Colorado electricity prices - 17.00¢/kWh (July 2026)
Residential price, average bill, and the data-center story
- Residential electricity in Colorado costs 17.00¢/kWh as of - +6.3% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
- The average Colorado home used 1,024 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $174.06 (+19.1% vs a year earlier).
- Colorado has the 22nd-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 7% below the U.S. average of 18.31¢/kWh.
Price by sector
| Sector | ¢/kWh (July 2026) | 1-yr change |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | 17.00¢ | +6.3% |
| Commercial | 13.81¢ | +4.2% |
| Industrial | 9.54¢ | +0.1% |
Data-center rate policy
- Xcel Energy (Public Service Co. of Colorado): pending (≥50 MW) - details
Water
Electricity delivered in Colorado carries 3.88 liters of water per kilowatt-hour consumed at the power plants supplying it (0.99 L/kWh excluding hydropower reservoir evaporation), against a national average of 4.28. That is below 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 Colorado accounts for about 102.6 million gallons of power-plant water before it cools anything. All states ranked →
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 Colorado data (CSV) · Glossary