Fifty-seven electric and natural-gas utilities across 48 states currently have pending requests before state regulators to raise the rates they charge, according to a tracker maintained by the energy-comparison site Electric Choice. The utilities are asking, on average, for a 13.2 percent increase, and the filings together touch a combined 125.1 million residential and commercial accounts. None of those requests has been approved as filed. For a household living on Social Security and a fixed pension, the size of the ask matters just as much as whether a state regulator eventually grants it.
A 13.2 Percent Ask, Not Yet a 13.2 Percent Bill
Rate cases like these move through the same basic process in every state, whether the utility is a familiar name like Consumers Energy or a small cooperative most customers have never had reason to look up. A utility cannot simply raise its own prices. It has to file a formal application, support the request with financial testimony, and wait for its state’s public utility commission to review it, a process that commonly runs six months to well over a year.
Electric Choice’s rate-filing tracker, updated August 3, 2026 and current as of September, counts 57 electric and gas utilities with active requests in 48 states, an average ask of 13.2 percent worth roughly $208 million per utility, and 125.1 million customers covered across the pending cases. Electric Choice is a commercial electricity-comparison service, not a state regulator or a research institution, and its own methodology page is candid about what a rate case does and does not guarantee: state commissions, it notes, “almost always approve less than what the utility requests,” typically 50 to 75 percent of the original number, after months of hearings, testimony, and often settlement talks that narrow the final figure. Of the 129 rate cases the same tracker has logged since 2023, 70 have already been decided and approved, one was withdrawn outright, and the rest, including the 57 counted in the 13.2 percent average, are still working their way through that process.
The individual filings vary widely. Consumers Energy has asked Michigan regulators for a $456 million increase, about 10 percent; San Diego Gas & Electric filed for an 8.1 percent, $280 million increase in California; and Baltimore Gas & Electric is seeking a 6 percent, $156 million increase in Maryland. Alaska Electric Light & Power’s request runs as high as 25 percent, while New Hampshire’s Liberty Utilities is asking for just 2 percent. All of them sit in the tracker’s Pending column, alongside PECO Energy’s 12.5 percent Pennsylvania request, which the utility withdrew in 2026 before regulators ruled on it.
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Grid Hardening, Not One Culprit, Is the Reason Utilities Give
The tracker attributes the wave of filings to five drivers utilities repeatedly cite in their applications: grid-hardening and storm-resilience spending such as undergrounding power lines and installing smart-grid equipment; the cost of retiring coal plants and building renewable generation and battery storage; wildfire-mitigation spending concentrated in California and other Western states; replacement of mid-20th-century infrastructure nearing the end of its service life; and higher financing costs on all of the above.
How any of that reaches a specific bill depends on where a household lives. In deregulated states such as Texas, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, a rate case changes only the delivery charge, the portion of the bill covering wires and meters, while the larger supply charge remains open to competitive shopping among retail providers. In regulated states, the utility supplies both delivery and generation, so an approved increase touches the entire bill, and it is typically phased in over one to three years rather than applied all at once.
EIA’s Own Numbers Show a Smaller Increase, Already Partly Realized
The U.S. Energy Information Administration’s Short-Term Energy Outlook offers an independent check on where residential prices are actually headed, and its numbers are both smaller than 13.2 percent and already partly realized rather than pending. The EIA projects that residential electricity customers will pay an average of 18.2 cents per kilowatt-hour in 2026, nearly a 5 percent increase from 2025, a rise similar in size to the one between 2024 and 2025. The agency expects the steepest increases along the East Coast, with the Mid-Atlantic, East North Central, and South Atlantic regions averaging 5 to 7 percent annual growth from 2024 through 2027, before national growth slows to roughly 2 percent in 2027. The distance between a $208 million average filing worth 13.2 percent and a national price trend closer to 5 percent is the distance between what a utility asks a commission to approve and what commissions, and the broader market, actually deliver.
For a Fixed Income, LIHEAP Is the Backstop, Not a Guarantee
Utility bills sit differently on a household budget once income stops rising with wages. A working household facing a rate increase can offset it with overtime pay or a raise; a retiree drawing a Social Security check adjusted once a year by the annual cost-of-living increase cannot. Heating and cooling costs also cannot be deferred the way a discretionary purchase can, which is what makes even an approved fraction of a requested increase land harder on a fixed income than on a paycheck that grows with inflation.
The federal government’s response for that situation is the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, run by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families. LIHEAP funds help eligible households pay heating and cooling bills, prevent shutoffs, and reconnect service that has already been cut off; grant recipients set their own income limits but must cap them at no more than 150 percent of the federal poverty guidelines. The program is administered state by state, and through tribal and territorial grant recipients, rather than paid out by Washington directly, and HHS states plainly that LIHEAP never charges a fee and never awards a grant over the phone. Households can find their state’s program through energyhelp.us or the National Energy Assistance Referral line, listed by the agency as 1-866-674-6327. None of that changes whether a state commission grants a utility’s 13.2 percent request in whole, in part, or not at all; that decision plays out case by case, over months, in front of public utility commissions rather than on any single bill.
This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
