TOU-D-4-9PM

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.

This is a time-of-use plan, which means the clock decides your bill as much as the meter does. At the worst hour you pay 60.5¢ a kWh; at the best hour, 37.8¢ — 1.6× apart for identical electricity.

That gap is worth real money only if you can move load into it. Every kilowatt-hour a day you shift from 4pm to midnight is about $83 a year. A dishwasher run is roughly 1.5 kWh; an EV commute charge is 8 to 12. If your day is fixed — you are home in the evening and the air conditioner runs when it runs — a plan like this costs you more, not less.

Before a single kilowatt-hour moves, this plan charges $11 a year in fixed fees. On the apartment above that is 1% of the whole bill; on the house with a car charging in it, 0%. 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 $489 in July and $261 in February — a $228 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.

Measured against the other residential plans this utility files, a family home lands 2nd cheapest of 6. The cheapest option, TOU-D-PRIME, would run about $612 a year less.