Joel Hicks is a visiting assistant professor in the University of Oregon’s School of Planning, Public Policy and Management.
Electricity demand in the United States is rising at its fastest sustained pace in decades, utilities are seeking billions for grid upgrades and households are being asked to charge electric vehicles differently, shift appliance use and respond to dynamic rates.
But most consumers still cannot easily see their own electricity use in real time. That is no longer just a transparency problem. It is a consumer-protection and grid-governance failure.
As electricity prices become more unaffordable, Americans are being asked to absorb rising costs without basic tools to manage consumption. Electricity prices have now outpaced inflation in more than half of U.S. states in recent years, making power bills part of the broader cost-of-living crisis.
This is happening as Americans are electrifying their homes: Heat pumps outsold gas furnaces in 2025; EVs remain a meaningful share of new vehicle sales; and roughly half or more of U.S. households now own at least one smart home device.
Yet most Americans still cannot see their electricity usage in real time. This is a problem.
Access to real-time electricity data should be a basic consumer right. In nearly every other part of the economy, people can track what they use and respond immediately. Drivers see fuel levels and prices before filling up. Bank customers receive instant alerts when money leaves their accounts. Mobile phone users monitor data usage in real time.
Electricity remains one of the few major household expenses where consumption is largely invisible until weeks later. Utilities have the data; customers don’t. Smart meters measure electricity use every few minutes, but most households only see a monthly bill summarizing past behavior.
Behavioral science consistently shows that people respond to visible information. When feedback is immediate, people adjust their behavior. Energy use is no different.
When households can see how much electricity they are using, they can connect everyday actions — charging an electric vehicle, adjusting a thermostat or running appliances — to real costs.
Even small changes matter. Research on feedback programs routinely finds household electricity reductions of about 2-5%, without any external incentives. While this is modest for one home, it is significant across millions of customers.
This is why real-time energy data should be basic information consumers receive to manage one of their largest and fastest-growing expenses.
The infrastructure is in place. Over the past two decades, regulators approved the widespread deployment of smart meters, which record electricity use frequently and transmit the information to utilities. Roughly three-quarters of U.S. households now have smart meters installed, giving utilities detailed insight into household energy use, detecting outages faster, reading meters automatically and managing the grid more efficiently.
These are good developments, but with one exception. Millions of households now generate detailed energy data, but they cannot easily access it. In many states, utilities are not required to provide customers with simple tools to view their usage. Instead, access to information often depends on utility policies rather than consumer rights.
That was a policy choice. Regulators approved systems that collect detailed household energy data without requiring that customers be able to see it in a timely way.
Thankfully, fixing this problem does not require new technology and the infrastructure already exists. What is needed now is three-fold:
First, public utility commissions should require utilities to provide simple dashboards or mobile apps that display electricity usage in near real time for customers with smart meters. This is already happening in some places. For example, in Texas, customers can view detailed energy usage through a statewide portal that shows how much electricity they use throughout the day.
Second, regulators should require standardized data access so customers can choose to share their energy information with third-party services if they want. These services can help households reduce costs, automate energy savings and participate in programs that pay customers to use less electricity during peak demand. Regulators keep saying they want more flexible demand, but customers cannot play that role effectively if utilities keep their usage data at arm’s length.
Third, customers should be allowed to use their own internet connections or smart-home devices to access energy data. Many households already operate connected technologies such as smart thermostats, solar panels and electric vehicle chargers. Allowing these systems to communicate directly with smart meters would improve transparency and control without requiring new infrastructure.
This is all doable.
As electricity quickly becomes the central fuel of the modern economy, with private electric utilities investing more than $1 trillion over the next five years and policymakers encouraging households to electrify transportation and heating, the burden is falling on consumers to manage rising energy costs and use electricity more efficiently.
Utilities increasingly rely on demand response, flexible load programs and virtual power plants to manage rising electricity demand. But these strategies assume consumers can respond intelligently to energy signals. That becomes far more difficult when households cannot easily see their own electricity use in real time.
That expectation is reasonable only if households have access to the information they need.
That’s why real-time energy data should be basic consumer information. Again, the technology exists and the infrastructure is there. What is missing now is a clear requirement that customers can see their own electricity use — a no-brainer.
It’s past time we bring the electricity sector in line with modern expectations for transparency, accountability and consumer choice. Access to real-time energy data as a consumer right does that.
