It might not feel feel like fall, but now that it’s October, Fort Collins Utilities is again switching up its “peak hours” for billing.
Peak hours, when electricity costs three times as much as it does in nonpeak hours, are 5 to 9 p.m. weekdays starting Oct. 1. This lasts through April.
What is time-of-day pricing and why do we have it?
The city of Fort Collins has to pay more for the electricity it buys from Platte River Power Authority during the hours of the day electricity is in most demand, when people are more often at home and doing things like cooking and turning up their heat or air conditioner.
So in 2018, the city implemented time-of-day pricing as a way of passing on those costs to customers while incentivizing them to use less electricity during peak times.
City staff have said the intention of the new pricing system wasn’t to make more money. They anticipated that the city’s lower costs for wholesale power would offset reduced revenue from customers who used less electricity or changed the timing of their use.