Washington (WA) electricity and natural gas rates
Electricity
14.71¢
per kWh
Natural gas
$2.48
per therm
Gas and electricity in the same unit
A therm is 29.3 kilowatt hours of energy, so Washington's gas works out at 8.46¢ per kWh against 14.71¢ 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 Washington compares
At 14.71¢ per kWh, Washington is below the national average of 19.26¢, making it the 13th cheapest of the 51 states we track.
What a typical Washington household uses
Electricity a month
932 kWh
Bill a month
$132
Households in Washington use 8% more electricity than the national average and pay 13% less than average. Cheap power absorbs most of that: the meter turns faster here, but at 14.71¢ each unit costs less than it does nationally. The climate is fairly balanced — 4,800 heating degree days against 300 cooling ones — so neither season dominates the bill.
More on this: the average electric bill in Washington, including how far it swings between seasons.
Averaged over twelve months across 3,444,957 residential accounts in Washington. Source: EIA.
What this means for heating
Washington sees around 65 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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