I had always been led to believe that US prices were well below UK prices but reading this BBC articlwe makes me wonder.

BBC News

'I had no electricity for six months': American families...

Rising electricity costs have emerged as a key cost-of-living concern, pushing families further into debt.

Over £1300 a month for electricity and rising ?

Data centres are raising demand in the energy sector and doing backdoor deals to lower the cost to them at the expense of domestic consumers. Also, the domestic consumers are being put on the hook, via their bills, for the new infrastructure needed for the data centres. It is a rapidly emerging political issue there.

Edited January 11Jan 11 by StringJunky

On average, the prices are still lower in the USA compared to UK (or many other European countries). But affordability can be an issue as income inequality is higher in the USA, as well as e.g. educational and healthcare costs. Even if things are cheaper, if you have less money in your pockets it might still be beyond what you can afford. As an additional factor, in Europe the high energy cost have created incentives for more energy efficient systems on all levels. In the US, this is not necessarily the case.

21 minutes ago, studiot said:

Over £1300 a month for electricity and rising ?

Highly dependent on their circumstances. Do they say where they are, how big the house is, and what the electricity is being used for (e.g. do they have electric heat) and how many kwh? Article is paywalled.

Here's more on my post:

"Electricity bills are on track to rise an average of 8 percent nationwide by 2030 according to a June analysis from Carnegie Mellon University and North Carolina State University. The culprits? Data centers and cryptocurrency mining. Bills could rise as much as 25 percent in places like Virginia. Science writer Dan Charles explains why electric utilities are adding the cost of data center buildings to their customers' bills while the data companies pay nothing upfront."

Electricity Grid Impacts of Rising Demand from Data Centers and Cryptocurrency Mining Operations - PDF link

In upstate NY, my base rate for electricity is about $0.17 per kwh. With taxes and other charges it comes to about $0.25 per kwh

I use less than 1000 kwh per month; that’s highest in winter when I use a space heater in one room that’s colder.

I think there is some market pressure (let's hope it keeps up) on tech companies to build their own power systems for server farms, e.g. wind turbines or solar or geo, with storage batteries. (Grids aren't trustworthy, so they want onsite power) I live in a public power state with 85% of its power from wind and hydro, so our rates are below the national average. (10¢/kwh, iirc) Means EVs driven here are lower carbon than in some places.

Energy prices have shot up ( along with everything else ) under the leadership of His Orangeness.
In Western New York, and others on the Eastern seaboard, they buy Ontario's and Qjuebec's surplus Hydro at tariff-free, reduced prices.

Swansont, and many others in Western New York, didn't vote for Trump, and I feel for them otherwise, I'd say "cut off their Hydro'.
( we can't do that anymore with our oil, because now he's stolen Venezuela's reserves )

15 hours ago, swansont said:

Article is paywalled.

Made a pdf.BBC.pdf

16 hours ago, studiot said:

I had always been led to believe that US prices were well below UK prices but reading this BBC articlwe makes me wonder.

BBC News

'I had no electricity for six months': American families...

Rising electricity costs have emerged as a key cost-of-living concern, pushing families further into debt.

Over £1300 a month for electricity and rising ?

I agree with others there is something odd about these numbers. I live a large 3 storey Victorian house in London, with poor insulation. My energy costs (gas and electricity) are of the order of £2.5-3k/yr * . It seems amazing that this person spends that every 2 months. Does she live in a mansion? Or in a flimsy wooden hut in Alaska? It is also very odd that the bill is said to have tripled. What kind of energy utility can get away with tripling energy bills? It's absurd. Is this perhaps some computer error that hit the headlines and the BBC has credulously picked it up without questioning it?

*~30,000kWh, of which ~28,000kWh gas and ~ 2,000 kWh electricity.

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I do not know if US charging practice includes any form of fixed charges or 'standing charges'.

In 2016 we removed the gas boiler and installed a heatpump so we are now all electric.

Usage is spread out over the seasons as follows

Summer 100 kwh per week for 14 weeks

Autumn & Spring 200kwh per week for 30 weeks

Winter 300kwh per week for 8 weeks

Total 9800 annual kwh

We had two cold/frosty weeks in December 2025 and the bill amounts to £300, including non negligible standing charges.

10 minutes ago, studiot said:

Thanks everyone for the replies.

