What the average Vermont electric bill actually is
The average residential electricity bill in Vermont is $142.87 a month — about 574 kWh of consumption at 24.89 cents per kWh as of May 2026. The national comparison is 863 kWh at 18.44 cents for $159.14. Vermont's price is roughly 35 percent above the national average, its consumption roughly a third below it, and the two nearly cancel: the bill lands about 10 percent under the national figure. Vermont is the clearest illustration anywhere of why a rate and a bill are different questions.
The state average describes almost no one, and the reason is unusually specific to Vermont. The largest single determinant of a household's electric bill here is not house size or income but how it heats. A farmhouse running an oil boiler and a wood stove barely touches the meter in January. The same building converted to cold-climate heat pumps draws far more — and spends less overall, because it stopped buying oil. Both are behaving sensibly, and the state average matches neither.
The seasonal shape is also unlike most of the country. Vermont's summer cooling season is short and central air conditioning is far from universal, so the July spike that dominates southern bills is muted here. Winter drives the year instead, but only for homes that heat electrically. If you want to know whether your own bill is reasonable, compare kilowatt-hours rather than dollars, and compare against homes with the same heating system. An electricity bill calculator run on your own annual usage will tell you more than any state figure.
Why Vermont electricity rates are among the highest in the country
Vermont's rate is high for reasons of geography and structure, not because anyone is being gouged. Four things dominate.
The distribution network is expensive per customer. Vermont is rural, forested and mountainous, with a small population spread across a lot of terrain. Delivery is a fixed-cost business: poles, wire, substations and line crews cost what they cost regardless of how many kilowatt-hours flow through them. Spread that investment across few customers per mile of line and the cost per unit is inevitably high. Add tree cover — Vermont is one of the most heavily forested states — and vegetation management alone is a continuing expense that open states do not carry to the same degree.
Low consumption makes it worse, arithmetically. The fixed cost of the wires has to be recovered from the kilowatt-hours sold. Vermont sells very few per customer. The same network cost divided by a third fewer units produces a higher price per unit, which is part of why the states with the lowest usage frequently show the highest rates.
Vermont generates little of its own conventional power. There is no large in-state fossil fleet and no state-scale coal or gas complex. Utilities procure power through long-term contracts — including substantial imports of Canadian hydroelectricity — alongside in-state hydro, biomass, wind and a large distributed solar base. Contracted power is stable and predictable, which is genuinely valuable, but it is priced by contract rather than by the cheapest marginal generator in any given hour.
Policy costs are real and deliberate. Vermont's Renewable Energy Standard requires utilities to source a defined and rising share of supply from renewable generation, and the state supports distributed generation through net metering programmes. These are choices the state has made openly. They carry a cost, and that cost is inside the rate.
Why Vermont homes use so little electricity
574 kWh a month is remarkable, and it is not because Vermont households are unusually frugal. It is because most of the energy a Vermont home consumes is not electricity.
Heating is the whole story. Vermont winters are long and severe, but the fuels that answer them are overwhelmingly fuel oil, propane and wood. Vermont has one of the highest rates of wood heating in the country, and delivered fuels dominate where natural gas mains never reached — which is most of the state. A household burning two or three cords a winter and topping up with an oil boiler is spending real money on heat; none of it appears on the electric bill. That single fact accounts for most of the gap between Vermont and the national average.
The cooling season is short and mild. Hot stretches happen, but they are brief, nights cool off reliably, and a large share of Vermont homes have no central air conditioning at all. Where cooling exists it is often a window unit or a mini-split run for a few weeks. The summer bill spike that defines the South is largely absent.
Housing is small and the population is old-stock New England. Median home size is modest by national standards, and small conditioned volumes need less of everything.
Efficiency programmes have been running a long time. Vermont funds statewide energy efficiency work through a dedicated efficiency utility structure, and decades of insulation, weatherisation and appliance work compound. This is one of the few places where a policy choice is visibly legible in the consumption data.
The counter-trend is heat pumps. As cold-climate heat pumps spread, Vermont's electric consumption per household rises while total household energy spending falls. The state average will drift upward for entirely benign reasons.
What you can actually control in a regulated state
Vermont is a regulated electricity state. No competitive retailer sells residential power here, there is no supplier to switch to, and any offer promising a cheaper Vermont electricity supply rate is selling something else. That leaves four levers — and in a state with a 24.89-cent rate, they are worth more here than almost anywhere.
Efficiency is unusually high-return at this price. The value of a saved kilowatt-hour is a function of the rate, and Vermont's is among the highest in the country. Measures that cannot pay back in a cheap state pay back here: air sealing, attic and basement-band insulation, heat pump water heaters, and removing any remaining electric resistance heat. Vermont's efficiency programmes offer incentives for much of this work.
Rate plan and programme selection. Utilities here offer optional time-of-use rates and, notably, a set of programmes built around home batteries and controlled electric loads — arrangements in which the utility can call on a customer's battery or water heater during peak periods in exchange for a lower cost of equipment or a bill benefit. These are more developed in Vermont than in most states and are worth asking about directly rather than waiting to be offered. Our explainer on time-of-use rates covers how to judge whether a time-varying plan fits your household.
Budget billing. It spreads the year into equal payments with a true-up. It changes when you pay, not what you pay. Useful for a household on a fixed income facing a winter-heavy bill; useless as a savings strategy.
