Yes, but it has no effect on when I use electricity
No, my electricity rates don’t have a daily cycle
0voters
I’ve read that in some markets, it’s common for the cost of electricity to vary over the course of the day. In these places, electricity costs less overnight, when usage is off-peak, so as to encourage customers to spread the load over time. I think this is because it’s difficult for power plants to dynamically adjust their output; they need to guarantee a certain availability of power during the day when everyone is using their lights, computers, TV sets, washers, dryers, etc., but can’t easily reduce the supply at other times.
It’s not clear to me why this pricing structure is in place in some markets and not others. Does it have to do with the type of power plants used?
To the best of my knowledge, none of the utility companies anywhere I’ve lived have had electricity rates that are cheaper at certain times of day. Does anyone here live somewhere where daily rate cycles are in place? If so, does it have any effect on when you yourself use your electrical devices?
It’s almost universal I think in Australia. Nearly all electric water heaters that use storage tanks run on off-peak. I know people who run other appliances, like their dishwashers and washing machines, on timers to run off-peak.
Didn’t answer the poll because we were on a time of day program until lockdown. With so many people working at home, the government brought back the option of tiered pricing with the first X KWh at a reduced rate.
I ran the numbers and it was marginally cheaper for us to opt for tiered rates. With the kids back in school during the day but my wife and I working at home, I should check again.
A lot of (most?) electricity providers in Texas do offer time-tiered rates but it never made economical sense for me, so I’ve always gone for a flat-rate plan. Air conditioning is the 500 lb gorilla of electricity costs so a low rate at night doesn’t doesn’t do much good.
I suppose if you live in a cold climate and have electric heat it could be quite beneficial to have cheaper rates at night.
We had tier pricing, so I tend to run the dishwasher at night. That is my one concession to it though. I’m pretty sure we don’t have tiered pricing any more any way.
Prior house I had installed solar panels, so it wasn’t really a concern overall.
My power company has a rather more complex setup in summer than at this time of year. I do the budget billing where I’m paying the same amount every month (gets adjusted annually), so I do things like laundry at times that work around other household scheduling. About the only time I worry about timing of power usage is when we’re on Flex Alert due to high demand (such as during 100F+ heat waves).
We don’t, but I wish we did. We could easily adjust some of our usage. In fact, I’d do it for free if there was a way for them to let us know when they have excess power and when they don’t.
I suppose it could be just a night versus day thing, but I’m not sure about that.
Same here. I have no idea when it’s most convenient for the power company to have me use electricity, but on the assumption that it’s better to spread the load, I do program the dishwasher to start in the middle of the night. (I don’t do this for the washing machine because it’s in our bathroom, and the spin cycle is likely to disturb me or our neighbours in the apartment building.)
I have some choice of suppliers and it seems both to vary with which supplier, and to be variably available (a supplier who used to offer it may stop doing so, a supplier who didn’t use to offer it may start doing so.) I have no idea how they make the decision.
I do currently have it, and answered the poll that I do and it affects my usage – but it affects my usage almost entirely in that I have my hot water heater on a timer and it’s set to mostly heat during the cheaper hours (I used to have it set to entirely do so, but the water heater broke and I wasn’t able to replace it with one that has a large enough tank to usually last the day.) The cheaper hours are all in the middle of the night when I’m generally asleep anyway, and I don’t do anything else that I’d be willing to leave on a timer so it went on while I was sleeping – I don’t have a dishwasher or clothes dryer, and the washing machine occasionally throws an error and I don’t want to be woken up by it beeping about it. Also it’s noisy even when it runs normally.
Generally speaking, the type of power plant doesn’t matter so much, but during times of heavy loads, additional generators have to be brought on-line to handle the load. When I worked at Ohio Edison (several decades ago) we had a small (and somewhat experimental) plant that burned old tires. This plant was only brought on-line during the day, when demand was at its peak. The plant only produced something like 40 MW, if I recall correctly. For comparison, the plant I worked in had a total of 7 generators. The four oldest produced something like 180 MW each and the three newer generators produced around 650 MW each. We had several other small plants that were only brought on-line during peak times. The plant I worked in ran 24/7. Ohio Edison also had one nuke plant that ran 24/7.
Those smaller plants that were only brought on-line during peak times were generally older plants. Even the tire plant was old. They had just modified it to auto-feed tires and burn them in what had originally been a coal-fired burner. Because they were old, they were less efficient than newer plants, but building newer and more efficient plants to pick up the peak load would cost so much that it was less expensive to keep running the old plants, even with their reduced efficiency.
So what you end up with is a bunch of more efficient power plants that run 24/7/365 and a bunch of smaller, less efficient plants that only run at peak load. The end result of this is that the production cost per every unit of electricity (kW-h) is higher during peak times.
If you can get your customers to switch their usage to non-peak times (doing their laundry in the evening, setting their dishwasher to run overnight, etc) then the power company doesn’t have to run those old inefficient plants as much. This saves the power company money and saves the customer money as well. So it’s win-win.