I do not know if US charging practice includes any form of fixed charges or 'standing charges'.

In 2016 we removed the gas boiler and installed a heatpump so we are now all electric.

Usage is spread out over the seasons as follows

Summer 100 kwh per week for 14 weeks

Autumn & Spring 200kwh per week for 30 weeks

Winter 300kwh per week for 8 weeks

Total 9800 annual kwh

We had two cold/frosty weeks in December 2025 and the bill amounts to £300, including non negligible standing charges.

Just for contrast, $20 pm covers my grid electric for a 4 bedroom, 3 floor apartment in Abuja, Nigeria. It isn't overly subsidised. Though it's only available ~ 70% of the time.

Bottled gas for the cooker (which I use daily) is considerably less.

These numbers vary immensely with climate and personal expectations.

PS. Nigerian tariffs are between 4c and 15c per kWh depending on supply uptime.

1 hour ago, StringJunky said:

Made a pdf.BBC.pdf

Thanks; unfortunately the “reporting” gives nothing in terms of actual detail. The bill tripled, but nothing about why. Did the rates change? Did the usage go up? Was it something administrative thing? (there are programs that “smooth out” your bills so you don’t pay so much in the high-use months - did that end, and the whole thing come due?)

Unfortunately it looks like it could be using an outlier and presenting it as typical, which is an intellectually dishonest tactic.

Also mystified by $1800/month for light/heat. (and does New York allow utility companies to shut off heat in the winter - it's illegal to do that here)

We have a 1900 era house, two story, 4 BR, keep temps around 65-67, and not heating rooms not in use so much, and our winter bills (Nov. 15 - March 31) for gas plus electric space heat averages around $200/month.

1800/month conjures images of pampered sybarites keeping every room at orchid-raising warmth so that family members can frolic around in swimsuits, with large-screen tvs blaring in every room, and a hot tub always bubbling away on the back deck, easily accessed through the perpetually open kitchen door.

TBH, it makes me want to tell them, "you idiots get whatever you deserve." I know I must be missing something here. Northern tier states of the US are generally acquainted with sweaters, turning heat down in unused rooms or bedrooms where one is under a heavy quilt, and most attics in older homes have either batts or blown-in cellulosic insulation with at least an R-30 rating. Loosefill insulation can also be blown into wall cavities without a huge fuss, and that's been standard for retrofitting older homes for at least fifty years. So, yes, more information needed.

I am generally not enchanted with the sense of entitlement and square-footage greed that has been so common in my country. Builders have catered to this palatial concept of personal space requirement for too long. I think the tide is finally starting to turn here (locally, I have noticed a new wave of contractors building 700-800 SF starter homes, which seems like a return to sanity.)

15 hours ago, MigL said:

Energy prices have shot up ( along with everything else ) under the leadership of His Orangeness.
In Western New York, and others on the Eastern seaboard, they buy Ontario's and Qjuebec's surplus Hydro at tariff-free, reduced prices.

You can't really call it leadership when he quite obviously has no idea what he's talking about. He just told ConocoPhillips there's no windmills in China when the company has been working on Chinese wind energy generation for some time now, and China is the world leader in wind power right now.

6 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I am generally not enchanted with the sense of entitlement and square-footage greed that has been so common in my country. Builders have catered to this palatial concept of personal space requirement for too long.

I researched this recently following a claim that housing costs are no less affordable than they were the past couple of generations, and while costs have risen it’s largely due to the size of new houses going up. Avg size of 1500 sq ft in in 1970 vs ~2500 square feet 40-50 years later

UK energy costs are ~6p/kWh for gas and ~25p/kWh for electricity:

https://energyguide.org.uk/average-cost-gas-kwh/

https://energyguide.org.uk/average-cost-electricity-kwh-uk/

So I suppose someone in the UK with a house like mine but no gas supply could end up paying £8k/yr which would be £670/month. But that’s still nowhere near the case in the BBC article.

2 hours ago, swansont said:

Thanks; unfortunately the “reporting” gives nothing in terms of actual detail. The bill tripled, but nothing about why. Did the rates change? Did the usage go up? Was it something administrative thing? (there are programs that “smooth out” your bills so you don’t pay so much in the high-use months - did that end, and the whole thing come due?)

Unfortunately it looks like it could be using an outlier and presenting it as typical, which is an intellectually dishonest tactic.