Regulatory participation. Rates are set in public proceedings before the state's utility regulator, and Vermont's process is comparatively accessible. It is slow, but it is the only lever that moves the price rather than the quantity.
The utilities that serve Vermont, and how they differ
Vermont is served by a small number of distribution utilities of three genuinely different types. None competes with another; your address decides which one you get.
Green Mountain Power serves the large majority of Vermont customers across most of the state. It is an investor-owned utility, regulated by the state, and owned by a Canadian parent. Its approved rates must fund a return on invested capital, which is a real component of every bill in its territory. It has also been the most experimental utility in the state, running programmes that put batteries and controllable devices in customers' homes and use them as grid resources — an approach that is unusual nationally and that shapes what options a household here is offered.
Vermont Electric Cooperative is member-owned and serves rural northern Vermont. Cooperatives carry no shareholder return, but they serve exactly the territory that is most expensive to wire: low density, heavy forest, difficult terrain. That trade-off typically shows up as a higher fixed monthly customer charge rather than a higher per-kilowatt-hour price, which is why a co-op bill can look expensive in a light month and ordinary in a heavy one.
Burlington Electric Department is a municipal utility owned by the city it serves. Public power carries no profit requirement and its governance runs through the city rather than through a corporate board. Burlington's utility is widely noted for sourcing its power from renewable generation, including in-state biomass, hydro and wind.
Several smaller municipal systems and additional cooperatives cover the remainder of the state. The practical differences between them are fixed charges, available optional programmes, restoration resources after a storm, and who you complain to — not competing prices.
The bill Vermont pays that this page does not show
Vermont's headline electric figure is honest but incomplete, and acting on it alone leads households to the wrong conclusions.
Because most Vermont homes heat with delivered fuels, the true winter energy cost sits on an oil or propane invoice, or in cordwood bought in August. Those costs are lumpy — a tank fill arrives as one large charge rather than a monthly line — and they are far more volatile than regulated electricity rates, because they track global fuel markets rather than a regulator's decision. A Vermont household comparing its $142.87 electric average to a southern state's is comparing a fraction of its energy spending to nearly all of theirs.
This is why the heat pump question is the central energy decision in this state rather than a marginal one. Converting from oil or propane to cold-climate heat pumps moves a large cost from a volatile delivered-fuel market onto a regulated, high-priced but predictable electric rate. Whether the net result is favourable depends on the price of oil or propane at the time, the efficiency of the equipment in deep cold, and how well the building holds heat. Do that arithmetic on total annual energy cost, not on the electric bill alone, and do the insulation work first — heating a leaky building efficiently is still heating a leaky building.
The second Vermont-specific point is distributed solar. The state has an unusually high share of small-scale solar for its size, supported by net metering. The relevant question is not whether solar works in Vermont — it does, despite the winters — but how the credit is valued seasonally, since production and heating load run in opposite directions here.
Frequently asked questions
Why are electricity rates so high in Vermont?
Mostly because of the cost of the wires, not the cost of the power. Vermont is rural, forested and mountainous, with few customers per mile of distribution line, and the fixed cost of poles, substations, line crews and vegetation management has to be recovered from a small number of kilowatt-hours. Low consumption per household makes that arithmetic worse, since the same network cost is divided across fewer units. On top of that, Vermont has little in-state conventional generation and procures power under long-term contracts, and its renewable energy requirements carry a cost that sits inside the rate.
Why is my Vermont electric bill low compared to other states?
Because most of your winter energy is probably not electricity. Vermont households average 574 kWh a month against a national average of 863, and the reason is that heating here runs largely on fuel oil, propane and wood rather than on the electric meter. The short, mild cooling season and relatively small homes contribute as well. The comparison flatters Vermont: measured on total household energy cost including delivered fuels, the picture looks very different. If your electric bill seems modest and your winter costs still hurt, the money is on the fuel delivery invoice.
Can I switch electricity suppliers in Vermont?
No. Vermont did not open its residential market to retail competition, so households buy generation and delivery together from whichever utility serves their address — Green Mountain Power, Vermont Electric Cooperative, Burlington Electric Department, or one of the smaller municipal systems and cooperatives. There is no supplier to choose and no contract to sign. Any offer promising a cheaper Vermont electricity supply rate is a solar sales pitch or a scam. Our list of deregulated electricity states shows where shopping is genuinely possible; Vermont is not among them.
Will a heat pump raise my electric bill in Vermont?
Yes, and that is not necessarily a problem. Moving heating load from an oil or propane boiler to cold-climate heat pumps shifts a cost from the fuel delivery invoice onto the electric bill, so the electric bill goes up while total energy spending usually goes down. Whether the net result is favourable depends on current oil or propane prices, how the equipment performs in deep cold, and how well the building retains heat. Do the arithmetic on total annual energy cost across all fuels rather than on electricity alone, and do air sealing and insulation first.
How much electricity does the average Vermont home use?
About 574 kWh a month based on annual 2024 residential data, roughly a third below the national average of 863 kWh and among the lowest in the country. The dominant reason is heating fuel: Vermont heats largely with oil, propane and wood, so the biggest seasonal load never touches the electric meter. Short summers and limited central air conditioning reduce cooling use, homes are relatively small, and the state has run efficiency programmes for a long time. Expect this figure to rise gradually as heat pump adoption moves heating load onto electricity.