PG&E Time-of-Use Rates: A Plain-English Guide to Saving

Most PG&E residential customers are on a time-of-use rate, which means the price you pay per kilowatt-hour changes depending on the time of day. If you can move some of your usage out of the expensive evening window, you pay less for the same energy. This guide breaks down PG&E’s main plans and shows the two ways to actually capture the savings.

How PG&E time-of-use pricing works

PG&E’s plans all share one idea: an expensive peak period in the evening, and cheaper energy the rest of the day. The plans differ in exactly when peak falls, how steep it is, and whether they carry a partial-peak “shoulder” price between off-peak and peak. The numbers below are the below-baseline summer prices effective March 1, 2026 (confirm your current numbers on PG&E’s rate plan pricing sheet, since they vary by baseline allowance and season):

• E-TOU-C — peak is 4–9 p.m. every day. Off-peak runs around 32¢/kWh and peak around 44¢.
• E-TOU-D — peak is 5–8 p.m. on weekdays only; weekends are entirely off-peak. Off-peak around 34¢, peak around 48¢.
• E-ELEC — the Electric Home plan, built for all-electric homes with a heat pump, EV, or battery. Off-peak (midnight–3 p.m.) around 33¢, a partial-peak shoulder (3–4 p.m. and 9 p.m.–midnight) around 39¢, and peak (4–9 p.m.) around 55¢. It also carries a fixed monthly Base Services Charge in exchange for lower per-kWh prices, so it pays off for larger all-electric loads.
• EV2-A — the standard EV plan. Off-peak (midnight–3 p.m.) around 23¢, partial-peak around 43¢, and peak (4–9 p.m.) around 54¢.
• EV-B — the older EV plan (closed to new whole-home enrollment in most cases, but still active for many households). Its peak is a wide 2–9 p.m. window at around 62¢, with partial-peak (7 a.m.–2 p.m. and 9–11 p.m.) around 38¢ and off-peak (11 p.m.–7 a.m.) around 26¢. The long peak makes automated load-shifting matter even more.

The pattern is the same everywhere: the grid is busiest in the early evening, so that’s when power costs the most.

Summer vs. winter: the prices shift twice a year

Every PG&E time-of-use plan runs two seasons, and the switch is automatic on your bill:

• Summer — June 1 through September 30. Peaks are at their highest, because air-conditioning across the state hits hardest on hot evenings.
• Winter — October 1 through May 31. Every plan drops, and the peak-to-off-peak gap narrows.

The winter discount is real. On E-ELEC, the 4–9 p.m. peak falls from about 55¢ in summer to about 32¢ in winter — and off-peak drops from 33¢ to 28¢. E-TOU-C peak goes from 44¢ to 32¢; EV2-A peak from 54¢ to 41¢; EV-B peak from 62¢ to 44¢. E-TOU-D is the one exception where the off-peak rate is slightly higher in winter (35¢ vs. 34¢) even as its peak falls from 48¢ to 39¢.

Two things follow. First, the shape of the day is flatter in winter, so the payoff from shifting a given load shrinks slightly, but it doesn’t disappear. Especially on the plans with a steep peak (E-ELEC, EV-B), it’s still worth automating year-round. Second, and more important: because summer and winter prices are different, the optimal schedule is different too. A pre-cool plan tuned for a 55¢ summer peak is over-aggressive against a 32¢ winter peak. Getting this right by hand means re-tuning twice a year; automation just uses whichever season’s prices apply on the day it’s scheduling.

Where the savings are

The savings come from shifting flexible loads out of peak and into the cheaper hours:

• EV charging. On EV2-A, charging a 40 kWh top-up during the midnight–3 p.m. off-peak instead of the 4–9 p.m. peak is roughly $9 versus $22 for the same charge. Set it and forget it, and that’s money saved every night.
• Cooling and heating. If your HVAC does most of its work before 4 p.m. and the house coasts through the evening, you move a large block of usage into off-peak.
• Water heating, laundry, dishwashing outside the peak window — small per-load, easy to automate.

You’re not necessarily using less energy. You’re using it when it’s cheap.

How to capture it: by hand vs. automatically

By hand, you’d pre-cool in the afternoon, schedule the EV charger to start late, and keep big appliances out of the 4–9 p.m. (or 5–8 p.m.) window. It works, but it’s a daily decision, and the right amount of pre-cooling depends on tomorrow’s weather. On a mild day you over-cool and waste money; on a hot one you under-prepare and pay 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 PG&E’s rate plan, the next day’s forecast, and a custom model of how your home actually holds temperature. It pre-cools just enough to coast through peak and times your EV and water heater for the cheapest hours. You set the comfort and charge limits; it does the scheduling.

For homes with an EV or central HVAC, that typically means 10–25% off the bill with no change in comfort.

Common questions

Which PG&E plan is best for an EV?

EV2-A is the current purpose-built plan — the overnight off-peak rate is among the lowest of the residential plans, which rewards charging while you sleep. The bigger your nightly charge, the more it matters. If you’re on the older EV-B, its off-peak rate is comparable but its peak stretches all the way from 2 to 9 p.m., so keeping the car (and other big loads) out of that seven-hour window is worth even more. And if your whole house is electric — heat pump plus EV plus maybe a battery — E-ELEC can beat both, since it trades a fixed monthly charge for lower per-kWh energy prices. Which one wins depends on your total usage; the honest answer is to compare on PG&E’s rate comparison tool.

Is E-TOU-D better because weekends are off-peak?

It can be, if your evenings are flexible on weekdays and you use a lot of power on weekends. The honest answer is that the “best” plan depends on your usage shape — and automation makes whichever plan you’re on perform closer to its best case.

Do I need solar to benefit?

No. Time-of-use savings come from when you use grid power, with or without solar. Solar changes the math, but load-shifting helps either way.

Next steps

In Southern California? The same playbook applies to SDG&E’s time-of-use rates. And if you’re on a plan where the price changes every hour rather than in fixed blocks, read how ComEd hourly pricing works.

To see the automatic version in action, check how Hungry Machines works and sign up now.