Cost to run air conditioning by state
What a year of cooling costs a 1,800 square foot home with a minimum-efficiency unit, at each state's current electricity price. Dearest first.
The spread is enormous — Hawaii at $1958 a year against Washington at $40. That is climate rather than price: the same unit in the same house runs for a small fraction of the hours. In Alaska it barely runs at all — there are effectively no cooling degree days in a normal year, so air conditioning is not a cost most households there have.
| State | An hour | A year |
|---|---|---|
| Hawaii | $1.21 | $1958 |
| Florida | $0.38 | $579 |
| Texas | $0.40 | $522 |
| Arizona | $0.39 | $488 |
| Louisiana | $0.32 | $418 |
| California | $0.71 | $409 |
| Mississippi | $0.37 | $395 |
| District of Columbia | $0.53 | $384 |
| Alabama | $0.41 | $372 |
| Georgia | $0.41 | $369 |
| South Carolina | $0.39 | $368 |
| Oklahoma | $0.36 | $325 |
| New Jersey | $0.53 | $307 |
| Maryland | $0.45 | $283 |
| Arkansas | $0.30 | $276 |
| New Mexico | $0.34 | $261 |
| Virginia | $0.37 | $249 |
| North Carolina | $0.32 | $246 |
| Missouri | $0.34 | $245 |
| Tennessee | $0.29 | $237 |
| Nevada | $0.27 | $233 |
| Kansas | $0.32 | $232 |
| Delaware | $0.39 | $225 |
| New York | $0.63 | $217 |
| Illinois | $0.40 | $215 |
| Kentucky | $0.29 | $196 |
| Massachusetts | $0.64 | $193 |
| Rhode Island | $0.59 | $179 |
| Pennsylvania | $0.46 | $177 |
| Indiana | $0.35 | $170 |
| Nebraska | $0.29 | $168 |
| Iowa | $0.34 | $162 |
| Ohio | $0.41 | $159 |
| Connecticut | $0.51 | $153 |
| Michigan | $0.48 | $146 |
| Utah | $0.28 | $146 |
| West Virginia | $0.33 | $129 |
| New Hampshire | $0.56 | $121 |
| Maine | $0.68 | $117 |
| Minnesota | $0.37 | $111 |
| South Dakota | $0.32 | $111 |
| Colorado | $0.36 | $108 |
| Vermont | $0.50 | $108 |
| Wisconsin | $0.40 | $104 |
| Idaho | $0.29 | $87 |
| North Dakota | $0.28 | $73 |
| Montana | $0.31 | $68 |
| Oregon | $0.34 | $58 |
| Wyoming | $0.30 | $52 |
| Washington | $0.31 | $40 |
| Alaska | — | Not used |
Note that the hourly and yearly columns rank differently. The hourly figure follows the electricity price; the yearly one follows the climate, because it is mostly a question of how many hours the compressor runs. A state can be expensive per hour and cheap per year.