ConEd Time-of-Use Rates: A Plain-English Guide to Saving

If you’re a Con Edison customer in New York City or Westchester, you can opt into a residential time-of-use rate — and its shape is unusual enough that it’s worth understanding before you do. Unlike California’s tidy 4–9 p.m. peak, ConEd’s expensive window is long, and summer afternoons carry an extra sting. Get your usage into the right hours and the plan pays off; ignore it and it can cost more than a flat rate.

This guide breaks down how ConEd’s time-of-use rate works, where the savings are, and the two ways to capture them.

How ConEd time-of-use pricing works

ConEd splits the day into time periods, and the price per kilowatt-hour depends on when you use power. The approximate summer all-in prices below are drawn from ConEd’s 2026 residential time-of-use structure. Confirm your current numbers on ConEd’s rate page, because the supply portion of your bill tracks the wholesale market (NYISO) and resets month to month:

• Off-peak — midnight to 8 a.m. The cheapest hours, around 26¢/kWh.
• Peak — 8 a.m. to midnight. The standard daytime-and-evening rate, around 43¢/kWh.
• Summer super-peak — 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., June through September. The steepest window by far, around 70¢/kWh.

Two things make ConEd’s structure distinctive:

• The peak is long. It runs from 8 a.m. all the way to midnight — sixteen hours. That means “off-peak” is essentially just the overnight window. Where a California plan gives you all day plus overnight as cheap hours, ConEd gives you only the small hours of the morning.
• Summer afternoons carry a super-peak. From 2 to 6 p.m. in summer, the price jumps to roughly two-and-a-half times the peak rate and nearly three times the overnight rate. Avoiding those four hours is the single biggest win on the plan.

Because the supply charge tracks the NYISO market and updates monthly, the exact numbers drift over the year — but the shape (cheap overnight, expensive all day, brutal summer afternoons) holds steady.

Where the savings are

With off-peak limited to overnight, the play is to push as much flexible load as you can into the small hours, and above all to stay out of the 2–6 p.m. summer super-peak:

• EV charging overnight. A full charge is usually a home’s single biggest load, and moving it from a summer afternoon into the overnight window is the difference between paying around 70¢ and around 26¢ for the same energy.
• Cooling your home. New York’s hottest hours land right on the 2–6 p.m. super-peak. If your AC does most of its work before 2 p.m. and the apartment coasts through the afternoon, you sidestep the most expensive power of the day.
• Water heating, laundry, and the dishwasher shifted to overnight — smaller individually, but easy wins on a plan where daytime is expensive for sixteen hours straight.

You’re not using less energy. You’re using it when it’s cheap — which, on ConEd, mostly means overnight.

How to capture it: by hand vs. automatically

By hand, you’d pre-cool before 2 p.m. on hot summer days, set the EV charger to run overnight, and keep big appliances out of the afternoon. It works, but the long peak makes it a constant discipline, and the right amount of pre-cooling depends on the day’s weather. Over-cool a mild afternoon and you waste money; under-prepare a hot one and you pay super-peak rates anyway.

Automatically removes the guesswork. Hungry Machines generates a fresh schedule for your HVAC, EV charger, water heater, and battery each night. It weighs ConEd’s rate structure, the next day’s forecast, and a custom model of how your home holds temperature, then pre-cools just enough to coast through the 2–6 p.m. super-peak and times your EV and water heater for the cheap overnight hours. You set the comfort and charge limits; it does the scheduling.

For homes with an EV or central AC, that typically means real savings on the summer bill with no change in comfort.

Common questions

Is ConEd’s time-of-use rate worth it?

It depends on how much of your usage you can move overnight and out of the summer super-peak. If you have an EV, central air, or an electric water heater, the 2–6 p.m. summer super-peak is steep enough that shifting those loads pays off. If your usage is small and fixed, a standard rate may be simpler.

ConEd’s shape is unusual, and it changes the calculation. The peak runs 8 a.m. to midnight — sixteen hours — so “off-peak” is essentially the overnight window alone. Where a California plan hands you all day plus overnight as cheap hours, ConEd hands you only the small hours.

That makes overnight-shiftable load the deciding factor. An EV charging at 2 a.m. is close to an ideal fit; a dishwasher you would rather run after dinner is not. Most customers can switch plans once a year, so it is worth comparing against a month of your own hourly data rather than a rule of thumb.

Why is ConEd’s peak so long?

Because New York City’s demand curve is genuinely different. Load stays high from morning through late evening — a dense city of offices, apartments and transit does not empty out at 5 p.m. the way a suburban service territory does — so ConEd’s peak reflects that with a single long window rather than California’s short evening spike.

California’s 4–9 p.m. peak exists because enormous midday solar generation collapses at sunset, producing a steep ramp. New York has far less solar on its grid, so its expensive hours track raw demand instead of a solar cliff.

The practical upshot is that the strategy inverts. In California you pre-cool during a cheap midday and coast through a five-hour evening. In New York the cheap window is overnight, so the play is to do everything you can while the city sleeps, and to plan hardest around the 2–6 p.m. summer super-peak.

What about the supply charge that changes every month?

ConEd’s supply price tracks the wholesale NYISO market and resets monthly, so your exact per-kWh numbers move across the year. That is genuinely awkward if you are trying to hand-tune a schedule, because the arithmetic you did in March is wrong by July.

The shape, though, doesn’t move. Overnight stays cheapest, the daytime peak stays expensive, and the summer afternoon super-peak stays the most expensive block of all. Whatever the month’s supply rate turns out to be, it scales the whole curve rather than reordering it — so the hours you want to avoid are the same hours.

That is why automation handles this well and manual scheduling handles it poorly. A schedule that reads the current numbers each night optimises against whatever this month’s rate actually is, without anyone having to notice that it changed.

Do I need an EV to benefit?

No. EV charging is the biggest single win, because it is a large load that has to happen but almost never has to happen now — moving a nightly charge into the overnight off-peak is the clearest saving available on this rate.

But pre-cooling an apartment or house ahead of the 2–6 p.m. summer super-peak captures meaningful savings on its own, and it needs no new hardware. The building is already a thermal battery: cool it while power is cheaper and it coasts through the expensive block. An electric water heater does the same with hot water.

ConEd’s sixteen-hour peak does make this harder than in California, since there is no cheap midday to pre-cool into. The realistic New York play is to lean on the overnight window and treat the summer super-peak as the one block worth planning hardest around.

Next steps

On a plan where the price changes every hour rather than in fixed blocks — like some Illinois utilities — see how ComEd’s hourly pricing works. In California, the same time-of-use playbook applies to PG&E, SDG&E, and SCE. For the fundamentals, start with our time-of-use rates guide. For the software category itself — what it does, and what it can’t — see our guide to home energy management systems.

To stop watching the clock and let your home handle the timing, see how Hungry Machines works and sign up now.

Still unsure when to run things? See the cheapest time to run your appliances and whether peak rates apply on weekends.