Picture Priya, a dental hygienist in Thousand Oaks, California. She has plugged in her electric car every night around 9 p.m. for two years, since that is when she gets home. That habit could now be costing her money she does not need to spend. A new pilot in her area offers free daytime electricity, and more than 4,000 neighbors are already using it.
Clean Power Alliance launched that pilot, called TOU-SMART, on October 1. It is a nonprofit electricity provider serving 38 cities across Los Angeles and Ventura counties. The idea behind the two-year program is almost embarrassingly simple: electricity used between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. carries no generation charge at all, zero cents per kilowatt-hour.
Utilities do not hand out free power for fun. California’s grid often makes more solar power than anyone needs at midday, and prices sometimes drop below zero. Researchers call this mismatch the duck curve, a pattern the U.S. Department of Energy has spent a decade trying to flatten. It is the same dynamic behind why cheap summer solar kept bills from spiking higher this year: abundant clean power only helps people if they actually use it.
How Much Free Daytime Electricity Actually Saves You
CPA’s own published rates show how wide the gap is between day and night.
| Period | Hours | Generation Rate |
|---|---|---|
| Daytime (Super-Off-Peak) | 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. | 0¢/kWh |
| Overnight (Off-Peak) | 9 p.m. to 8 a.m. | 9¢/kWh |
| Evening (On-Peak, weekdays) | 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. | 28¢/kWh |
Run the numbers on something real and the gap stops feeling abstract. A full EV charge that adds roughly 30 kWh of range costs about $2.70 overnight, based on CPA’s July 2026 rate sheet, but nothing at all in early afternoon. Charge three times a week that way, and a driver like Priya keeps roughly $35 a month she used to hand to the utility. CPA itself estimates households can save hundreds of dollars a year by also moving laundry and dishwashing out of the evening peak.
CPA built in a safety net so the experiment cannot backfire on anyone who tries it. If a household’s bill ends up higher on TOU-SMART than on their old rate, Clean Power Alliance credits back the difference at year’s end, and anyone can drop out anytime with no penalty.
“TOU-SMART is about putting an idea into practice and learning from what happens in the real world,” says Clean Power Alliance CEO Ted Bardacke.
Why This Matters Beyond One Utility Bill
Every kilowatt-hour that moves into daylight hours is one that does not come from a gas peaker plant firing up at dinnertime. Those plants typically sit in industrial corridors near the same lower-income neighborhoods that already breathe the most polluted air, so trimming evening demand means real people breathe a little easier. The pilot also builds on California’s broader push to pay households for shifting how and when they use power.
UCLA professor Magali Delmas is helping design the research. She calls it a rare chance to study how households respond to a strong price signal instead of just guessing, and her team will track whether new habits stick once the novelty fades.
A few ways renters and homeowners alike, from busy parents to retirees, can put the free hours to work:
- Run the dishwasher and washing machine after breakfast instead of after dinner
- Charge an EV, e-bike, or power tools at midday instead of overnight
- Pre-cool or pre-heat a home between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. so the AC or heater works less later
- Run pool pumps and sprinklers during the free window instead of at dawn or dusk
Sign-ups for this round closed October 1. If you live in a Clean Power Alliance community and never got a notice in the mail, call (888) 585-3788 and ask about a waitlist. Everyone else should ask their own utility the same question: is there a cheaper, cleaner time to use power, and why haven’t they said so?