New federal data shows that Maine had the biggest increase in residential electricity prices in the country over the last year. But state officials are criticizing the report, saying the numbers overstate what people pay here, though they acknowledge bills have climbed.

The data, published by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, shows that the price of a kilowatt-hour in Maine went up an eye-popping 36% from May 2024 to the same month this year, followed by Connecticut with a roughly 18% increase. Those figures, which have garnered attention in the national media, are based on “a pretty simple calculation,” said Chris Higginbotham, administration spokesperson: the revenue electric utilities bring in divided by the amount of electricity purchased.

“That means our average price includes the cost of generation, transmission and distribution costs, tariffs, fees, taxes, etc.,” Higginbotham said in an email. “So our data on average prices is not equivalent to average rates.”

Maine officials say that while electricity rates are up since last year, the climb has been more gradual than the 36% hike shown by revenue changes. Though individual state offices and power companies each offered slightly different figures, they were all within a few percentage points of each other.

Heather Sanborn, who represents ratepayers as the state’s public advocate, said she was unable to re-create the federal administration’s 36% increase using state-level price data, which is based on actual bills received by Mainers. Sanborn said she did not have data for May of both years, but she used data from June and noted that retail electricity rates did not change between the two months.

From June 2024 to June of this year, Central Maine Power Co. customers saw a 20.7% increase, while Versant customers saw rates go up 11.9% in the Bangor Hydro District and 15% in the Maine Public District, Sanborn said. The Governor’s Energy Office, meanwhile, estimated that monthly bills increased by about 10% from May 2024 to 2025 for customers of both utilities.

Marissa McKay, a Versant spokesperson, said monthly bills increased about 13% in the hydro district serving Greater Bangor and parts of the Downeast region, and about 16% in the public district serving northern Maine from May 2024 to 2025.

Dustin Wlodkowski, a spokesperson for CMP, did not provide a specific year-over-year change, but said the federal agency’s stated price increase was nearly 60% higher than the actual change for residential customers between May 2024 and 2025.

In a written statement, the Governor’s Energy Office said the federal data does not reflect actual prices paid by consumers and pointed to what it called issues in the fundamental analysis.

“Electricity usage, payments and prices in Maine change throughout the year, so comparing spending in May 2024 and May 2025 misses important trends,” the office said.

Also worth noting is that May 2024 represented a two-year low for electricity prices, according to the Energy Information Administration’s own metrics, Sanborn said.

Electricity prices bottomed out at just under 20.5 cents per kWh in April and May of last year, marking their lowest point since January 2022, when residential prices averaged about 18.3 cents per kWh, according to the federal data. The drop reflected a decline in natural gas prices, which lowered the standard offer rates for customers of Maine’s two largest utilities.

“They took the very lowest month for Maine and compared it to 12 months later,” Sanborn said on a Tuesday phone call. “It’s not to say that there aren’t affordability challenges in electricity. That is certainly the case.”

But, she said, conversations surrounding affordability need to be anchored in the reality of rates.

Following Press Herald inquiries to federal and state officials, Higginbotham, the EIA spokesperson, said his team planned to meet with state officials to discuss the differences in data.