Electricity Peak Hours in California by Utility, and the Cheapest Time to Use Power

In most of California, electricity peak hours are 4 to 9 p.m. That is the peak window on the main time-of-use plans at PG&E, SCE and SDG&E, and on PG&E and SDG&E it applies every day, weekends included. The two big city-owned utilities differ: SMUD peaks 5 to 8 p.m. on weekdays, and LADWP's time-of-use plan peaks 1 to 5 p.m. on weekdays.

Peak hours are set plan by plan, not statewide, so the real answer is on your bill: find the rate plan name, then match it to the table below. Every hour window here comes from the utility's own tariff or rate page, checked September 23, 2026. If a community choice provider supplies your electricity, the utility still delivers it and your plan name still appears on the bill; check the provider's rate page for its generation prices.

Peak hours by utility and plan

Two patterns stand out. First, the investor-owned utilities all converged on an evening window that starts at 4 or 5 p.m. Second, weekends are where plans split: some keep the evening peak seven days a week, some drop it on weekends, and SCE keeps the hours but charges less for them on summer weekends.

Off-peak and super off-peak hours

Off-peak is simply every hour that is not peak or part-peak, but several plans add a cheaper tier. SDG&E calls it super off-peak: midnight to 6 a.m. and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on weekdays, and midnight to 2 p.m. on weekends and holidays. SCE adds super off-peak only in winter, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on TOU-D-4-9PM and TOU-D-PRIME. PG&E's EV2-A and E-ELEC treat midnight to 3 p.m. as off-peak, with a part-peak shoulder on either side of 4 to 9 p.m. LADWP calls its cheapest period Base: 8 p.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays and all day on weekends.

What is the best time to use electricity?

For most California households on a 4-to-9 p.m. plan, run flexible loads before 4 p.m. or after 9 p.m. The biggest savings come from loads you can schedule: EV charging, dishwashers, laundry, pool pumps and water heaters with timers. If you have a pool, see when to run a pool pump and what it costs. Air conditioning is harder to move, but pre-cooling the house in early afternoon and letting it drift up during the peak shifts part of the load. On SDG&E, the midday super off-peak window is cheap enough that running the dishwasher at noon beats running it at 10 p.m.

The gap is large. On SDG&E's TOU-DR1 in summer, a kWh at 6 p.m. costs 69.135 cents and a kWh at 1 p.m. costs 37.433 cents. On PG&E's EV2-A, 53.809 cents against 22.558 cents. Our own arithmetic: moving 10 kWh a day of EV charging out of the SDG&E peak into super off-peak saves about $3.17 a day, or roughly $95 over a 30-day summer month.

Holidays count as off-peak on some plans

PG&E's E-TOU-D and EV-B, SDG&E's time-of-use plans and SMUD all have holiday rules. PG&E and SDG&E use the same eight: New Year's Day, Presidents Day, Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving and Christmas. SDG&E prices those days like weekends, so super off-peak runs from midnight to 2 p.m., but 4 to 9 p.m. is still on-peak. SMUD adds Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Juneteenth and Indigenous Peoples' Day for 11 in all, and prices every listed holiday as off-peak all day. PG&E's E-TOU-C, EV2-A and E-ELEC peaks apply on holidays too.

Why the evening is the expensive part of the day

California's grid now carries a large share of solar, which floods it with power at midday and fades in the late afternoon while homes turn on lights, cooking and air conditioning. SCE puts it plainly: conservation matters most when solar production starts declining, generally around 4 p.m. Time-of-use pricing puts that cost on the evening hours, which is also why a home battery that stores midday solar for the evening is worth more under these plans than panels alone.

Peak hours and prices by utility, in depth

• PG&E peak hours and time-of-use rates — E-TOU-C, E-TOU-D, EV2-A and E-ELEC prices.
• SCE time-of-use rates and peak hours — the three TOU-D plans and the EV plan.
• SDG&E peak hours and TOU-DR1 rates — including weekend and super off-peak rules.
• SMUD peak hours and summer rates — when summer pricing starts and ends.
• LADWP rates and R-1B time-of-use hours — tiers, seasons and the TOU option.

For the average price per kWh at each utility rather than hour by hour, see the California utility rate tracker. If a high bill is what brought you here, start with why California electric bills run high.