Public Building-TOU
Does the hour matter on Public Building-TOU? No — one rate, every hour of the year.
- off-peak7.17¢
There is no peak and no off-peak here: 7.17¢ per kilowatt-hour at 3am is the same as at 6pm, on a Sunday as on a Tuesday, in July as in January. 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 Public Building-TOU cost a year?
| Household | Uses | A month | Per year | Works out to |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apartment One or two people, no central air, no electric heat | 4,866 kWh | $69 | $829 | 17.0¢ / kWh |
| Family home Three or four people with central air conditioning | 9,453 kWh | $96 | $1,158 | 12.2¢ / kWh |
| Home with an EV Same house, plus an electric car charging overnight | 13,103 kWh | $118 | $1,420 | 10.8¢ / 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
| Period | Rate | Applies when |
|---|---|---|
| off-peak | 7.17¢ | midnight–midnight |
Plus a fixed charge of $40 per month.
Should you be on Public Building-TOU?
This plan bills a demand charge on top of the per-kWh rates: a fee tied to your single highest hour of the month. Two homes using the same total electricity can pay very different amounts if one of them runs the dryer, the oven, and the car charger at the same moment. We do not price demand charges yet, so treat every dollar figure on this page as a floor, not a total.
Before a single kilowatt-hour moves, this plan charges $480 a year in fixed fees. On the apartment above that is 58% of the whole bill; on the house with a car charging in it, 34%. 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 $119 in July and $83 in February — a $36 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.
Other Denton County Elec Coop plans
Who can be on Denton County Elec Coop’s Public Building-TOU?
Eligibility is not our judgement — it is written into the tariff Denton County Elec Coop filed. This is what that document says:
This optional Time-Of-Use rate is offered to Customers receiving or eligible to receive service under the Public Buildings rate schedule upon request by the Customer. The Customer must establish usage during the hours for determination of On-Peak Billing Demand before billing under this rate becomes effective. The Cooperative reserves the right to discontinue this optional Time-Of-Use rate to additional Customers when, in the Cooperative�s judgment, system load characteristics no longer warrant such option.
Quoted from the filed tariff. Your utility decides eligibility, not us; check with them before you switch.
If this is new to you
- How to read your electric bill
Four kinds of charge, only two of which you can do anything about.
- What is a demand charge on a residential electric bill?
Billed for your worst hour, not your total. Rare on homes, and growing.
- What is critical peak pricing? Peak-day events on your electric bill, explained
A dozen brutally expensive afternoons a year, in exchange for a discount on the other 353 days.
Where this comes from
- Effective
- 2025-10-31
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