How Much Electricity Does a House Use? kWh Per Day, Month and State

Average Household kWh Usage: Per Day, Month and Year

The average U.S. residential customer bought 863 kWh of electricity a month in 2024, according to the EIA’s state-by-state sales table built from utility reports (Form EIA-861) [1]. That is about 10,356 kWh a year and 28.4 kWh a day (863 × 12 ÷ 365, our arithmetic). The EIA’s May 2025 summary of the same year reported 865 kWh [2]; the final table rounds to 863, so either figure gives about 28.4 kWh a day.

Those are purchases from the utility. Homes with rooftop solar buy less than they use, so the EIA also publishes a second measure from its Residential Energy Consumption Survey (RECS), which counts electricity from on-site solar panels as well [3][4]. RECS put the average home at 10,566 kWh in 2020, or about 28.9 kWh a day. The figure moves from year to year with the weather: purchases averaged 10,791 kWh in 2022 (about 899 kWh a month) [3].

The rest of this page uses the 2024 purchase figures for state averages and the 2020 RECS for everything that needs detail (home size, heating fuel, months and appliances), because RECS is the only EIA source that breaks usage down that way. Its newest full cycle is 2020.

Electricity Use by State: kWh Per Month and Per Day

State averages range from about 495 kWh a month in Hawaii to 1,202 kWh in Louisiana, more than double. The Southeast and Gulf states run highest because of long air-conditioning seasons and widespread electric heat; mild coastal and Northeastern states, where many homes heat with gas or oil, run lowest [2][4]. The first two columns are 2024 utility purchases from EIA Table 5.a [1]. The last column is the 2020 RECS total for each state, which includes rooftop solar [8].

Two things to read into the table. The highest-use states (Louisiana, Mississippi and their neighbors, at around 37–40 kWh a day) use a third or more above the national average, so a backup sized on national figures comes up short there. The lowest-use states (Hawaii and California) are where purchase figures understate use the most, because rooftop solar covers part of what homes consume: California’s 2020 RECS total of 6,482 kWh is about 540 kWh a month against 503 bought from utilities in 2024, and Hawaii’s 7,976 kWh is about 665 a month against 495 bought [3][8]. The two columns come from different years, so compare them loosely.

By Season and Heating Type

Usage swings by month. In the 2020 RECS the average home used 1,200 kWh in July (about 38.7 kWh a day) and 714 kWh in April (about 23.8 kWh a day) [8]. Summer is the national peak because of air conditioning, with a second, smaller peak in December and January from electric heating [9].

*Averages per household that uses electricity for that purpose, so they are not a slice of the first column for every home. Source: RECS 2020 Tables CE8.5, CE8.6 and CE8.7 [8][9]. Daily values divide by the days in each 2020 month (February had 29).

Summer-peak and winter-peak states

The national curve hides two very different patterns. Sun Belt homes peak in July or August; homes in the Pacific Northwest and parts of Appalachia, where electric heat is common, peak in December or January [8].

Electric heat vs gas heat

How the home is heated changes its electricity use more than anything except size. In the 2020 RECS, homes heated mainly with electricity averaged 13,073 kWh, about 35.8 kWh a day; homes heated with natural gas averaged 9,035 kWh, about 24.8 kWh a day [4]. That gap is the reason a winter outage is harder to cover with a battery in an all-electric home: a gas furnace needs only its blower and controls, while a heat pump or baseboard heater is one of the largest loads in the house (electric space heating averaged 2,484 kWh a year in the homes that use it) [7].

Source: RECS 2020 Table CE2.1 [4]. Climate regions are DOE Building America zones as grouped by EIA. Wood-heated homes are omitted from the fuel table.

How Much of That Do You Need in an Outage?

Far less than a normal day. The RECS also reports how much each appliance uses in the homes that have it, which lets you build an outage day from EIA numbers rather than guesses [7]:

RECS 2020 Tables CE5.3a and CE5.3b, average kWh per household that has the item [7]; per-day values are ÷ 365. RECS doesn’t break out routers, phone chargers or medical devices in these tables; they are small (see the appliance wattage chart for typical watts). A furnace blower averages 233 kWh a year in homes that have one, almost all of it in the heating months.

Essentials vs whole-home: the two ways to plan

• Essentials (about 4–6 kWh a day). Keep food cold, lights and internet on, maybe the TV and a furnace blower or sump pump. A 2–4 kWh power station does this on extension cords or through a transfer switch on a few circuits, and solar panels can refill much of it on a sunny day.
• Whole-home (about 28–36 kWh a day, more in summer). Run the house as normal, including AC or electric heat. That takes a 10 kWh-plus system wired into the panel by an electrician, and even a 12 kWh system holds only about a third of an average day without solar. Our whole-house solar generator cost guide prices each tier.

Verdict: Size Backup for the Essentials, Not the Average

An average U.S. house uses about 28.4 kWh a day, and a detached house in a hot state can use 35–40. No portable power station carries that for long. The EIA’s own appliance averages say the essentials (fridge, lights, TV, microwave) take about 4.4 kWh, and that is the number to size around. The EcoFlow Delta Pro 3 (our score 95/100) covers about 80% of it per charge and can feed essential circuits through a transfer switch, so it is our pick for most homes. It is the size where one unit plus a few solar panels can carry the essentials through a multi-day outage. If you mainly need to save the fridge for a day, the Bluetti Elite 200 V2 (91/100) does that on extension cords for far less.

Household Electricity FAQ