What Are Time-of-Use Rates?

A time-of-use plan divides the day into named periods, commonly peak, off-peak, and sometimes a super off-peak window, and attaches a different price to each. Solar output crests around midday while the priciest hours often arrive after sunset, so the hour a kilowatt-hour is made and used matters as much as how many there are. Some utilities require solar customers to take a time-of-use plan; others let them choose.

On an appointment, the rate plan name printed on the bill drives sizing and the battery conversation. Two homes with identical usage and identical panels can see very different savings, because the second home’s expensive hours fall when production fades. Closers use the schedule to show where a battery would move midday power into the evening, which turns the battery from an upsell into arithmetic the homeowner can follow.

Common slips: quoting one blended rate for the whole day, assuming the schedule never changes when regulators and utilities do move peak windows over time, and forgetting that in some programs the credit for exported power also varies by hour, so timing affects both what the home avoids buying and what it earns by exporting. Recommending a plan belongs to the closer working with the utility, not to the setter.