South Dakota electricity prices - 15.37¢/kWh (July 2026)
Residential price, average bill, and the data-center story
- Residential electricity in South Dakota costs 15.37¢/kWh as of - +5.9% year over year, per U.S. Energy Information Administration data.
- The average South Dakota home used 1,146 kWh that month and paid an average bill of $176.10 (+11.9% vs a year earlier).
- South Dakota has the 34th-highest residential electricity price of the 50 states and DC - 16% below the U.S. average of 18.31¢/kWh.
Price by sector
| Sector | ¢/kWh (July 2026) | 1-yr change |
|---|---|---|
| Residential | 15.37¢ | +5.9% |
| Commercial | 12.17¢ | +3.8% |
| Industrial | 9.83¢ | +5.4% |
Water
Electricity delivered in South Dakota carries 3.87 liters of water per kilowatt-hour consumed at the power plants supplying it (1.19 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 South Dakota accounts for about 102.3 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 South Dakota data (CSV) · Glossary