Utility report card: smart meters, time-based rates and efficiency programs

1. Smart meters: share of residential meters that are AMI

AMI is the two-way type of smart meter. U.S. median utility: 100%, and 505 of 803 utilities are at 100%, so the top of this list is a tie and is ordered by size. A low AMI share does not mean no automatic reading: many utilities read meters automatically with older AMR meters, shown in the next column. By type, median share (utilities): cooperative 100% (433); municipal 100% (198); investor owned 99% (139); political subdivision 100% (30).

Largest 25 utilities at 100%

Lowest 25

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Utilities with fewer than 10,000 residential meters are left out. Ties are ordered by the number of meters. A share over 100% in a filing is left blank.

2. Time-based pricing: who offers it and how many customers are on it

TOU is time-of-use; RTP real-time; VPP variable peak; CPP critical peak; CPR critical peak rebate. 286 of 890 utilities with 10,000+ residential customers report at least one residential program. 17 of the listed utilities show 100% enrolled, which usually means a time-of-use rate is the standard residential rate; EIA's count of enrolled customers is the utility's own.

Highest enrolled share, 25 utilities

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A utility that does not appear in EIA's dynamic-pricing sheet is counted as reporting no program; it may still have one it did not file. The state-level view is on the coverage ranking.

3. Efficiency programs: spending per customer

Customer incentives plus all other program costs reported for the year, over the utility's customers. 372 utilities with 10,000+ customers reported spending; median $17.5 per customer. Spending and savings are reported separately and may not describe the same programs, so read the two columns together.

Highest 25

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Savings are first-year energy savings from programs started in the reporting year. Utilities that reported no program are not in the table.

4. Demand response: peak demand actually cut

Demand response pays or asks customers to use less at peak times. 234 utilities with 10,000+ customers reported actual peak savings; median 75 watts per customer. Several of the highest are small cooperatives and public power districts, where one program with a few large customers weighs heavily.

Highest 25

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The four measures by state

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State smart-meter share adds the meters of utilities with 10,000+ residential meters. Spending and demand response are all reported amounts over all customers the state has in EIA's sales file.

Look up your utility

Choose your state and the company on your bill to see its four measures against the national median.

What this means for you

• With a smart meter your utility can see an outage and bill you by time of day. If your utility reports a low share, asking when meters will be replaced is a fair question.
• Time-of-use rates charge different prices at different hours. Ask the utility for your own past usage by hour before switching.
• Efficiency and demand-response programs often come with rebates or bill credits. If your utility spent little per customer, your state or a federal program may still offer help.
• These are reported counts, not quality scores; a utility can rank low on one list and high on another.

Method, sources and dates

Source. EIA, Form EIA-861 annual electric power industry report, data year 2024, file eia861_2024.zip, retrieved 2026-10-01. Sheets used: Reliability, Sales to Ultimate Customers, Advanced Meters, Dynamic Pricing, Demand Response, Energy Efficiency, Net Metering, Operational Data. EIA publishes the utilities' own filings; we add nothing to a utility's figure.

State figures. A state figure is the average of the utilities' published numbers, weighted by the customers each utility reported next to them. Nothing is estimated. Only utilities that follow the IEEE 1366 standard are counted: EIA's form has a second block for utilities that use another method, and the two do not measure the same thing, so they are never added together. No utility reports in both blocks.

When a state gets a figure. The utilities that report under IEEE 1366 must serve at least 60% of the customers EIA lists for the state and at least 100,000 customers. Otherwise the state page shows the utilities and the reason, and the state is left out of rankings. Utility ranking floor: 10,000 customers; below that one bad day moves the average too far.

With and without major events. The comparison uses only utilities that published both numbers. One utility, Nashville Electric Service (Tennessee), published an all-events SAIDI of 0.0 against 86.6 minutes without major events, which cannot both be right; its all-events figure is dropped and its without-events figure kept. 82 of 102 state figures match EIA's own State Totals sheet within 1%. The rest differ, the largest being Tennessee and Mississippi; we have not traced which utilities EIA counted there, and we do not use that sheet.

Report card definitions. Utilities that sell without owning meters (third-party sellers) are left out. Smart meter share is residential AMI meters over all residential meters; time-based pricing is the residential flags and enrolled counts in the dynamic-pricing sheet; efficiency spending is customer incentives plus other costs over customers; demand response is actual peak savings over customers. Floors: 10,000 residential customers or meters, 10,000 customers.

State CSV, utility CSV.