Electricity got noticeably more expensive across the Charleston area last year, no matter which utility sent the bill.
The average price that Dominion Energy South Carolina’s 712,700 residential customers paid rose 12.5% in 2025, to 16.4 cents per kilowatt-hour, according to a Charleston Business Report analysis of utility data the U.S. Energy Information Administration released Oct. 7. The typical Dominion household’s bill averaged $169 a month, up from $151.
Dominion serves parts of all three counties in the region, along with 20 others. Three other utilities that serve homes in the three counties raised what their residential customers paid by 9% to 16%, the analysis found.
Every utility went up
Average residential price and monthly bill, 2025, with the change in price from 2024:
- Edisto Electric Cooperative: 19 cents, $228 a month, up 15.8%
- Dominion Energy South Carolina: 16.4 cents, $169, up 12.5%
- Berkeley Electric Cooperative: 16.3 cents, $187, up 9.3%
- Santee Cooper: 12.9 cents, $124, up 13.4%
- South Carolina average: 15.1 cents, $161, up 6.2%
- U.S. average: 17.2 cents, $151
Bills vary more than prices because households use different amounts of power. Berkeley Electric’s residential customers used an average of 1,149 kilowatt-hours a month, compared with 1,032 for Dominion’s and 959 for Santee Cooper’s. Santee Cooper’s retail customers are in Berkeley, Georgetown and Horry counties, according to the Energy Information Administration’s service-territory records. Edisto Electric, whose territory includes parts of Berkeley and Dorchester counties and six other counties, had the highest average bill.
South Carolina households pay less per kilowatt-hour than the national average but use more power, so their bills are higher. The state’s average residential bill was $161 a month, compared with $151 nationally, according to the agency.
What changed
The figures are averages, calculated by dividing what each utility collected from a class of customers by the electricity it sold them. They include base rates, fuel charges and other riders, so they move with fuel costs as well as rate cases.
Santee Cooper’s higher prices came in the year its first base-rate increase since 2017 took effect, in April 2025. Under those rates, a typical residential customer would pay about $11 a month more, the American Public Power Association reported when the board approved them in December 2024. The analysis found the average Santee Cooper residential bill rose about $16 for the year.
At Dominion, the average monthly bill rose about $19 while the amount of power the typical household used did not change.
Over six years, prices rose fastest at the two cooperatives. From 2019 to 2025, Edisto Electric’s average residential price rose 26%, Berkeley Electric’s 22.5%, Dominion’s 14.7% and Santee Cooper’s 12.1%. The statewide average rose 16.4%.
Businesses paid more, too
Commercial and industrial customers also paid more.
Dominion’s commercial customers, a category that includes stores, offices and restaurants, paid an average of 12.9 cents per kilowatt-hour, up 10%. Its industrial customers paid 8.4 cents, up 13.9%. Santee Cooper’s commercial price rose 14.7%, to 10.8 cents, and its industrial price rose 16.9%, to 5.9 cents.
Statewide, commercial customers paid an average of 11.2 cents and industrial customers 7.3 cents, below the national averages of 13.4 cents and 8.5 cents, according to the agency.
Berkeley Electric’s commercial customers paid 8.3 cents, up 16.3%. The cooperative sells far more power to commercial customers than to homes. Its commercial sales were 3.75 million megawatt-hours in 2025, up 10.8% from 2024 and more than twice its residential sales. The cooperative serves Google’s data center site in Berkeley County, The Post and Courier reported in July 2025. The federal figures do not identify individual customers.
How often the lights went out
The agency’s reliability figures, which exclude days with major storms or other large events, show Santee Cooper’s customers averaged 41 minutes without power in 2025. Dominion’s averaged 81 minutes, Berkeley Electric’s 93 minutes and Edisto Electric’s 235 minutes.
More increases ahead
Santee Cooper’s board approved an average 3.3% increase across its retail customer classes for 2027 on Oct. 30, including 4.7% for residential customers, according to the utility. It approved another average increase of 3.1% for 2028, including 4.6% for residential customers.
What the numbers don’t show
Average prices are not tariffs. A household’s own bill depends on its rate plan, how much power it uses and when. Monthly bills here are annual revenue divided by the number of customers and by 12 months.
The figures cover each utility’s whole South Carolina service area, not just the Charleston area. Coastal Electric Cooperative, which also serves part of Dorchester County, files a shorter federal report that does not break out residential customers. Its average price across all customers was about 17 cents in 2025, up 4% from 2024.
How we did this
We used the Energy Information Administration’s annual electric power industry data, form EIA-861, for 2019, 2024 and 2025, released Oct. 7, 2026, for the most recent year. We identified utilities serving Berkeley, Charleston and Dorchester counties from the agency’s service territory file and calculated average prices and bills for residential, commercial and industrial customers from each utility’s reported revenue, sales and customer counts. State and national averages come from the agency’s 2025 average bill tables; our state calculations match them. Reliability figures are each utility’s reported average outage minutes per customer, excluding major event days. Rate changes come from Santee Cooper and the American Public Power Association.
