Which U.S. metro uses the most electricity?

New York–Newark–Jersey City (NY) tops the list at roughly 144.8 TWh/year of electricity demand, based on state-weighted EIA retail-sales data.

How is metro-level demand calculated?

We multiply each metro's primary-state per-capita electricity consumption (from the EIA retail-sales API) by the metro's V2025 Census population. This is a sound approximation when a metro's primary state matches its grid territory, which is the case for nearly all 25 in this list.

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Which U.S. metros use the most electricity?

The top three metros — New York–Newark–Jersey City (144.8 TWh/yr), Chicago–Naperville–Elgin (108.3 TWh/yr), and Washington–Arlington–Alexandria (108.3 TWh/yr) — together consume roughly 361 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.

#	Metro	TWh / year	Population	MWh / person
1	New York–Newark–Jersey City(NY)	144.8	20,112,448	7.2
2	Chicago–Naperville–Elgin(IL)	108.3	9,434,123	11.5
3	Washington–Arlington–Alexandria(DC)	108.3	6,465,724	16.7
4	Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington(TX)	93.0	8,477,157	11.0
5	Los Angeles–Long Beach–Anaheim(CA)	87.5	12,844,441	6.8
6	Houston–Pasadena–The Woodlands(TX)	86.7	7,904,627	11.0
7	Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell(GA)	78.8	6,482,182	12.2
8	Philadelphia–Camden–Wilmington(PA)	72.9	6,329,118	11.5
9	Miami–Fort Lauderdale–West Palm Beach(FL)	61.6	6,391,072	9.6
10	Boston–Cambridge–Newton(MA)	60.4	5,034,221	12.0
11	Phoenix–Mesa–Chandler(AZ)	52.3	5,228,938	10.0
12	Detroit–Warren–Dearborn(MI)	45.9	4,390,913	10.4
13	Seattle–Tacoma–Bellevue(WA)	45.4	4,161,883	10.9
14	Minneapolis–St. Paul–Bloomington(MN)	44.7	3,790,295	11.8
15	St. Louis(MO)	37.9	2,814,421	13.5
16	Charlotte–Concord–Gastonia(NC)	34.1	2,938,830	11.6
17	Tampa–St. Petersburg–Clearwater(FL)	33.0	3,418,895	9.6
18	Riverside–San Bernardino–Ontario(CA)	32.5	4,769,007	6.8
19	San Francisco–Oakland–Fremont(CA)	31.5	4,630,041	6.8
20	San Antonio–New Braunfels(TX)	30.9	2,813,140	11.0
21	Baltimore–Columbia–Towson(MD)	28.9	2,857,781	10.1
22	Austin–Round Rock–San Marcos(TX)	28.7	2,620,945	11.0
23	Orlando–Kissimmee–Sanford(FL)	28.5	2,957,672	9.6
24	Denver–Aurora–Centennial(CO)	26.8	3,092,037	8.7
25	San Diego–Chula Vista–Carlsbad(CA)	22.4	3,282,248	6.8

How we ranked these

Each metro's annual demand is the latest available state-level retail-sales total from EIA, scaled by the ratio of metro population to state population (from U.S. Census Vintage 2025). For metros that cross state lines, we use the primary state. Per-capita figures are for context — they reflect both residential, commercial, and industrial load mixed together. See full methodology.

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