Pennsylvania electricity prices - 21.73¢/kWh (June 2026)

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

• Residential electricity in Pennsylvania costs 21.73¢/kWh as of June 2026 - +10.4% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
• The average Pennsylvania home used 785 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $170.56 (+10.1% vs a year earlier).
• Pennsylvania has the 15th-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 18% above the U.S. average of 18.34¢/kWh.

Price by sector

Data centers & Pennsylvania's electric bills

PJM's 2028/2029 capacity auction, announced July 14, 2026, cleared at the FERC-approved price cap of $325/MW-day at a total cost of about $16.4 billion, as large data-center loads continued to be added to the demand forecast; capacity costs were already expected to push some PJM customers' bills up 1.5% to 5% in the year starting June 2026. PPL Electric has an approved large-load framework making big data centers pay their own interconnection-driven infrastructure costs. The Shapiro administration projects the state's data-center sales-tax exemption will cost $188 million in fiscal 2026-27 and about $2 billion by mid-2031.

• 2026-07-14 - PJM's 2028/2029 Base Residual Auction, announced July 14, 2026, cleared at the FERC-approved price cap of $325 per megawatt-day, procuring 138,318 MW of unforced capacity at a total cost of about $16.4 billion, with the auction continuing a trend of large data-center loads being added to the load forecast that sets the reliability requirement. Source: PJM Interconnection (Inside Lines)
• 2026-06 - Utility bills were already expected to rise between 1.5% and 5% for some PJM customers in the 12-month period starting June 2026 because of record capacity costs, and PJM projects peak demand will grow by 32 gigawatts from 2024 to 2030 with all but 2 gigawatts coming from data centers. Source: Canary Media
• 2026-03 - PPL Electric reached a proposed settlement, pending Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission approval, that would create a large-load data-center class for facilities over 50 MW of peak demand (or at least 75 MW combined within a 10-mile radius), require a 10-year minimum operating commitment with early-exit penalties, make data centers pay the infrastructure costs that would not be incurred but for their interconnection, and direct $11 million to low-income customer assistance programs. Source: WHYY
• 2026-02 - The Shapiro administration's budget proposal projects Pennsylvania's data-center sales and use tax exemption will cost $188 million in fiscal year 2026-27 and about $2 billion in forgone revenue by mid-2031, and a bill to repeal the exemption has been introduced in the state House. Source: Spotlight PA

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.

Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania 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 Pennsylvania data (CSV) · Glossary