Why Shifting When You Use Power Can Lower Your Bill
Most commercial and industrial electricity plans price power differently depending on the time of day. Under Time-of-Use (TOU) rate plans, off-peak rates late at night are often priced well below daytime peak rates, so a business that can flex its schedule — running cold storage compressors or certain production lines overnight, for example — can cut its electric bill significantly without using any less power overall. This calculator takes your monthly usage, current and off-peak rates, and the share of usage you can realistically shift, and instantly gives you the estimated savings and your new expected monthly bill. It's a useful way to gauge whether adjusting operating hours alone, with no equipment investment, is worth pursuing.
The same amount of electricity can cost very differently depending on when you use it, which makes a schedule shift one of the few ways to lower a fixed monthly cost without spending on equipment. That said, weigh it against the added cost of night-shift labor or any noise complaints from running equipment overnight before deciding it's worth making the change.
Frequently Asked Questions
Under most Time-of-Use (TOU) utility plans, off-peak hours typically fall late at night through early morning, often 9 PM to 7 AM on weekdays and most of the weekend. Exact windows vary by utility and plan, so check your rate schedule.
Businesses that can flex their operating hours, like manufacturers, cold storage, and laundry facilities, see the biggest impact. Retailers with fixed store hours usually have a lower share of usage they can realistically shift.
Yes. If your billed demand is set much higher than your actual peak usage, you're paying more in fixed demand charges than necessary. Reviewing a year of usage data to right-size your demand level is worth doing alongside a TOU shift.
※ Actual rates vary by utility, rate class, and time-of-use schedule. This is an estimate for reference only.