The 25-year cost of doing nothing about your power bill

Doing nothing feels free. No contract, no salesperson, no decision. But “keep paying whatever the utility charges” is a plan too — it’s just the only plan you never see priced out. So let’s price it out.

This isn’t a scare piece. Every number below is either government price data, a public rate-case filing, or arithmetic you can redo on the back of your own bill. Where we use an example, we label it an example.

What the last five years actually did

Start with the record, because the record is the argument. Per Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI data, U.S. residential electricity prices rose nearly 40% from 2021 through 2025. In 2025 alone, electricity rose about 7% and piped utility gas about 11%.

Nobody asked your opinion on any of it. Rate cases are decided between utilities and regulators; your role in the process is to receive the new bill. That’s not an outrage claim — it’s just how the system works, and it’s worth being clear-eyed about who holds the pen on your biggest recurring home expense.

What’s already in the pipeline

The next stretch is already being written. According to PowerLines, a nonprofit that tracks utility rate cases, electric and gas utilities requested nearly $31 billion in rate increases in 2025 — more than double the $15 billion requested in 2024, across 83 tracked cases affecting roughly 81 million Americans.

Two honest caveats. Those are requestedincreases, not approved ones — regulators routinely pare requests down, and roughly half were still pending going into 2026. But the direction and the doubling are the point: the requests keep coming, and the trend of the last five years didn’t happen by accident.

Run your own 25-year number

Here’s the exercise most people never do. Take your average monthly electric bill and play it forward 25 years — the same horizon a solar quote uses.

Worked example — illustrative arithmetic, not a forecast. Say your bill averages $200 a month, or $2,400 a year:

• If rates never rise again: $2,400 × 25 years = $60,000. That’s the floor — the best case for doing nothing.
• If rates rise 3% a year — well below the pace of the last five years — the 25-year total compounds to roughly $87,500.
• If rates rise 5% a year, still under the recent pace, the total runs to roughly $114,500.

Notice what’s missing from all three lines: an asset. After 25 years and somewhere between $60,000 and $115,000, you own nothing, your rate is whatever it is that year, and the meter is still running. Rent, in other words — with a landlord who sets the price after you’ve moved in.

Why we frame it as a loss

You’ll notice this article talks about what doing nothing costs, not what switching saves. That’s deliberate, and we’d rather tell you why than hope you don’t notice: people weigh losses more heavily than gains, and the loss here is real. The money leaves your account either way. The only question is whether it buys 25 years of rate increases or a fixed number and an asset on your roof.

What we won’t do is inflate the loss to rush you. No fake deadlines, no “prices double next month.” The rate history is dramatic enough without embellishment — and if the math for your house says doing nothing actually is the right move, we’ll tell you that too.

What doing something looks like

For most homes, the alternative worth pricing is a fixed solar payment — the subject of our solar page and the honest-math walkthrough in “Does solar actually beat your power bill?” The process is the same either way:

• Your last 12 months of real usage, not a template.
• Both 25-year totals side by side — the utility trajectory and the fixed payment — in writing.
• The Pencil Promise: if solar doesn’t beat your bill, we say so and walk. The numbers stay with you.

The exercise costs nothing and ends the guessing either way. Get your two numbers — it starts with a ZIP code.

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI — electricity up nearly 40% 2021–2025, ~7% in 2025; utility piped gas ~11% in 2025. PowerLines 2025 utility rate-case review — nearly $31B in requested increases across 83 tracked cases vs. $15B in 2024 (requested, not all approved). The 25-year projections above are labeled illustrative arithmetic, not forecasts.