Pennsylvania (PA) electricity and natural gas rates
Electricity
21.72¢
per kWh
Natural gas
$2.77
per therm
Gas and electricity in the same unit
A therm is 29.3 kilowatt hours of energy, so Pennsylvania's gas works out at 9.46¢ per kWh against 21.72¢ for electricity.
That compares the energy you buy, not the heat you get. A furnace throws away a fifth of every therm up the flue, while a heat pump delivers two to three times the heat in a kilowatt hour — so the cheaper unit here is not automatically the cheaper way to heat a house.
Residential sector, US Energy Information Administration, 2026-07. Updated monthly.
How Pennsylvania compares
At 21.72¢ per kWh, Pennsylvania is above the national average of 19.26¢, making it the 38th cheapest of the 51 states we track.
What a typical Pennsylvania household uses
Electricity a month
840 kWh
Bill a month
$174
Households in Pennsylvania use about as much electricity as the national average and pay 16% more than average. That is a price problem rather than a consumption one — at 21.72¢ a kilowatt hour, even a modest amount of electricity adds up. The climate is fairly balanced — 5,700 heating degree days against 900 cooling ones — so neither season dominates the bill.
More on this: the average electric bill in Pennsylvania, including how far it swings between seasons.
Averaged over twelve months across 5,567,538 residential accounts in Pennsylvania. Source: EIA.
What this means for heating
Pennsylvania sees around 120 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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