This also requires everyone on the system to have smart meters, so that the meter can keep track of how much was used at each billing rate. These smart meters also have to be able to “phone home” since they have a lot more data to collect than simply a kW-h total. They generally transmit over the power lines themselves, so the power company doesn’t need to run new wires to every customer, but the higher frequency communication signals won’t go through transformers, so small bypass filters need to be installed on transformers all throughout the system and communication equipment needs to be added to the system to process all of the meter signals.
In smaller towns or areas with a lower population density, replacing all of the meters with smart meters and adding all of the communication networking equipment might not be worth the expense for the amount of money that will end up being saved. So smart meters are much more common in larger cities where the savings is significantly greater. The power company also may want to spread out its costs for new meters over a much larger time period so that they don’t take the financial hit all at once, so smart meters might roll out in some areas before others.
Mine keeps track of day and night billing rates, but has to be read by someone from the power company physically coming out and looking at it (which they do every two months, these days. It used to be monthly.) So it’s not necessary to install “smart meters” in order to offer night/day rates.
Whether it’s cheaper for them, in the long run, to send out people to physically read the meters or to install meters that can be read remotely I have no idea. At this point I think my utility is just trying to stagger through to the next month; their infrastructure’s not in great shape overall, and they’ve got themselves in a bind in which their repair people are all working extraordinary hours continuously because they don’t have enough repair people, and they can’t get enough repair people because (in addition to it being a doozy of a hard job both physically and mentally, though it pays well) very few people are willing to work extraordinary hours continuously.
Where I live we have separate summer and winter rates, but they both have a time of use component. Regardless of the time of year, the most expensive electricity is between 5-8 pm. During the summer there’s also a medium priced tier in the afternoon and evening. The cheapest off-peak rate also applies all day on weekends and holidays.
So, I adjust my usage depending on the season, day of the week, and time of day. During the summer I use the delay start feature on my dishwasher so that it runs after midnight. During the winter I just avoid using it between 5-8 pm. Year round I try to use my laptop on battery power between 5-8 and plug it in to charge after 8 pm. And I do laundry on the weekend when power is cheap all day, but honestly that was when I did laundry anyway.
If that’s true generally (and roughly) I wish our electric company would tell us. I’d set my car to recharge after 9:00 p.m. As it is, I usually plug it in when I get home (around 5:00) and it starts charging right away. (as I said, I’m willing to do this for free if they’d give me a little guidance)
You can find some nice charts showing typical hourly electrical usage here, about halfway down the page. The charts are broken down by region and by season.
If you want to know what your specific power company charges, they usually have that information posted on their web site.
For example, BGE (Baltimore) has switched from varying rates back to a flat rate, but their variable rate information is still on their web site here:
I’m on the “standard” rate plan, but in my area you can also sign up for a special EV rate plan. With that plan you get even cheaper electricity between midnight and 6 am, but the rates the rest of the day are slightly higher. And I’m pretty sure it’s the most expensive between 5-8 no matter what plan you’re on.
I would assume the loads are about the same in general no matter where you are, although I am in a climate with very hot summers, so that peak late afternoon / early evening time is when everyone’s air conditioners are kicking in during the summer. But I would guess that midnight-6am period is the best time to charge your EV no matter where you are.
My area (Ontario) has had province-wide Time of Use rates for a while now, and added tiered-pricing as an option a couple of years ago. Off-peak rates run from 7 PM to 7 Am, with on-peak in the middle of the day and mid-peak early morning and late afternoon during summer and switching around in winter. We time discretionary peak loads such as dishwasher and laundry for off-peak.
I’ve looked at tiered-pricing a couple of times and calculated that we would save a bit in winter but pay more in summer for an average increase in cost. I suspect that this option, although some users may be able to make good use of it, was mostly added to make the voters who don’t want the gummint telling them when to do the laundry feel good.
We have a lower rate from 10pm - 7am, so we run the dishwasher after 10pm. That’s about it.
Later this year, if all goes as planned, we’ll get solar panels and then there might be some other plans for running the washer and dryer, for example.
I’ve been on a time of use plan since getting an EV. Back then, owning an EV was one of the few reasons Xcel would let you onto the plan, but now they want everybody on it.
There are only two behaviors I change based on the rate schedule. My cheap power goes from 7pm-1pm, so I tell the car not to charge until 7pm, and I lower the AC temperature set point at 7pm. (I have another thing where Xcel can control when the car charges, and they often set it to start at midnight or 11pm.)
The biggest hassle was convincing the thermostat to start going for the lower temperature at 7pm, rather than to try to make the house the lower temperature by 7pm. On the old thermostat it was a dip switch or jumper, on the new one it is buried in the setup menu.
I don’t worry about timing for any of my other electrical activities, like cooking, clothes washing, etc.
