California electricity prices - 33.61¢/kWh (July 2026)
Residential price, average bill, and the data-center story
- Residential electricity in California costs 33.61¢/kWh as of - +2.9% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
- The average California home used 571 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $191.76 (+2.7% vs a year earlier).
- California has the 2nd-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 84% above the U.S. average of 18.31¢/kWh.
Price by sector
| Sector | ¢/kWh (July 2026) | 1-yr change |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | 33.61¢ | +2.9% |
| Commercial | 30.56¢ | +1.6% |
| Industrial | 25.11¢ | −0.6% |
Water
Electricity delivered in California carries 7.45 liters of water per kilowatt-hour consumed at the power plants supplying it (0.63 L/kWh excluding hydropower reservoir evaporation), against a national average of 4.28. That is above the national figure, and it is a property of the grid here rather than of any one building: a data center drawing 100 GWh a year in California accounts for about 196.8 million gallons of power-plant water before it cools anything. All states ranked →
California's Colorado River apportionment falls to 3.96 million acre-feet in 2027 and 2028, a reduction of 440,000 acre-feet under the federal guidelines issued August 21, 2026.
A data center's water use is roughly twelve times larger once the water evaporated at its power plants is counted. The Colorado River arithmetic → · how the water numbers work →
All states ranked → · Download California data (CSV) · Glossary