Time-of-Use Electricity Rates, Explained — July 2026

How the peak/off-peak structure works

Most TOU plans define two or three windows — typically an on-peak afternoon-to-evening block on weekdays, sometimes a mid-peak shoulder window, and an off-peak block covering nights, early mornings and often weekends. The exact hours, the number of tiers, and the price ratio between them are set by your utility and vary widely; there is no national standard window to assume.

The reason utilities offer it connects directly to the capacity charge mechanism: capacity is priced to cover the grid's peak demand hour, so demand shaved off that peak reduces what the grid has to be built and paid to cover. A TOU rate is the utility passing part of that same incentive down to individual households — cheaper power when the grid has room, a premium when it does not.

Which loads are actually worth shifting

Shifting only pays off for loads that do not need a person awake or present to run. Ranked by monthly cost at the U.S. median state price of 16.09¢/kWh (EIA, July 2026) — the larger the number, the more a peak-vs-off-peak price gap is worth chasing for that load:

Costs shown are total monthly cost at typical use, not the savings from shifting — this site does not have a sourced peak/off-peak price ratio (it is set by your specific rate plan), so no shifting-savings figure is invented here. The ranking shows where to focus: the biggest bar has the most room to move. EV charging tops the list for households that have one, by a wide margin.

What does not belong on a shifting list: a refrigerator or freezer runs on its own cycle regardless of the clock, cooking and most hot-water use are tied to when people are actually home, and heating or cooling load is dictated by outdoor temperature, not convenience — you can pre-cool or pre-heat ahead of a peak window, but you cannot simply move the need for comfort to 2 a.m.

Whether TOU helps or hurts your own bill

TOU is not automatically a saving — it is a reshuffling, and reshuffling only helps if your usage pattern has room to move. A household that is out most of the day and runs the dishwasher, laundry and EV charging overnight is already shaped like an off-peak household, and TOU is close to a free saving for them. A household with someone home all day running air conditioning through the exact hours a utility defines as on-peak can end up paying more on TOU than on a flat rate, for the identical kilowatt-hours.

Before switching, most utilities let you model your actual usage pattern against the TOU schedule using your own interval data (from a smart meter) rather than guessing — ask for that comparison instead of accepting a plan on the strength of the off-peak rate alone. And check whether the plan is optional or a default: some utilities are moving TOU to default status with an opt-out, which reverses the burden of figuring this out.

Start from your own numbers

Enter your state and bill: the calculator shows where you stand against your state's average and which increases are already locked in — the baseline to compare any TOU offer against. Nothing you type is stored.

Keep going

• How much does it cost to charge an EV at home? — the single biggest shiftable load, in detail.
• How to lower your electric bill — the ordered playbook this guide's price lever complements.
• Deregulated vs. regulated states — TOU can come from your utility either way; this is what supplier choice adds on top.