Run the dishwasher at 6 p.m. and it might cost you twice as much as running the exact same load after midnight. Not because the machine changed, but because of when you pressed start. That’s the whole idea behind time-of-use electric rates, and in 2026 they’re showing up on more residential bills than ever.
For households that can shift their biggest power draws to off-peak hours, the savings are real. For households that can’t, a time-of-use plan can quietly cost more than the flat rate it replaced. Here’s how the pricing works, what a real utility’s numbers look like, and how to tell which kind of household you are.
How time-of-use pricing works
On a traditional flat rate, a kilowatt-hour costs the same at 5 p.m. on a scorching weekday as it does at 3 a.m. on a Sunday. But it doesn’t cost your utility the same. Demand peaks in the late afternoon and early evening, when everyone gets home, cooks dinner and cranks the air conditioning, and utilities have to buy or generate their most expensive power to cover those hours.
Time-of-use (TOU) rates pass that reality through to your bill. The Department of Energy describes the standard shape of these plans: an afternoon or evening peak period, cheap overnight off-peak hours, and “shoulder” pricing in between. Prices move at set times every day, so you always know the schedule in advance. Most utilities now offer at least one time-varying option, and state regulators publish plain-English guides to them; Colorado’s Public Utilities Commission has a good example.
What the numbers look like at a real utility
Seattle City Light opened a time-of-use rate to residential customers in May 2026, and its price sheet shows the pattern cleanly. Inside Seattle, peak electricity, weekdays and Saturdays from 5 to 9 p.m., costs 16.10 cents per kilowatt-hour. Off-peak power, from midnight to 6 a.m., costs 8.05 cents, exactly half. The remaining hours are billed at a mid-peak price in between, and Sundays and holidays skip peak pricing altogether.
That two-to-one spread between peak and off-peak is common across the country, and some utilities stretch it further in summer. The specific cents-per-kilowatt-hour will differ where you live, but the logic travels: the same appliance, run at a different hour, is billed at a very different price.
Where the savings actually come from
Here’s the honest part: most of your electricity use doesn’t care what time it is. The refrigerator runs all day. Lights come on when it’s dark. TOU savings come almost entirely from the handful of loads that are both large and movable:…