New Jersey electricity prices - 24.95¢/kWh (June 2026)

Residential price, average bill, and the data-center story

• Residential electricity in New Jersey costs 24.95¢/kWh as of June 2026 - +0.3% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
• The average New Jersey home used 831 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $207.33 (−0.3% vs a year earlier).
• New Jersey has the 9th-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 36% above the U.S. average of 18.34¢/kWh.

Price by sector

Data centers & New Jersey's electric bills

On July 7, 2026 Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the Data Center Fair Share Act (S731/A796), creating a new ratepayer class for data centers, requiring them to pay for their own energy use and grid infrastructure, and requiring them to curtail before residential customers during grid strain; the BPU will write implementing rules for data centers of 50 MW or more. A June 2026 Rutgers New Jersey State Policy Lab analysis of 2014-2024 data found no statistically significant data-center effect on local residential bills so far.

• 2026-07-07 - On July 7, 2026 Governor Mikie Sherrill signed the Data Center Fair Share Act (S731/A796), which creates a new ratepayer classification and rate structure for data centers, requires them to pay for their own energy use and associated grid infrastructure, and requires them to reduce consumption before residential ratepayers during grid strain. Source: Office of the Governor of New Jersey
• 2026-07-07 - Under the new law the Board of Public Utilities must develop special electric service rules for data centers with peak demand of 50 megawatts or more (or a lower threshold BPU sets), including financial guarantees that a data center pays for at least 85 percent of requested service for a minimum of 10 years, with utilities applying the rules within 180 days of their adoption. Source: New Jersey Assembly Democrats
• 2026-07-07 - In the same July 7, 2026 announcement, the Sherrill administration said all 3.6 million New Jersey ratepayers would receive a $25 bill credit, with an additional $150 credit for lower- and moderate-income families, and cited a Synapse Energy Economics estimate that its actions would save ratepayers more than $1 billion annually. Source: Office of the Governor of New Jersey
• 2026-06-22 - A June 22, 2026 Rutgers New Jersey State Policy Lab analysis of 22,834 ZIP-code units and 2,277 data centers from 2014 through 2024 found ZIP codes with a data center had monthly residential bills about $2.09 higher in raw comparisons, falling to about $0.90 and not statistically significant when comparing similar areas, against an average bill of about $164 per month. Source: Rutgers New Jersey State Policy Lab

Each item above is dated and linked to its primary source; entries are reviewed quarterly. See the large-load tariff tracker and the who-paid-what ledger for the cross-state picture.

New Jersey 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 New Jersey carries 1.90 liters of water per kilowatt-hour consumed at the power plants supplying it (1.23 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 New Jersey accounts for about 50.2 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 New Jersey data (CSV) · Glossary