North Carolina electricity prices - 15.16¢/kWh (July 2026)
Residential price, average bill, and the data-center story
- Residential electricity in North Carolina costs 15.16¢/kWh as of - +13.4% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
- The average North Carolina home used 1,338 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $202.80 (+9.1% vs a year earlier).
- North Carolina has the 36th-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 17% below the U.S. average of 18.31¢/kWh.
Price by sector
| Sector | ¢/kWh (July 2026) | 1-yr change |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | 15.16¢ | +13.4% |
| Commercial | 10.73¢ | +10.1% |
| Industrial | 8.37¢ | +7.7% |
Data-center rate policy
- Duke Energy (Carolinas/Progress): settlement filed - details
North Carolina is served by the PJM grid region (in part), 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 North Carolina carries 10.49 liters of water per kilowatt-hour consumed at the power plants supplying it (1.24 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 North Carolina accounts for about 277.2 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 North Carolina data (CSV) · Glossary