Virginia Electricity Rates and Average Electric Bill Guide

Usage, not price, drives the Virginia bill. Households use 22% more electricity than the typical US household, while the price runs 11% below the national price. Climate and heating fuel usually explain a gap like this, because air conditioning, space heating and water heating are the largest named uses of electricity in a home (EIA RECS 2020).

Over a year, the average Virginia household pays about $1,957 for electricity. The state ranks 11th highest for the monthly bill, 25th lowest for price per kWh and 12th highest for use, out of 51 places (50 states and DC).

Source: EIA Form EIA-861 final 2025 data, residential sector. Bills are revenue divided by customers, divided by 12.

Want to see where your own bill falls? Use the bill checker or read the average bill guide for apartments, houses and different household sizes.

Virginia is dominated by investor-owned utilities, which serve 80% of residential customers. The rest are served by electric cooperatives (17%) and municipal utilities (3%). EIA lists 19 utilities and electricity suppliers with customers in Virginia.

See every utility that reports customers here on the electric companies in Virginia page.

If you do not know who serves your address, the find my electric company tool matches your county to a utility.

Virginia allows a narrow form of competitive supply, mostly for customers who want 100 percent renewable power that their utility does not offer. Most households buy from their local utility.

Utilities in Virginia reported an average of 4 hours and 44 minutes without power per customer in 2025, with 1.88 interruptions per customer, when major storm days are left out. That outage time is longer than the median state (127 minutes).

Customers in Virginia had 76,164 net-metered residential solar systems with a combined 723.6 megawatts of capacity in 2025. That works out to 20.7 systems for every 1,000 households, which ranks 24 of 51 places. Net metering lets a home with solar offset what it uses from the grid, so it changes the bill math for those households. Our net metering guide explains how the credit works.

Outage figures are reported by utilities and follow different standards, so compare states with care. The median state averaged 127 minutes of outage per customer in 2025.

• Start with cooling and water heating. Virginia households use 22% more electricity than the typical US home, so the biggest savings usually sit in air conditioning, space heating and water heating. Our guide to lowering your bill covers the fixes.
• Ask about time-of-use pricing. 5 of the 8 largest providers report residential time-of-use programs in EIA data. If you can shift laundry, charging and cooling to cheaper hours, the savings can be real. Our time-of-use guide explains how to test it.
• Ask about budget billing. Many utilities spread costs across the year. Read how budget billing works before you sign up.
• Price your appliances. The electricity cost calculator shows what a space heater, dryer or pool pump costs to run at your rate.

Electric rates and consumer complaints in Virginia are handled by the Virginia State Corporation Commission. If you have a billing dispute you could not settle with your utility, the regulator is the next step.