SCE Time-of-Use Rates 2026:
TOU Plans Explained and How to Pay Less

Adrian Marin|Independent Solar Advisor, Temecula CA

Helping Riverside County homeowners navigate SCE rates and solar options since 2020

If you are on a Southern California Edison Time-of-Use plan, the rate you pay per kilowatt-hour is not fixed. It depends entirely on what time you run your dishwasher, charge your EV, or run the air conditioner. Get the timing right and TOU saves you money. Get it wrong and you can pay 58 cents per kWh or more during summer peak hours.

This guide covers every SCE TOU plan available to residential customers in 2026, breaks down exactly when on-peak and off-peak periods apply, and explains which plan costs less based on your household habits. It also covers the NEM 3.0 export credit change and how solar panels combined with the right TOU plan can dramatically cut your bill. For context on where rates are heading, read our SCE rate increases through 2028 guide.

1. What Are SCE TOU Rate Plans and How Do They Work

Standard SCE residential customers are on a tiered rate plan by default. Tiered pricing means you pay one rate per kWh up to a baseline amount (Tier 1), then a higher rate for usage above that baseline (Tier 2). Under this plan, the time of day does not matter.

Time-of-Use plans work differently. Instead of pricing based on total volume consumed, TOU plans price based on when you consume electricity. The grid is most stressed between 4pm and 9pm on weekdays, when homes are occupied and demand peaks. SCE charges more during those hours and less at all other times.

The core structure of every SCE TOU plan:

SCE offers several TOU plan variants for residential customers. The most common are TOU-D-4-9PM (the standard default TOU option), TOU-D-PRIME (for EV owners with overnight charging), and TOU-D-5-8PM (an older plan with a slightly different peak window). SCE has been enrolling customers in TOU plans as the state pushes toward dynamic pricing under its Clean Energy mandate.

2. SCE's 2026 Rate Increase: What Changed and Why It Matters

The rates in this guide are not static numbers pulled from a spreadsheet. In January 2026, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a 9.7% SCE rate increase as part of the current General Rate Case cycle. That followed an 11.3% increase in 2024 and 19.2% in 2023. The cumulative result: SCE residential rates are now roughly 83% higher than they were in 2014.

For TOU customers, rate increases hit both the on-peak and off-peak rates. The 58.3 cents per kWh summer peak rate you see in 2026 reflects years of compounding increases on what was once a moderate rate. The CPUC has already authorized continued increases of 7-9% per year through 2028. These are not projections or estimates from analysts - they are approved regulatory decisions sitting in signed CPUC orders.

This is the financial core of the solar argument for Riverside County homeowners: you are not just avoiding today's rates. A system installed now locks in your energy cost structure against a grid that has risen 83% in a decade with more increases already approved. For the complete breakdown of what is driving these increases and the specific CPUC decisions behind each hike, see our SCE rate increases 2026-2028 guide.

3. Rate Comparison: Tiered vs TOU-D-4-9PM vs Solar PPA

Here is how the three main rate structures compare for a typical Riverside County household. All figures reflect 2026 SCE rate schedules.

The 58 cent on-peak rate is not hypothetical. It is the actual SCE TOU-D-4-9PM rate for summer months. A household running the AC, cooking dinner, and doing laundry between 4pm and 9pm on a hot July evening is paying 58 cents for every kWh consumed during those five hours. If a household uses 15 kWh between 4pm and 9pm on a summer weekday, that single five-hour window costs $8.70 in electricity. Across 22 weekdays in a month, that is $191 just for peak hours.

By comparison, the same 15 kWh consumed at midnight on TOU-D-4-9PM costs 15 kWh x 34 cents = $5.10, and as little as $3.60 for usage covered by the baseline credit. Running the same load at night instead of in the evening saves $3.60 or more on that single shift. The TOU math is not subtle.

The $24.15 fixed Base Services Charge added in November 2025 under AB 205 changes the calculus for low-usage households. If you use less than 300 kWh per month, the tiered plan may now cost less than TOU because the variable savings from off-peak rates cannot overcome the fixed charge. High-usage households above 700 kWh per month generally benefit more from TOU if they can shift load.

4. Which Plan Saves Money

The right TOU plan depends on two factors: your household's peak-hour usage habits and whether you have flexible loads you can shift.

The honest reality for most Temecula and Murrieta households: the 4pm to 9pm window is exactly when two-income families get home from work. Kids need dinner. AC needs to run. Laundry has been sitting in the hamper all day. The behavioral shift required to fully benefit from TOU is harder than it sounds when your schedule is fixed.

