Fact Brief: Do Santa Clara residents pay a fraction of what San Jose residents pay for electricity?

Santa Clara residents get their electricity from Silicon Valley Power, a city-owned utility, and spend significantly less on power than PG&E customers in San Jose.

According to Silicon Valley Power, the average rate for a residential user is $0.182 per kilowatt-hour (kWh), meaning a customer consuming 411 kWh a month would be billed about $75. A PG&E customer with the same energy usage enrolled in a time-of-use plan at peak hours — as of December 2025 — would pay about $201 a month at the company’s rate of $0.48974 kWh — more than double the cost of Silicon Valley Power.

San Jose has explored creating its own municipal electric utility, but a 2025 partnership between the city and PG&E to attract data centers to Silicon Valley has halted that pursuit.