Market Data

Industrial Power Is Running 8.7¢/kWh. Here's What It Adds to Your Cost Per Part.

The price manufacturers pay to run their machines keeps climbing. Here is what the latest EIA number means for machine-hour rates, quoting, and where the slack is.

The average U.S. industrial customer paid 8.7¢/kWh for electricity as of Apr 2026, up about 5.5% from a year ago, according to the Energy Information Administration. That single figure is quietly baked into the cost of every part that comes off a powered machine, and because it is trending up, quotes priced off last year's rate are steadily losing margin.

What the number actually measures

This is the EIA's average retail price of electricity sold to the industrial sector, in cents per kilowatt-hour, blended across all 50 states. It is a delivered price, generation plus transmission and distribution, so it already reflects what shows up on a plant's bill, not a wholesale spot rate. Industrial buyers pay less than commercial or residential customers because they draw power at higher voltages and steadier loads, but the trend line is what matters for cost planning.

U.S. industrial electricity, Apr 2026: 8.7¢/kWh. Ranged from 8.2¢ in Apr 2025 to 9.3¢ in Jul 2025 across the archived history.

What a penny per kilowatt-hour does to cost per part

Take a 40 kW machining center running two shifts, about 4,000 run-hours a year. That draws roughly 160,000 kWh, so at 8.7¢/kWh its electricity alone costs about $13,856 a year. A one-cent move in the rate shifts that bill by $1,600, straight off the bottom line unless it is rebuilt into the machine-hour rate. Spread across the parts that machine makes, power is rarely the biggest line in a quote, but it is one of the few that moves every month and is easy to forget to reprice.

Power is rarely the biggest line in a quote, but it is one of the few that moves every month, and the easiest to forget to reprice.

Where to find slack

The fastest lever is not a cheaper rate, it is fewer kilowatt-hours per good part: idling machines and compressed-air leaks run the meter without producing anything, and off-peak scheduling can shift demand into cheaper windows where a utility offers time-of-use pricing. Rate itself is a location decision, industrial power costs vary by a factor of two or more across states, so it belongs in any plant-siting or reshoring analysis. Rebuild the current 8.7¢/kWh into your machine-hour rate first; then go hunt the waste.

Put your machine's connected load, run-hours, and this live rate into the energy cost per part calculator to see what power adds to each piece. Run your own numbers

Published 2026-07-13.