Econ Blog
US energy in eleven charts: power mix, gas, crude and coal
Electricity, natural gas, crude and coal set the cost floor under every delivery, every warehouse and every shop lease. These charts pull the EIA series that move first, updated from the source on each refresh.
By Matthew Dettman, ChFC, CLU, founder of Second Difference Solutions. Updated .
Showing Oct 2021 to Oct 2026
- Henry Hub, latest monthly average
- $2.95
- Dollars per MMBtu
- Henry Hub, change from a year earlier
- -0.7%
- Gas in storage, latest week
- 3,644
- Billion cubic feet, contiguous states
- Crude production, latest week
- 13,269
- Thousand barrels per day
- Commercial electricity, latest month
- 14.47
- Cents per kWh
- Commercial electricity, change from a year earlier
- +4.3%
- LNG exports, change from a year earlier
- +18.8%
- Coal production, change from a year earlier
- -2.6%
Generation by fuel
US net electricity generation by fuel, monthly, all sectors, in gigawatthours (thousand megawatthours).
Utility-scale against rooftop solar
Utility-scale solar against the EIA estimate of small-scale rooftop solar, monthly, gigawatthours (thousand megawatthours).
Retail electricity price by class
Average retail electricity price by customer class, monthly, cents per kilowatthour.
Commercial power price, year over year
Commercial retail electricity price against the same month a year earlier, percent.
Unusual readings
- Henry Hub against its two-year range: within two standard deviations of its 24-month average
- Gas storage against its two-year range: within two standard deviations of its 24-month average
How to read these charts
Generation is what power plants delivered to the grid, and the fuel lines add up to most of US supply. Retail prices are the average bill per kilowatthour by customer class; the commercial line is the one most small businesses pay. Henry Hub is the benchmark gas price behind both power bills and heating costs, and storage shows the cushion the market carries into winter. Crude production and stocks set the backdrop for pump prices, which have their own post. Product supplied is the EIA proxy for demand. Coal still sets the marginal power price in several regions. Every series except Henry Hub comes straight from the EIA open data API; Henry Hub is the EIA series as mirrored on FRED. Monthly series lag one to two months, weekly series about a week. Small-scale solar is an EIA estimate, not metered output.