Maryland electricity prices - 21.41¢/kWh (July 2026)
Residential price, average bill, and the data-center story
- Residential electricity in Maryland costs 21.41¢/kWh as of - +13.7% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
- The average Maryland home used 1,184 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $253.42 (+7.1% vs a year earlier).
- Maryland has the 15th-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 17% above the U.S. average of 18.31¢/kWh.
Price by sector
| Sector | ¢/kWh (July 2026) | 1-yr change |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | 21.41¢ | +13.7% |
| Commercial | 17.51¢ | +15.7% |
| Industrial | 16.21¢ | +18.7% |
Maryland is served by the PJM grid region, where the price of guaranteed generating capacity is set in an annual auction - see PJM capacity auction prices for how that reaches retail bills.
Water
Electricity delivered in Maryland carries 1.96 liters of water per kilowatt-hour consumed at the power plants supplying it (1.30 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 Maryland accounts for about 51.9 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 Maryland data (CSV) · Glossary