumption data. The EIA State Electricity Profiles and the EIA Form 861 utility survey together cover every state’s average retail price by sector (residential, commercial, industrial), the generation mix by fuel type (coal, natural gas, nuclear, renewables), and the year-over-year trend. The data is public, free, and the API is open without authentication.

The presentation problem is the usual one — EIA publishes everything, but the discoverability is geared toward energy-sector analysts. EnergyProfile presents the same EIA data per-state, with the residential rate, the generation mix as a stacked breakdown, and the renewable-share trend in chart form. A homeowner curious about their state’s electricity costs, a journalist comparing renewable penetration across states, and a policy researcher tracking the coal-to-gas transition all need the same data in different framings; this site picks the most useful framings for a general audience.

How the pipeline pulls EIA data

The pipeline pulls from the EIA Open Data API on a monthly cadence for retail price data and an annual cadence for the State Electricity Profile and Form 861 generation-mix data. The retail price data has a 2-3 month reporting lag because utility-by-utility filings need to be compiled and reviewed. The generation-mix data has a longer 12-18 month lag for a full-year snapshot. The site stamps the EIA data vintage on every value.

A practical detail: state-level average retail prices mask the substantial within-state variation between utilities. A state with a single large investor-owned utility tells a different price story than a state with dozens of municipal and cooperative utilities at very different price points. The state page shows the state average; the methodology page links to the EIA utility-by-utility tables for readers who need to compare individual utilities.

Where energy data has caveats

Three caveats. First, generation mix is reported by where electricity is generated, not where it is consumed. A state that imports a large share of its electricity from neighboring states shows the in-state generation mix on this site, not the mix of the electricity its residents actually consume. For consumption-based generation mix, the EPA Power Profiler is a useful supplement and is linked from the methodology page.

Second, residential retail prices include both the generation cost and the transmission-and-distribution cost; the split between them varies substantially by state. A high-price state may be high because of expensive generation, expensive T&D, or both, and the headline rate alone doesn’t distinguish.

Third, the renewable share is reported on a generation basis but renewable capacity is reported separately and the two can move in different directions — a state can add wind capacity faster than its share of wind generation grows if total generation grows alongside. The pages note both capacity and generation where both are reported. Every value links back to the originating EIA report.