Total electricity load across the 246 matched utilities has remained roughly flat at 1.9–2.0 trillion MWh since 2008, masking dramatically diverging trajectories at the utility level. Entergy Louisiana grew load by 117% — driven by LNG export terminal construction and petrochemical plant expansions along the Gulf Coast that added massive new industrial load. Appalachian Power lost 25% of its load as coal mines, steel mills, and manufacturing facilities closed across its Appalachian service territory.
The most analytically significant trend is the decline in residential MWh per customer — from 10.85 MWh per year in 2008 to 10.50 in 2024. This 3% decline in median per-customer consumption represents a structural shift in how residential customers use electricity. San Diego Gas & Electric's -44% per-customer decline is the extreme case — California's aggressive rooftop solar policies have pushed significant generation off-grid, reducing grid sales even as the number of customers grows.
Declining load has direct implications for rate design. When total MWh sales fall while fixed costs remain constant or grow, utilities must recover more fixed costs per kWh sold — driving rates higher, which in turn reduces consumption further. This dynamic, sometimes called the utility death spiral, is visible in the data for several California and Appalachian utilities where per-customer load is falling while per-kWh rates are rising.
| Utility | Total Load (TWh) | Res Load (TWh) | Res MWh/Customer | YoY Load Change | 2008→2024 Change | Res/Cust Change |
|---|
| Year | Value 1 | Value 2 |
|---|---|---|
| 2024 | — | — |
| 2023 | — | — |