Data

Average electric power of the average US home

The electricity the average US household used at home in 2020, expressed as average power in kilowatts: the year's kilowatt-hours spread evenly over its 8,784 hours. From the US Energy Information Administration's Residential Energy Consumption Survey.

Latest value

1.20kW

United States: all primary occupied homes in the 50 states and the District of Columbia, 2020. Version RECS 2020, Table CE2.1 (revised March 2024).

Average electric power of the average US home (kilowatts (average over the year))

1 values from 2020 to 2020.

Show as a table

Average electric power of the average US home, every value
Period	Value (kW)	Status
2020	1.20	final

Calculated by Environment Dashboard from U.S. Energy Information Administration, 2020 Residential Energy Consumption Survey, Table CE2.1 (Mar 2024). Changes: annual electricity use divided by the 8,784 hours of 2020 to give average power in kilowatts. Public domain (work of the US federal government).

Notes on individual values

EIA's relative standard error for this estimate: 0.38% (Table CE2.1, sheet 'rse').

Where it comes from

Producer: U.S. Energy Information Administration · Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, household consumption (Table CE2.1)
Version: RECS 2020, Table CE2.1 (revised March 2024)
File: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/c&e/xls/ce2.1.xlsx
Fetched: 2026-10-08 (automatically), 37,081 bytes
Fingerprint: sha256 14c8a8c29b419eae27a477347cf70569720544ce51d441e391f4e97d540ef7ffETag "80265728ed7eda1:0" · Last-Modified Mon, 25 Mar 2024 19:46:41 GMT
Copies: Archived copy (Wayback Machine) Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer: Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (Mar 2024).

Producer: U.S. Energy Information Administration · Residential Energy Consumption Survey 2020, household consumption (Table CE2.1)
Version: RECS 2020, Table CE2.1 (revised March 2024)
File: https://www.eia.gov/consumption/residential/data/2020/pdf/2020%20RECS%20CE%20Methodology%20-%20Monthly%20Appendix%20-%20Final.pdf
Fetched: 2026-10-08 (automatically), 681,860 bytes
Fingerprint: sha256 fdc47fbc71fb0a90ca229e42b6f501a6ea95f8a085377e05c334d45640ac7ebfETag "0e173d857cadb1:0" · Last-Modified Wed, 21 May 2025 13:54:18 GMT
Copies: Archived copy (Wayback Machine) Our copy of the exact file
Cite the producer: Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration (Mar 2024).

What was done to it

Read Table CE2.1 (sha256 14c8a8c29b41…), sheet 'physical units', row 'All homes': average site electricity consumption 10566 kWh per household, after checking the title, the headings, the release dates and the footnotes. Every home uses electricity, so this is the average per home: total consumption (1305 billion kWh) over the number of homes (123.53 million) agrees with it to within rounding.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/energy/eia_recs.py · code sha256 1aad46fc68ef411e… · inputs 14c8a8c29b41… fdc47fbc71fb…
Unit conversion to average power: divided the annual kilowatt-hours by the 8,784 hours (366 days) from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2020, giving kilowatts (kWh / h = kW), in exact decimal arithmetic. The period is EIA's: page 13 of the survey's consumption technical documentation (sha256 fdc47fbc71fb…) says the bills cover 'the 366 total days from January 1 to December 31, 2020', and that sentence was found before converting. The result is the constant power that would deliver the same electricity over the year, not the home's peak demand.
Code: pipeline/src/envdash/transforms/energy/eia_recs.py · code sha256 1aad46fc68ef411e… · inputs 14c8a8c29b41… fdc47fbc71fb…

What it covers

Geography: United States: all primary occupied homes in the 50 states and the District of Columbia
Basis: Survey estimate (sample of households and their energy suppliers' bills) of site electricity use per home in calendar year 2020, including electricity from the home's own solar panels. Vacant and seasonal homes, second homes, military housing and group quarters are excluded. Average power is the annual energy divided by the hours in 2020 (8,784), not the home's peak demand.
Unit: kilowatts (average over the year) (kW)