California electricity and natural gas rates
Electricity
33.25¢
per kWh
Natural gas
$2.00
per therm
Residential sector, US Energy Information Administration, 2026-05. Updated monthly. California last reported gas in 2026-03, so that figure is older than the electricity one.
How California compares
At 33.25¢ per kWh, California is above the national average of 19.41¢, making it the 50th cheapest of the 51 states we track.
What a typical California household uses
Electricity a month
488 kWh
Bill a month
$160
Households in California use 43% less electricity than the national average and pay 7% more than average. That is a price problem rather than a consumption one — at 33.25¢ a kilowatt hour, even a modest amount of electricity adds up. The climate is fairly balanced — 2,300 heating degree days against 1,200 cooling ones — so neither season dominates the bill.
Averaged over twelve months across 14,141,111 residential accounts in California. Source: EIA.
What this means for heating
California sees around 20 freezing nights a year. Whether a heat pump beats a furnace here depends on the gap between those two prices above — not on the equipment.
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