The answer depends on your state. The states that added the most demand have mostly seen real prices fall, not rise. Look yours up.
U.S. Energy Information Administration data, 2019–2024, inflation-adjusted (BLS CPI-U).
Load growth vs. real price change, 2019–2024
Real prices fellReal prices rosePJM grid (2025 capacity pressure)
Your state
—
Load growth · 2019–2024
—
Real price change · 2019–2024
—
Pick a state to see how load growth and prices moved together.
The honest read
01
The states that added the most demand have generally seen real electricity prices fall. Across all 51 jurisdictions the correlation is clear (-0.6): the top-15 growth states averaged a 7.7% real decline, the bottom-15 a 5.8% increase.
02
The pressure point is supply-constrained grids like PJM, where capacity-auction prices began climbing in 2025 as anticipated load met an underbuilt system. Through 2024, even high-growth PJM states like Virginia still saw real prices fall.
03
Whether households win or lose comes down to one decision: cost allocation. Large-load tariffs that make big users pay their own way are what protect other ratepayers.
How to read this. Each dot is a state. Right means more electricity demand was added from 2019 to 2024; down means inflation-adjusted retail prices fell over the same period. The downward trend line is the core finding.
Method. Load growth = percent change in total retail electricity sales by state, 2019 to 2024. Real price change = percent change in the all-sector average retail price, deflated by BLS CPI-U (about 22.7% cumulative inflation over the window). The outlined points mark PJM-footprint states, where capacity-auction prices rose in 2025. Correlation is not causation, and the relationship holds where low-cost supply is available and tariffs assign costs to the loads that cause them.
Sources. U.S. Energy Information Administration, Electric Sales, Revenue, and Average Price (2024 edition) and Historical State Data; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, CPI-U. Pattern corroborated by Wiser et al., Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and The Brattle Group, “Retail Electricity Price Trends and Drivers” (2026).