The BBC's famed reporting integrity is a myth now.

Where I live, it's common for people to rent an apartment and be astonished by their electric bill in the winter, because they didn't notice the apartment has electric resistance heat. (Not a heat pump, just a giant toaster.) They tend to make confused posts online, somewhat like the BBC article, quoting the total cost but no other information about usage and pricing. As electricity prices rise, electric resistance heat will get disproportionately more expensive.

59 minutes ago, Cap'n Refsmmat said:

Where I live, it's common for people to rent an apartment and be astonished by their electric bill in the winter, because they didn't notice the apartment has electric resistance heat. (Not a heat pump, just a giant toaster.) They tend to make confused posts online, somewhat like the BBC article, quoting the total cost but no other information about usage and pricing. As electricity prices rise, electric resistance heat will get disproportionately more expensive.

And apartments are relatively cheap, since you have neighbors and a corridor, so you’re basically not losing heat to anyone adjoining you.

I had to check on Google what the price of electricity is in the US.

$0.18 per kWh.

That's BARGAIN.

We (privately) have 60–80% more here than there.

If you have a company (i.e., you have registered it at your address), the cost is 350–400% higher (> $0.65 / kWh)

Let's Google more.

Average Monthly Bill: ~$155 (based on 863 kWh usage)

Is this some kind of (unfunny) joke?

Have Americans gone crazy from all this prosperity?

When I had a server room at home 24h/7, my monthly electricity consumption + 14 hours of watching monitors (three LCDs) was at its peak around 320 kWh / month. And IMHO it was damn high.

I reduced it to 75 kWh without much trouble, all I had to do was connect a wattmeter to all electrical devices and get rid of server at home.. ;)

On 1/12/2026 at 12:26 AM, studiot said:

Over £1300 a month for electricity and rising ?

..Some people have lost their minds with all this prosperity..

No one can consume $1800 / $0.18 = 10,000 kWh per month. That's how much you consume in 31 months with 320 kWh/mo. Unless someone stole it or grew a marijuana plantation, etc. The whole article looks like a bunch of unreliable nonsense to me..

Edited January 13Jan 13 by Sensei

6 hours ago, Sensei said:

No one can consume $1800 / $0.18 = 10,000 kWh per month.

15 kW is a fairly typical Level 2 charging rate for an EV.

Perhaps a couple of high mileage commuters treated themselves to an EV apiece and got a nasty shock when the next electricity bill came through the letterbox.

50 minutes ago, sethoflagos said:

15 kW is a fairly typical Level 2 charging rate for an EV.

Perhaps a couple of high mileage commuters treated themselves to an EV apiece and got a nasty shock when the next electricity bill came through the letterbox.

Interesting point.

I had a larger Kia for a while.

A full charge is 64 kwh say 65 with charginging losses.

65 x 30 days = 1950 units if she had to charge it every day.

Note you will not get a 15 kw rate from a standard UK socket it's 3kw from one socket or up to 8kw for a directly wired special outlet.

Edited January 13Jan 13 by studiot

On 1/11/2026 at 11:26 PM, studiot said:

I had always been led to believe that US prices were well below UK prices but reading this BBC articlwe makes me wonder.

BBC News

'I had no electricity for six months': American families...

Rising electricity costs have emerged as a key cost-of-living concern, pushing families further into debt.

Over £1300 a month for electricity and rising ?

I've said it before and I'll say it again, "Trump seems determined to bankrupt America (He's writing cheque's that nobody can afford)", energy is just a side effect.

Looking at the average bill is not particularly informative; it’s going to vary by location in the US owing to the different climates we can experience, it fluctuates over the course of the year, and it depends on how you heat your home, as Cap’n pointed out.

She hasn’t even hit the coldest part of winter, though this past December where I am in NY was colder than average, so it likely was for her, too.

Also, the article says “energy bill” not “electricity bill” and that “the gas is still off” so the large bill may indeed be (in part) because she’s using resistive heat now

According to a few analyses, resistive heating is somewhere around 2.5 - 3x more expensive than gas, (~4x in this one https://extension.okstate.edu/fact-sheets/true-cost-of-energy-comparisons-apples-to-apples.html )

so having the bill jump up because of that doesn’t seem so surprising. It doesn’t excuse the reporting for not detailing that and painting it as a rate hike.