Illinois electricity and natural gas rates
Electricity
23.85¢
per kWh
Natural gas
$1.48
per therm
Residential sector, US Energy Information Administration, 2026-05. Updated monthly.
How Illinois compares
At 23.85¢ per kWh, Illinois is above the national average of 19.41¢, making it the 40th cheapest of the 51 states we track.
What a typical Illinois household uses
Electricity a month
719 kWh
Bill a month
$132
Households in Illinois use 16% less electricity than the national average and pay 11% less than average. That is a price problem rather than a consumption one — at 23.85¢ a kilowatt hour, even a modest amount of electricity adds up. The climate is fairly balanced — 5,900 heating degree days against 1,100 cooling ones — so neither season dominates the bill.
Averaged over twelve months across 5,410,276 residential accounts in Illinois. Source: EIA.
What this means for heating
Illinois sees around 130 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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