Reading the EIA State Electricity Profile: A Practical Guide

The U.S. Energy Information Administration State Electricity Profile is the federal authoritative source for state-level electricity data. It publishes annually and covers every state plus the District of Columbia. Each state profile includes generation mix, fuel consumption, retail sales by sector (residential, commercial, industrial), average retail prices by sector, demand-side management activity, and renewable generation detail. The full PDF for each state runs 8 to 12 pages and is dense with data. This is the practical guide to extracting the information that matters for most analysis.

Start with Table 1, the state at a glance summary. It shows total generation in megawatt-hours, the generation mix by primary fuel source, peak demand in megawatts, and end-use customer counts. Three numbers carry the most signal: total generation gives you the size of the state's electricity sector, peak demand tells you the load shape, and the generation mix tells you what's burning to meet that demand.

Go next to Table 5, the historical electric power industry net generation by source. This table shows annual generation by fuel type going back 25 years or more. The trend lines reveal the fuel substitution stories: coal-to-gas in most states starting around 2008, gas-to-renewable in some states starting around 2015, and the nuclear share which has been roughly flat in most states but with notable retirements in California, Vermont, and a handful of others. The historical view puts the current year in context.

Table 8 shows retail sales of electricity by sector. Residential sales typically account for 35 to 40 percent of total retail sales; commercial sales for another 35 to 40 percent; industrial sales for 25 to 30 percent. The sector split matters because residential rates are typically the highest of the three sectors (residential customers are smaller and require more T&D infrastructure per kilowatt-hour delivered). Industrial customers often have negotiated rates or interruptible rate options that materially lower their average rate.

Table 8 also shows average revenue per kilowatt-hour by sector, which is what most readers call "the electricity rate" but with important caveats. The figure is the average of what utilities actually billed, divided by the total kilowatt-hours sold. Customers on time-of-use rates or tiered rates see different effective rates than this average. Comparing across states, the residential average rate is the most apples-to-apples comparison.

Table 10, generation capacity by primary energy source, distinguishes between installed nameplate capacity and net summer capacity. Wind and solar have substantially lower capacity factors than nuclear or coal, so a state with 10,000 megawatts of installed wind capacity will generate less annual electricity than a state with 10,000 megawatts of installed nuclear. The capacity vs generation distinction matters for understanding the renewable transition: capacity growth has been much faster than generation growth because new capacity is largely renewable, with lower capacity factors than the retiring fossil capacity.

Three practical tips. First, the EIA data is annual; for intra-year movement (a winter natural-gas price spike, a summer drought reducing hydroelectric), look at the EIA monthly Electric Power Monthly publication or the daily ISO operator reports. Second, generation includes electricity exported across state lines; consumption-based metrics exist but require additional sources. Third, EIA's renewable definitions include some sources (woody biomass, landfill gas) that may not match a reader's intuitive definition of "renewable"; check the footnotes.

The State Electricity Profile is the right starting point for any state-level electricity question. The format is consistent across all 50 states, making cross-state comparisons straightforward once you know which tables to read.

Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2026.