US Electricity Prices Are Likely Headed Higher, New Analysis Warns

The upward pressure on power bills is not over

Retail electricity prices in the United States have already risen significantly in recent years, and a new analysis suggests more increases are likely in the near term. According to Utility Dive, an April 1 analysis from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and The Brattle Group says record investor-owned utility rate requests and regulatory approvals indicate further price pressure unless policy or market actions intervene.

The report does not present a single simple narrative. Instead, it offers both a “crisis” view and a more “nuanced” view of recent price increases. But on the immediate outlook, its warning is direct: the volume of utility rate cases in the pipeline points toward additional increases ahead.

That matters because electricity costs now sit at the center of several competing pressures at once, including grid modernization, storm resilience, affordability concerns, and rising demand from new technologies and electrification.

The numbers show a clear climb

From 2019 to 2025, the nominal price of a kilowatt-hour rose 33% for residential customers, 26% for commercial customers, and 27% for industrial customers, according to the analysis cited by Utility Dive. Across all customer classes, average retail electricity prices increased 5.3% in 2025 compared with 2024.

The regional picture is uneven. National averages, the analysis says, mask stark differences among states. Larger increases have shown up in California, the Northeast, and parts of the Mid-Atlantic. That means the experience of “electricity inflation” is highly location-dependent, even if the broader national trend points upward.

The affordability implications are substantial. Utility Dive reports that a third of U.S. households spend more than 5% of their income on electricity. That is one reason even moderate percentage increases can become politically and economically significant.

Why prices may keep rising

The strongest near-term signal comes from utility regulation itself. The analysis says there were $18 billion in rate increases proposed last year, and about two-thirds of utility rate proposals were approved from 2021 through 2025. Investor-owned utility revenue increase requests in 2025 exceeded any point since the mid-1980s.

That matters because rate cases are not just retrospective accounting exercises. They are forward-looking indicators of what utilities expect to recover from customers. If requests remain elevated and regulators continue approving a substantial share of them, the likely result is continued price growth for households and businesses.

The report therefore frames the current moment not only as a story about what bills have done, but also about what the regulatory queue implies for bills still to come.

Crisis or nuance depends on the lens

One useful aspect of the Berkeley-Brattle analysis is that it resists collapsing the situation into a single slogan. In the “crisis” framing, prices have surged nationally since 2019, with meaningful household burden and concentrated pain in certain regions. In the “nuanced” framing, many price increases have roughly tracked inflation, and 29 states saw inflation-adjusted electricity prices decline from 2019 to 2025.

Both views can be true at the same time. Nationally, customers have clearly seen higher nominal prices. But when adjusted for inflation, the story is more mixed. That distinction is analytically important, though it may not reduce the political salience of rising monthly bills.

Residential customers appear to be under especially strong pressure. The analysis says they have faced larger recent retail electricity price increases than commercial and industrial customers. That distribution matters because residential consumers generally have fewer options to manage costs than large industrial users or sophisticated commercial buyers.

The larger policy challenge

Electricity price debates increasingly sit at the intersection of reliability, resilience, infrastructure investment, and affordability. Utilities are under pressure to maintain aging systems, harden networks against storms, support load growth, and integrate new technologies. Customers, meanwhile, care about the end result on the bill.

The Berkeley-Brattle analysis does not claim those pressures will disappear. Instead, it suggests that absent policy or market changes, the current regulatory environment is likely to keep pushing prices upward in the near term.

That creates a familiar but unresolved tension in the power sector. Modernization and resilience often require large capital outlays. Yet the cost recovery for those investments lands on households and businesses already sensitive to inflation and energy burden. The new analysis sharpens that tension rather than resolving it.

For consumers, the message is straightforward: recent bill increases may not be the end of the trend. For policymakers and regulators, the harder question remains how to fund a changing grid without making electricity materially less affordable.

• A new LBNL-Brattle analysis says more near-term electricity price increases are likely.
• Residential electricity prices rose 33% in nominal terms from 2019 to 2025.
• There were $18 billion in utility rate increases proposed last year.
• Regional differences are large, with sharper increases in places like California and the Northeast.
• The core policy tension is between grid investment needs and customer affordability.

This article is based on reporting by Utility Dive. Read the original article.