Average kWh per Day and per Month in California, and How to Find Yours

Your own figure is one division. Take the total kWh on your bill, divide it by the number of days in the billing period, and that is your kWh per day; the table below shows what a month at that level costs at each big utility's average rate. For scale, the average California home uses about 503 kWh a month, or about 16.5 kWh a day. Where you land against that depends on climate, home size, heating fuel and whether you charge an EV.

Knowing your kWh is the fastest way to tell a usage problem from a price problem, and it is the number a solar or battery proposal should start from. Prices per kWh at each utility are on the California utility rate tracker; this guide is about the kWh and what it costs you.

What is the average kWh usage per month in California?

503 kWh. EIA's 2024 residential table reports average monthly use of 503 kWh for California customers, against 863 kWh for the United States as a whole. Only Hawaii is lower. The biggest users were Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, at roughly 1,150 to 1,200 kWh a month, more than twice California's figure.

One catch with any monthly figure: a billing period is not a calendar month. PG&E's bill glossary explains that charges are built from the number of days in your period, so multiply a daily figure by the day count printed on the bill rather than by 30. LADWP bills residential customers every two months, so its periods run about 60 days and its kWh totals look roughly twice as large as a monthly bill from an investor-owned utility.

How to find your own kWh per day and per month

Every California bill shows two numbers you need: total kWh and the number of days in the billing period. Divide the first by the second for your kWh per day. A 30-day bill for 450 kWh is 15 kWh a day; a 33-day bill for the same 450 kWh is about 13.6. To go back the other way, multiply your kWh per day by the day count printed on your own bill rather than by 30, which is how the utility builds the charge and how the baseline allowances further down are applied. Do it for the same month last year before you decide your usage went up.

A single day is noisy, and a single month is seasonal. For sizing solar or a battery, use a full year: add up twelve months of kWh, divide by 12 for the monthly average and by 365 for the daily one. Utility online accounts show usage history; LADWP's, for example, has an Analyze My Usage chart.

Daily, monthly and annual use by type of home

EIA's Residential Energy Consumption Survey breaks usage down by home type and household size, but only by region, not by state. The figures below are for the West census region, which includes hotter Arizona and Nevada as well as California, from the 2020 survey, the latest with usage data. EIA says the 2024 survey's usage tables will come out in spring 2027. Use the table to convert between the three framings: the annual column is what EIA publishes, and the monthly and daily columns divide it by 12 and by 365.

A statewide average also hides a wide spread inside California: the baseline tables below give SCE's hottest region three to four times the summer allowance of its cool regions.

Baseline allowances: the kWh billed at the lowest price

California's investor-owned utilities give every home a baseline allowance, a daily amount of electricity billed at the lowest residential price. PG&E's bill glossary says the CPUC bases it on average use in each baseline territory. Your territory or region is printed on your bill. Multiply the daily figure by the days in your billing period to get your monthly allowance.

Compare these with the 16.5 kWh statewide daily average and you can see why many homes spend part of each month above baseline. On SCE's tiered plan, the price as of June 1, 2026 was 30 cents per kWh up to baseline and 40 cents above it. On PG&E's tiered E-1 plan from March 1, 2026, it was 32.561 cents and 40.702 cents. Medical Baseline customers get more: SCE adds 16.5 kWh a day. Our PG&E tier rates guide shows the tier math on a real bill.

What time of day are PG&E rates the lowest?

On time-of-use plans, when you use the kWh matters as much as how many. PG&E's lowest-priced hours depend on the plan you are on:

For how those plans compare in winter and who qualifies for EV2-A and E-ELEC, see PG&E time-of-use rates and peak hours. LADWP and SMUD use different hours; see the LADWP rate guide for Los Angeles.

Turning your kWh into a system size

Solar is sized against a year of kWh, not one bill. A home at the California average uses 6,036 kWh a year, which is EIA's 503 kWh a month times twelve. Add up your own twelve months and you have the number every proposal should be measured against.

From there the arithmetic is one division. Take the annual production in kWh that a proposal assumes, divide it by your annual use, and that is the share of your usage the system is designed to cover. If a proposal does not state an annual production figure in kWh, you cannot do that division, and that is reason enough to ask for it in writing. The production assumption depends on roof pitch, orientation and shading, which is where how big a solar system a California home needs picks up.

Two things keep that number honest. First, the kWh you remove come off the top of the bill, so on a tiered plan they come off at the above-baseline price, which is the 40.702 cents on PG&E E-1 and 40 cents on SCE's tiered plan quoted above, not at an average rate. Second, on a time-of-use plan what matters is which hours the production lands in. Your daily kWh turns into a monthly bill in the average California utility bill guide. For backup, the question is how much of that daily use you need overnight, which is where battery sizing starts.

How much electricity California uses in a day, statewide

The California Energy Commission counts total system electric generation, in-state plants plus imports, at 278,338 gigawatt-hours in 2024. Over 366 days that is about 760 gigawatt-hours a day. It does not include power from rooftop solar used on site, which the commission estimated at 26,765 gigawatt-hours in 2024. Where that power comes from is covered in California's electricity sources.