Change the way your electric bill works? Seattle City Light launches online tool to help customers decide on ‘Time of Use Rate’

| Utilities | West Seattle news

Seattle City Light wants to ensure you know its new voluntary option for how you’re billed for electricity at home, the “Time of Use Rate,” is available, and it’s launched an online tool to help you evaluate it. Here’s how the rate is explained by SCL:

With TOU, when you use electricity affects how much you pay. Electricity costs more during peak hours (from 5 to 9 PM), when demand is highest, but it will cost less during other times.

By shifting some of your electricity use to off-peak hours, you can reduce your bill. Plus, you’ll help make our power grid more efficient.

Our TOU rate has three pricing periods:

-Peak hours (most expensive): 5 to 9 PM, Monday through Saturday (excluding observed holidays).
-Mid-peak hours (moderate pricing): 6 AM to 5PM and 9 PM to midnight, Monday through Saturday. On Sundays and holidays, mid-peak pricing lasts all day (6 AM to midnight).
-Off-peak hours (least expensive): Midnight to 6 AM, every day.

Learn more about TOU rates on our Residential Rates page.

City Light’s announcement today explains how to access the new online tool that can help you figure out whether changing to this kind of rate would save money.

Confused May 4, 2026 (2:02 pm)

So the highest rates will be during a the all important family time. Dinner/cooking, homework, kids baths, and bedtime. I get that some people are home during the day, but if your in any service industry the requires you to be onsite, it feels like you would be penalized.

JTinWS May 4, 2026 (3:19 pm)

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Yes, that’s the time of day with the highest demand, so it’s the time of day in which they’re trying to discourage people from using electricity. Obviously cooking and kids’ baths are hard to time-shift, but there are other choices some people can make that this would incentivize, like setting the dishwasher not to run till after midnight, or saving EV charging till then, or trying to start laundry loads in the morning rather than afternoon.
- Drako Claw May 4, 2026 (10:24 pm)
  
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  Or with heating/cooling, running the higher heating temps / lower cooling temps outside the 5-9 window.Use the other times to turn your home into a heat/cool battery so you can bump back the heating/cooling needs during peak times.One thing a lot of people don’t account for is that heating/cooling tends to be the highest usage of the grid and the highest production of costs. So instead of having the tstat run up to 68 (or 70) when you get home, do that during the day and bump it down to like 65 in the evening for heating. (73 during the day, then bump back to 75 in the evening.). It will still be the “largest cost point” but it’ll be during a lower tier rate.
Ab May 4, 2026 (4:20 pm)

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It’s a voluntary option aimed at lowering demand voluntarily during the highest demand. I won’t be issuing that option for that reason sounds like you won’t either. This is working as intended.

RickB May 4, 2026 (2:53 pm)

I was interested in this for our house so I researched it a while back. Unfortunately I learned that if you have solar panels and a net metering agreement in place you are not eligible for TOU billing. Thought I’d mention it to save time for others in that situation.

Westwood May 4, 2026 (5:01 pm)

Just logged on to the tool. My costs are exactly the same. So much for saving.

SCL TOU fan May 4, 2026 (9:50 pm)

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I had a similar experience when I used their tool to compare costs. However that tool is looking backward at your previous usage and calculating how much it would cost with the new rates. The advantage of the TOU plan is that if you can shift your usage to the low rate time you can save some money. Some things that I’m planning on changing going forward to take advantage of the TOU billing include
- setting our e-golf to start charging at 04:00. (with my commute it takes 2 hours of charging each night)
- having the water heater set 5 degrees cooler at 5:00
- setting the thermostats off from 5:00 – 9:00.
- Always waiting to start the dish washer until we go to bed

Erik May 4, 2026 (6:31 pm)

I could see saving a lot of money if you have a home battery backup. Power the backup at night. Switch to battery all day. Power it back up at night.

Scrappy May 4, 2026 (9:15 pm)

Back in 2017, when SCL was rolling out Smart Meters, I came across this animation on Youtube explaining what was REALLY going on. I opted out and had the lesser of two evils installed… a digital meter that has to be manually read every other month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N29AtA3VodU

Shocked May 5, 2026 (9:06 am)

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Scrappy’s concerns are certainly dated in decade old paranoia.
I watched the 2017 youtube cartoon.
It now plays like a satire.

Steve May 5, 2026 (12:29 am)

Hope you like paying more than flat-rate for every time period other than midnight-6am!

Stephen Shafer May 5, 2026 (5:53 am)

In San Diego, this “voluntary” option quickly became mandatory (even for solar owners) and then the utility slowly changed the prices so that rates became much higher during that 5-9PM window when demand is highest and solar is waning. The impact was highest on homes with solar installed, as 1KW of solar generated during the day becomes less valuable then 1KW of electricity used in the evening – effectively forcing people to start paying again because they have to generate 2KW+ of electricity for every 1KW used. I would consider making the switch now if the utility will guarantee that the relative rates for the 5-9 window will not change over time.

Bub May 5, 2026 (8:43 am)

This isn’t how everyone is billed now?! I thought it was and always tried to use less electricity during peak times.

Me May 5, 2026 (11:39 am)

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Agree, I remember seeing this years ago and thought that’s how they’ve been billing for years…
- WSB May 5, 2026 (12:53 pm)
  
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  SCL clarified for me that they made this available to a limited number of customers some months back but now it’s available to all residential customers.

Admiral2009 May 5, 2026 (5:19 pm)

Everyone should make an effort to run the dishwasher laundry and charging electric cars outside the PM peak period. The alternative is expensive added generation, at huge cost, to accommodate peak use!