This is one of the reasons solar changes the math so significantly. Solar panels do not require you to change your behavior. They just eliminate most of your exposure to whatever rate SCE charges during daylight hours.

5. How Solar Changes the TOU Math

Solar panels produce power from roughly 8am to 5pm in Riverside County, depending on the season. For TOU-D-4-9PM customers, that means solar covers the first hour of the on-peak window (4pm to 5pm) and all of the daytime off-peak period. Power you generate and consume on-site never goes through your SCE meter at all. You do not pay 58 cents, 34 cents, or any rate for it. It is effectively free electricity.

The math for a 1,000 kWh household on TOU-D-4-9PM:

The critical change NEM 3.0 introduced: solar export credits dropped from about 30 cents per kWh under NEM 2.0 to roughly 5 to 8 cents per kWh today. That makes exporting excess power to the grid much less valuable than it used to be. Under NEM 2.0, a solar system that overproduced could wipe out your entire bill. Under NEM 3.0, that overproduction earns you a fraction of its former value.

The implication: self-consumption is now what makes solar financially strong. If your panels produce power and you consume it directly, you avoid buying that electricity at 34 cents, 42 cents, or 58 cents per kWh. That is a hard dollar saved. If you export it, you get 5 to 8 cents back. The difference is significant.

For homeowners on a TOU plan, solar is especially powerful during spring and fall months when solar production is high and on-peak exposure is real but AC load is lower. During those months a properly sized solar system can drive SCE bills near zero while still covering the $24.15 base services charge. Read our full PPA vs buying solar comparison to see which ownership model works best under NEM 3.0 rules.

6. Battery Storage and Solar Under NEM 3.0 TOU

The combination of solar plus a home battery (like a Tesla Powerwall or Enphase IQ Battery) is where TOU optimization becomes genuinely powerful under NEM 3.0 rules.

Here is the basic cycle on a TOU-D-4-9PM plan with solar and battery:

This cycle is why NEM 3.0 was specifically designed to incentivize battery storage. Under NEM 2.0, exporting excess solar during the day was highly valuable. Under NEM 3.0, that export value dropped dramatically. The state wants homeowners to store the excess and use it during the evening peak instead of selling it back cheaply and then re-buying it at 58 cents during peak. Adding a battery aligns with exactly what NEM 3.0 was structured to reward.

On the export credit side: even at 5 to 8 cents per kWh, solar exports are not worthless. If your system overproduces during shoulder months (spring and fall), those credits roll forward on your bill and offset future usage. Annual true-up billing means credits accumulate until SCE settles the account once per year. Heavy producers in spring can offset high summer AC costs through this mechanism.

For a deeper look at how the export credit change affects the overall savings calculation, see our SCE rate overview page and the complete rate increase timeline.

Ready to see how your SCE bill stacks up against what solar would cost? Use the free Temecula solar savings calculator to get a personalized estimate based on your actual SCE usage and rate plan.

7. Shifting Load Off Peak: Appliances, Smart Controls, and Interval Data

Solar and a battery remove most peak exposure. Moving the loads you control is what closes the remaining gap, and it costs nothing but a schedule change. The savings below assume roughly a 33 cent per kWh spread between peak import rates and midday self-consumption, 250 cycles a year for cycling appliances, 180 days of pool pump operation, and 200 EV charging sessions.

The pool pump is often the single largest optimization available to a Temecula homeowner. A pump on a default schedule may run 8pm to 4am, which is off-peak but produces no solar benefit at all. Moving it to 9am to 5pm costs nothing beyond a timer setting and shifts 2 to 6 kWh a day into hours your panels are already covering.

8. Panel Orientation and Self-Consumption Under TOU

Conventional advice favors south-facing panels for maximum annual production. That was correct under flat and tiered billing, where every kilowatt-hour was worth the same whenever it arrived. Under time-of-use pricing it is no longer automatically true, because a kilowatt-hour produced at 5pm is worth roughly twice one produced at noon.

A south-facing 10kW system in Temecula produces about 17,000 kWh a year. The same system facing west produces roughly 14,500 kWh, about 12 to 15 percent less overall. But it produces 30 to 40 percent more inside the 4pm to 7pm window, and those are the hours that cost the most.

For homes with usable roof area on both planes, a split array often beats either orientation alone: south-facing panels for volume and for charging the battery through the middle of the day, west-facing panels for late-afternoon production that hits the peak window directly. Ask your installer to model both orientations against your rate plan rather than defaulting to south.

