It’s not your imagination – you have been paying more for electricity this year. Driven by large increases in the Northeast, U.S. residential electricity prices took their biggest leap in five years during the first six months of this year, the government said on Tuesday.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said pinpointing all the factors behind the 3.2 percent increase in the nationwide average residential price of electricity, to 12.3 cents per kilowatt hour, can be difficult in such a big, complex market. However, cascading impacts from the “polar vortex” get a big share of the blame.

The record-breaking cold spell in a large swath of the country drove up demand and prices for natural gas, an increasingly important source of