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Tariff data · 2026-08-27
← Austin Energy · TX

Residential

Does the hour matter on Residential? No — one rate, every hour of the year.

  • off-peak10.56¢

There is no peak and no off-peak here: the price per kilowatt-hour at 3am is the same as at 6pm, on a Sunday as on a Tuesday, in July as in January, though the price does step up once a month’s use passes the tier threshold shown below. Moving laundry or car charging to another time of day will not change this bill by a cent. What does change it is how much you use, and the fixed charge below, which you pay whether you use anything or not.

What does Residential cost a year?

HouseholdUsesA monthPer yearWorks out to
Apartment

One or two people, no central air, no electric heat

4,866 kWh$59$70714.5¢ / kWh
Family home

Three or four people with central air conditioning

9,453 kWh$104$1,24913.2¢ / kWh
Home with an EV

Same house, plus an electric car charging overnight

13,103 kWh$143$1,71713.1¢ / kWh

Estimates, not quotes. We run three made-up but realistic households through this tariff hour by hour for a full year — including the way air conditioning loads the afternoon and an EV loads the small hours. Your own bill depends on when you actually use electricity, which is exactly the thing a per-kWh number hides.

What you actually pay

PeriodRateApplies when
off-peak10.56¢ up to 300 kWh11.59¢ up to 900 kWh13.98¢ up to 2000 kWh17.34¢midnight–midnight

Plus a fixed charge of $15 per month.

Should you be on Residential?

One rate, every hour of the year. That makes this plan predictable and nothing else: there is no cheap window to move laundry or car charging into, and no penalty for running the oven at six in the evening. Predictability is worth something if your schedule is not yours to control — but if it is, a flat rate is the one structure that guarantees you cannot benefit from it.

There is a usage cliff to watch. The first 2000 kWh each month are billed at 14.0¢; past that line the rate steps up to 17.3¢ — 24% more for every unit after. The last kilowatt-hour of a heavy month is the expensive one, which is why cutting a little off a big month saves more than cutting the same amount off a small one.

Before a single kilowatt-hour moves, this plan charges $180 a year in fixed fees. On the apartment above that is 25% of the whole bill; on the house with a car charging in it, 10%. Fixed charges are invisible in a cents-per-kWh comparison and they punish small users hardest — if you use very little electricity, the headline rate is the least important number on this page.

Expect the bill to move with the calendar. The same family home costs about $144 in July and $81 in February — a $63 spread driven by heating and cooling far more than by anything you chose. Budget against the July figure, not the average, and a summer bill stops being a surprise.

How it compares to Austin Energy’s other plans

Measured against the other residential plans this utility files, a family home lands 2nd cheapest of 3. The cheapest option, Residential - Outside Austin, would run about $51 a year less.

Other Austin Energy plans

Who can be on Austin Energy’s Residential?

Eligibility is not our judgement — it is written into the tariff Austin Energy filed. This is what that document says:

Applies to all electric service for domestic purposes in each individual metered residence, apartment unit, mobile home, or other dwelling unit whose point of delivery is at secondary voltage less than 12,470 volts nominal line to line located within the limits of Austin Energy's service territory.

Quoted from the filed tariff. Your utility decides eligibility, not us; check with them before you switch.

If this is new to you

Where this comes from

Effective
2025-05-01

the date this tariff took effect

Covers
delivery + supply

the ZIP-code service map lists this territory as bundled, so the utility sells delivery and supply together

Enrollment
open to new customers

Tariff document: https://austinenergy.com/-/media/project/websites/shared/pdfs/rates/tariff.pdf?rev=382867d1201343b78d6a940e4ef471b5&hash=51DA5A20032359FB44C3F61BFB5E7F5E