Time-of-Use (TOU) Electricity Rate -- My Stats

[eskudo12791]

Agreed, definitely look into it, but I'd also advice people not to sign up for a TOU plan blindly. TOU rates in VA are a joke. Our normal rate is about $0.126 / kwh (maybe a touch lower in winter, but not much). TOU rate gets as low as $0.101 / kwh during "super off peak" times in the summer (wow 2 cents less!), but then they nail you for up to $0.231 / kwh during peak summer hours!

I was looking forward to trying out a TOU rate schedule once Dominion finally upgraded my meter, but I am far better off with the standard rate. I'd blow through my savings with AC use, especially since I work from home. Not that I'm complaining about overall cheap power, but they are definitely not trying to incentivize EV charging in VA.

For Your Information! I looked yesterday, TOU with dominion would've saved me $11 this year.

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[mroe]

Jeebus. My OFF-peak rates are closer to $0.50/kwh.

I'm at least grandfathered on the EV2A plan with solar, but still painful. Fuck PG&E!

 

[bbonkk]

Bold statement from PNM, our New Mexico power provider but true ! I have the EV rate and it's 3 cents a kWh between 10PM and 5 AM. My cost is about 1 cent a mile to drive my R1S. I can drive 1,000 miles for about $10 of electricity. That's about 3 1/2 gallons at just under $3.00 per gallon, the current price for regular. How far can the non EV car drive on 3 1/2 gallons ?

 

[Morphine]

My Dear Commifornia Comrades... We love to pay our insane electricity rates to honor our Dear Great Leaders ?? ??

I personally only wish I could pay more

The rates these other states have make me dizzy...

 

[beatle]

For Your Information! I looked yesterday, TOU with dominion would've saved me $11 this year.

How did you calculate that?

 

[eskudo12791]

How did you calculate that?

If you go on the dominion website and look at your account. Usage, view and compare my rate. Compare/ change rates.

 

[beatle]

Ah, that's helpful for the future, but since I've only had my smart meter for a few months, it doesn't yet have the data to show me what it would be if I switched to the TOU schedule. They say it needs a full year of data to compare.

 

[ElGuano]

I'm at least grandfathered on the EV2A plan with solar, but still painful. Fuck PG&E!

I have real-time energy monitoring set up now in my main and subpanels, and have created a Google sheets with 200k row second-by-second load calc, and a 8000 row per-breaker model including scenarios for 1 and 2-EV charging across all the various PGE rates.

For me, the plan with the best rates is actually E-ELEC because the winter rates are all below $0.40 even during peak hours. But if I have 2 EVs and charge more at home, EV2-A wins out, so long as we make some changes to reduce peak usage during the summer.

All I know is that I'm getting reamed by the E-1 Tiered rate right now :/

 

[risingphoenix]

The Colorado XCEL rates are at least significantly improved from where they were last year when there was only a $0.01 gap between off peak and opt out in the summer.

You’re right that it doesn’t make sense for most people. I have two EV’s, a heat-pump water heater and heat pump hvac. All of which primarily operate in off-peak. And the TOU rates are only mildly beneficial to me.

Where CO TOU rates shine are when you have solar, particularly with a south or west facing roof. You shave a lot off your power bill even if you’re not fully offsetting your usage. Xcel’s method of net metering makes sure this isn’t a guaranteed win though.

Powerwalls FTW. "Selling" back full power walls down to 15% during peak hours in the summer gives me 2.8x value for my PV production. I'll essentially never have to pay a power bill over $20 for the time I live in this house. TOU works both ways if you have battery storage. Highly recommend.

 

[Chewy734]

Living in SoCal, whenever I see these utility rate threads, it makes me ?

 

[SyanVergio]

I grabbed my switch bonus pretty smoothly after using the referral code rob-gibbs, and the faster switching timeline made the whole thing painless. If you want a quick peek at how the process works or just want the code handy without digging around, I’ve kept it bookmarked on octopus-referral-code.co.uk, which made signing up a bit easier for me.

 

[mudito]

Late to the party, but I’m curious how these rates have worked out for you over time. Have you noticed real savings sticking to off-peak charging, or did the rebate program end up making the bigger difference? I’ve been debating switching plans and would love to hear if your numbers changed as seasons or usage shifted.

I live in Texas where I have Free Nights (really $0.00/kWh from 8pm to 6am) and I've been using this plan since 2017. During daytime is a steep $0.33/kWh so... steep. But we got used to it and my electric bill was always lower than my neighbor's. Now with two EVs (one since 2022 and 2nd one in 2024), bills are of course the same because charging schedules.

Finally, in late 2025 I installed my DYI whole-home battery backup system and my Electric bill is ~$30/month every month of the year since I peak-shave 20kWh a day using battery power


So... yeah, big fan of ToU here

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