Methodology → Electricity Inflation
How Electricity Inflation Is Calculated
This page explains how PriceOfElectricity.com compares current electricity rates with historical rates and computes percentage changes over time.
Comparing current vs historical rates
The site uses state-level average residential electricity rates from its normalized data pipeline. To compute inflation, the current rate is compared with the rate from the same period one year ago (for 1-year change) or five years ago (for 5-year change). Monthly data is aggregated by period; the most recent complete period is used as the "current" rate.
1-year and 5-year percentage changes
Percentage change is computed as the difference between the current rate and the historical rate, divided by the historical rate, multiplied by 100. Positive values indicate price increases; negative values indicate decreases.
inflation1yPercent = ((currentRate - rate1YearAgo) / rate1YearAgo) * 100 inflation5yPercent = ((currentRate - rate5YearsAgo) / rate5YearsAgo) * 100
Missing historical data
If historical data is missing for a state or period, that state may be excluded from rankings or summaries that rely on inflation metrics. The site does not extrapolate or interpolate missing values.
Data sources
State rates come from the site's normalized data pipeline. See sources for provenance.