Do Peak Electricity Rates Apply on Weekends? PG&E, SDG&E, SCE and ConEd
On most US time-of-use plans, peak rates do apply at weekends. SDG&E and all three SCE residential plans charge their 4–9 p.m. on-peak rate seven days a week. A Saturday at 6 p.m. is priced exactly like a Tuesday at 6 p.m.
The main exception is PG&E’s E-TOU-D, whose 5–8 p.m. peak runs on weekdays only.
This matters because the assumption runs the other way. Most people expect weekends to be cheap, plan their laundry and EV charging accordingly, and pay peak rates for it — on SDG&E, 20 kWh of Saturday-evening load costs about $11.60 instead of about $5.40.
The answer, utility by utility
| Utility / plan | Peak window | Weekends |
|---|---|---|
| PG&E E-TOU-C | 4–9 p.m. | Peak applies |
| PG&E E-TOU-D | 5–8 p.m. | Off-peak — the exception |
| PG&E E-ELEC / EV2-A | 4–9 p.m. | Peak applies |
| PG&E EV-B | 2–9 p.m. | Peak applies |
| SDG&E (all standard plans) | 4–9 p.m. | Peak applies |
| SCE TOU-D-4-9PM | 4–9 p.m. | Peak applies |
| SCE TOU-D-5-8PM | 5–8 p.m. | Peak applies |
| SCE TOU-D-PRIME | 4–9 p.m. | Peak applies |
| ComEd Hourly Pricing | None | No peak window exists |
| Ameren Power Smart Pricing | None | No peak window exists |
ConEd is a different shape again — its peak runs 8 a.m. to midnight, sixteen hours, with a summer super-peak from 2 to 6 p.m. Its weekend treatment depends on your service classification, so check your own tariff sheet rather than generalising from California.
Why the exception is not free
E-TOU-D looks like the obvious winner until you read the other column. Its weekday peak is about 48¢/kWh against E-TOU-C’s 44¢, and its off-peak rate is slightly higher too. PG&E is not giving away two cheap days; it is selling them to you at the price of more expensive weekday evenings.
So the plan is a bet on the shape of your week:
- Weekend-heavy household — laundry, batch cooking, EV charging and guests at weekends, quiet weekday evenings. E-TOU-D wins. Twenty kWh of Saturday load costs about $6.80 off-peak on E-TOU-D against about $8.80 in an E-TOU-C peak.
- Flat household — usage spread evenly, someone home every evening. E-TOU-C usually wins, because you pay E-TOU-D’s steeper weekday peak five days a week for a weekend benefit you barely use.
There is a reliable way to settle it rather than guess. Download a month of hourly usage data from your PG&E account, total your weekend 5–8 p.m. consumption, and compare it against your weekday 5–8 p.m. consumption. If the weekend number is not substantially larger, the exemption is not worth the weekday premium.
Why most utilities charge peak at weekends
It is worth understanding the reasoning, because it tells you what to expect as more plans are introduced.
Time-of-use pricing exists to reflect what electricity actually costs to supply at a given moment. In California the expensive hours are driven by the evening solar ramp: enormous midday solar generation falls away around sunset just as households come home and switch things on. That ramp happens on a Saturday exactly as it does on a Wednesday — the sun sets at the weekend too.
Where weekday and weekend genuinely differ is in commercial and industrial demand, which does drop at weekends. On a fixed time-of-use plan that difference is averaged away into a single set of blocks. On an hourly-priced plan it shows up directly, which is why weekend afternoons are often cheaper than weekday ones on ComEd and Ameren.
That is the honest summary: fixed plans mostly ignore the weekend because the physics that drives their peak does not care what day it is, and market-priced plans reflect it automatically without needing a rule.
What to do about it
Check which plan you are actually on. It is printed on your bill. This is the single most common gap — people optimise against a plan they were moved off two years ago.