The same logic drives system sizing. Under NEM 3.0, self-consumption is worth more than export at every hour of the day. Avoiding an import saves you the retail rate, 26 cents off-peak and 59 cents on-peak on TOU-D-PRIME weekdays in summer, or 40 cents during the weekend mid-peak window. Exporting earns the avoided cost credit, roughly 2 to 25 cents depending on the hour. There is no time of day when sending a kilowatt-hour to the grid beats using it yourself.

All three rows describe the same 10kW system producing 17,000 kWh a year in Temecula. The only difference is how much of it you use yourself. The practical conclusion is to stop sizing for export volume: a system that roughly matches your consumption returns more per kilowatt installed than one producing 150 percent of it and selling the remainder cheaply. Once you have matched consumption, a battery captures what would otherwise leave at the low credit.

9. EV Rates and Switching Plans After You Install

If you drive an EV, TOU-D-PRIME is the plan SCE points you to. It is the rate listed on SCE's own electric vehicle plan page, and eligibility is EV owners and lessees, households with a residential battery, and households with an electric heat pump for water or space heating. Signing up requires an attestation that you have one of those, though customers moving from TOU-D-A, TOU-D-B or TOU-D-T do not need one.

Two details matter for EV owners specifically. SCE's own guidance on this plan is to charge between 8am and 4pm and avoid drawing power between 4pm and 9pm, which lines up exactly with solar production rather than fighting it. And if you install a second meter dedicated to EV charging, you qualify for a monthly EV Meter Credit that offsets the basic charges on that second meter.

The arithmetic is simple enough to do yourself. Charging a 75 kWh battery from empty costs about $19.50 at the 26 cent off-peak rate and about $44.25 if you do it during the 4pm to 9pm peak. A household driving 15,000 miles a year at 3.5 miles per kWh needs roughly 4,286 kWh of charging, so the gap between charging entirely off-peak and charging carelessly during peak is on the order of $1,400 a year before any solar is involved. For a solar, battery and EV household the combined play is to charge the car in the middle of the day off your own production where possible, otherwise off-peak, and discharge the home battery through the 4pm to 9pm window.

10. CARE, FERA, Winter Rates, and the Fixed Charge Coming Next

Three things change the arithmetic above and none of them are widely understood.

CARE and FERA. CARE discounts electricity charges 30 to 35 percent for income-qualifying households; FERA discounts 12 percent for households just above the CARE threshold. Both apply on top of your TOU plan and reduce peak and off-peak rates proportionally. The consequence for solar is that avoided peak consumption is worth less in absolute dollars: roughly 38 to 41 cents per kWh on CARE rather than 59 cents. The NEM 3.0 export credit does not change with CARE status, so the gap between what you earn exporting and what you save by self-consuming narrows, though self-consumption still wins. CARE and FERA do not disqualify you from solar or from NEM 3.0 interconnection. Apply first if you qualify, because an installer quoting you standard SCE rates while you are on CARE will overstate your savings.

Winter is a different rate season.Summer rates run June through September; October through May is billed on a separate winter schedule with lower rates and, on TOU-D-PRIME, a super off-peak window that summer does not have. Check the winter table on SCE's rate plan page for the current figures rather than assuming they track summer. The spread narrows, so optimization matters less than it does in summer but does not stop mattering, and the 4pm to 9pm weekday peak window is unchanged. Production falls at the same time: an 8 kW system making 45 kWh a day in July may make 25 kWh in January, and December sunset arrives so early that solar has effectively stopped by the time peak begins. Battery storage therefore carries more of the load in winter than in summer. If you heat with an electric heat pump, your winter peak exposure is comparable to summer AC; if you heat with gas it is much lower. Know which before you model winter savings. Pre-cooling has a winter mirror image: warm the house to 70 or 71 degrees on off-peak power before 4pm and let it coast.

The Income Graduated Fixed Charge.AB 205 (2022) requires the CPUC to implement a fixed monthly charge on residential bills scaled to household income, from roughly $6 a month at the low end to $73 or more at the high end, offset by lower per-kilowatt-hour volumetric rates. For solar owners this cuts both ways and mostly against: lower volumetric rates reduce what self-consumption is worth, and the fixed charge is a floor that solar production cannot offset at all. Separately, SCE continues to file General Rate Cases and the CPUC has approved increases in every recent one, driven by wildfire mitigation, grid hardening, and the buildout for California's 2035 zero-emission vehicle mandate.

If you are modeling a system today, budget roughly $20 to $40 a month in fixed charges that solar will not remove. That does not make solar a bad decision here, since the volumetric rates it offsets are still among the highest in the country and still rising. It does mean a payback estimate built only on today's volumetric rates is optimistic, and you should ask any installer whether their projection accounts for the fixed charge.