If peak applies at weekends, treat Saturday like Tuesday. The same schedule works, which is genuinely convenient: one set of habits, seven days a week. Keep the dryer, dishwasher and EV charging out of 4–9 p.m. and the arithmetic takes care of itself.
If you are on E-TOU-D, use the weekends properly. Batch the laundry, run the dishwasher, do the big EV top-up on Saturday. You are paying for those hours in your weekday rate, so not using them is the worst of both.
On hourly-priced plans, read the curve instead of the calendar. Tomorrow’s prices are published the afternoon before. The cheapest weekend hour and the cheapest weekday hour are found the same way, and there is no shortcut in either case.
The general point is that “weekends are cheap” is a habit inherited from older rate structures, and on most modern plans it is simply false. It costs about $6 a weekend on SDG&E — small enough that nobody notices it on a bill, and steady enough that it adds up to real money over a year.
Common questions
Do peak electricity rates apply on weekends?
On most US time-of-use plans, yes. SDG&E charges its 4–9 p.m. on-peak rate every day of the week, and all three SCE residential plans — TOU-D-4-9PM, TOU-D-5-8PM and TOU-D-PRIME — do the same. A Saturday at 6 p.m. is priced exactly like a Tuesday at 6 p.m.
The significant exception is PG&E’s E-TOU-D, whose 5–8 p.m. peak runs on weekdays only, leaving Saturday and Sunday entirely off-peak. Every other PG&E plan, including E-TOU-C, E-ELEC, EV2-A and EV-B, applies its peak seven days a week. On hourly-priced plans such as ComEd Hourly Pricing and Ameren Power Smart Pricing the question does not apply at all, because there is no fixed peak window — every hour is priced by the wholesale market.
Which utilities exempt weekends from peak rates?
Among the major US utilities covered here, PG&E’s E-TOU-D is the clearest residential example: its peak runs 5–8 p.m. on weekdays only and weekends price entirely off-peak. SDG&E offers no weekend-exempt residential time-of-use plan, and neither does SCE across TOU-D-4-9PM, TOU-D-5-8PM or TOU-D-PRIME. ConEd’s structure is different again, with a long 8 a.m. to midnight peak, so check your specific service classification.
It is worth noting that a weekend exemption is never free — E-TOU-D charges a higher weekday peak, around 48¢/kWh against E-TOU-C’s 44¢, in exchange for the two cheap days. Whether that trade favours you depends entirely on how your household’s usage is distributed across the week.
Should I choose a plan with off-peak weekends?
Only if your usage is genuinely weekend-heavy, and you should check rather than assume. PG&E’s E-TOU-D buys you off-peak Saturdays and Sundays by charging a steeper weekday peak, so the trade pays off if you do laundry, cooking and EV charging at weekends and keep weekday evenings light.
If your consumption is flat across the week, you pay the higher weekday peak for a benefit you never collect, and E-TOU-C’s lower peak price is usually better. The reliable way to decide is to download a month of hourly usage data from your utility account and total your weekend evening consumption against your weekday evening consumption. The best plan is a fact about your household, not about the plan.
Are electricity rates cheaper on holidays?
Sometimes, but it varies by utility and it is not safe to assume. Some tariffs treat designated holidays as off-peak in the same way they treat weekends, while others make no distinction at all and bill a holiday exactly like any other weekday. The rule is generally written into the tariff sheet rather than advertised, so the reliable answer comes from your own plan’s documentation rather than from a general rule.
On hourly-priced plans the question resolves itself differently: holidays often are cheaper, not because of any calendar rule but because commercial and industrial demand falls, which pushes the wholesale price down in exactly the same way it does at weekends.
Next steps
Check your own utility’s peak windows and per-kWh numbers: PG&E, SDG&E, SCE, ConEd, ComEd, Ameren.
If the answer is “peak applies every day,” the follow-up question is when the cheapest hours actually are — and how a home energy management system keeps to them without anyone remembering to.