PG&E rates 2026: tiered, TOU and EV2-A walked through

Pacific Gas & Electric serves about 5.5 million electric accounts across northern and central California. This page covers the four residential rate plans most households end up on in 2026, the peak windows that drive your bill, and the cases where switching plans actually saves money versus the cases where it does not.

Why PG&E rates are higher than almost any utility in the lower 48

PG&E's residential rates have risen roughly 75 percent over the last decade, faster than any major US investor-owned utility. Three structural forces explain almost all of it. First, the cost of wildfire-mitigation work (vegetation management, undergrounding around 10,000 miles of distribution line under the Wildfire Mitigation Plan filed with the CPUC, and Public Safety Power Shutoff infrastructure) flows into rates through a series of GRC (General Rate Case) and WMCE (Wildfire Mitigation and Catastrophic Events) authorizations. Second, the cost of buying clean power under California's 60 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard by 2030, plus integration costs for the rapidly growing distributed-solar fleet, push the supply portion of the bill up. Third, the wires themselves (transformers, substations, the new bidirectional inverters needed for higher solar penetration) need replacement and modernisation at a pace that compounds capital cost recovery.

None of those forces is going away in 2026. The CPUC's 2023-2026 GRC settlement, finalised in late 2023, authorised PG&E to recover roughly $13.5 billion in 2023 alone, with annual escalators baked in. That is the dollar number behind the cents-per-kWh you see on the bill. Whether you find that a fair allocation of cost is a policy question; from a household-budgeting standpoint, the rates are what they are, and the question becomes which plan minimises your bill given how you actually use power.

E-1 (legacy tiered): the plan most long-time customers grew up on

E-1 is the historical default. Every kWh up to the climate-zone baseline allowance (which varies by your zone and by summer versus winter) is billed at the Tier 1 rate, currently around 39 cents per kWh. Everything above the baseline is Tier 2, currently around 51 cents per kWh. There is no time-of-day differentiation: a kWh at 2am costs the same as a kWh at 6pm. PG&E still allows existing customers to opt back to E-1 even after being defaulted onto E-TOU-C; new connections cannot start on E-1, but they can switch after the first bill.

E-1 still wins for a specific household profile: low total monthly usage (under the baseline allowance), no EV, no electric heat pump, and no realistic ability to shift load to overnight or midday. A 600 kWh-per-month apartment in Climate Zone 3 with a winter baseline of about 400 kWh will see most of the bill priced at Tier 1, and the absence of a peak premium makes E-1 cheaper than any TOU plan. For larger homes that always blow through baseline, the math reverses: every kWh ends up at Tier 2 (about 51 cents), and a TOU plan with a midday off-peak window almost always beats that.

E-TOU-C: the new default, 4-9pm peak every day

E-TOU-C is the rate PG&E rolled to most residential customers in the 2021-2022 transition. It has a peak window of 4pm to 9pm every day of the year (weekends included), priced at roughly 50 cents per kWh; off-peak runs at about 41 cents. There is also a small baseline credit, which slightly reduces the off-peak portion if your usage stays within baseline. The plan is intentionally a soft transition: the peak versus off-peak spread is only about 9 cents, so households that do nothing different see modest changes either way.

Where E-TOU-C wins is for households that can pre-cool the home before 4pm and run laundry, dishwasher and any other discretionary loads before 4pm or after 9pm. A smart thermostat with a programmable pre-cool ramp (lower the setpoint to 70 at 3pm, then let it drift to 76 between 4 and 9) plus a habit of running the dishwasher on a delayed-start timer will typically cut the peak-window kWh in half, and that compounds across a year. For households that already have an EV, however, E-TOU-C is rarely the right answer: the difference between E-TOU-C off-peak and the deeper off-peak on EV2-A is meaningful enough that the EV-specific plan usually wins.

E-TOU-D: more peak risk, more off-peak reward

E-TOU-D has a shorter peak window (5pm to 8pm weekdays only) but a sharper price differential. Peak runs about 53 cents, off-peak around 35, and the weekends are entirely off-peak. For a household with strong load-shifting discipline, E-TOU-D produces a lower bill than E-TOU-C because the cheaper off-peak rate compounds over many more hours per month. The downside is that the peak window is harder to avoid completely (dinner cooking, after-school routines, an AC system fighting the heat of the day) so if you cannot reliably keep peak usage low, E-TOU-D will be more expensive than E-TOU-C.

A practical filter: if your home is south- or west-facing without much shade, has no rooftop solar, and uses central AC heavily in summer, E-TOU-D is risky. If your home is shaded or has solar (especially with a battery that can carry the peak), E-TOU-D is usually better than E-TOU-C. PG&E's online rate-comparison tool uses your last 12 months of interval data to model the bill on each plan, which is the right way to make this decision rather than estimating from first principles.

EV2-A: the EV household's default

EV2-A is the residential TOU rate intended for households with at least one electric vehicle. It applies to whole-house usage, not just the EV charger. The structure has three periods: peak (4pm to 9pm every day, about 62 cents per kWh), partial-peak (3pm to 4pm and 9pm to midnight weekdays, about 51 cents) and off-peak (midnight to 3pm weekdays, weekends outside the peak window, about 31 cents). There is no baseline credit and no tier structure: every kWh is priced at the period it lands in.

The math for a typical 12,000-mile-per-year EV looks like this. EPA-rated efficiency for a 2024 Model 3 RWD is about 25 kWh per 100 miles. That means 12,000 miles requires roughly 3,000 kWh per year of charging. If you charge entirely off-peak on EV2-A at 31 cents per kWh, the annual fuelling cost is about $930. Compare that to charging on E-1 (where most charging would hit Tier 2 at 51 cents, since charging blows through baseline) for about $1,530 per year, or to gasoline at $4.25 per gallon and 30 mpg, which costs about $1,700 per year. EV2-A saves an EV household between $600 and $900 per year versus E-1, and even more versus gas, on the EV fuel alone.

Two cautions before switching to EV2-A. First, if you cook dinner with electric appliances, run laundry after dinner or charge the EV before 9pm by accident, the 62-cent peak rate can erase the savings quickly. Second, EV2-A loses to E-1 for households without an EV: the peak rate is too punishing if you have any meaningful 4-9pm load and no overnight charging to offset it. PG&E requires proof of EV ownership (or signed attestation) to enroll, and they audit periodically.

CARE and FERA: the income-tested discounts

California's CARE program (California Alternate Rates for Energy) gives qualifying low-income households a 35 percent discount on every bill, applied as a single line credit, on whatever rate plan they are on. Eligibility is income-tested against limits that scale with household size (about $39,440 for a one or two-person household, escalating from there); enrollment is via self-certification on the PG&E CARE portal, with periodic verification. FERA (Family Electric Rate Assistance) applies the same logic for households with three or more occupants whose income exceeds CARE limits but still falls under a higher tier, with an 18 percent discount.

A household on CARE saves the equivalent of one tier on the legacy rate, which in dollar terms is several hundred dollars per year for a typical bill. Both programs auto-renew but require re-certification roughly every two to four years. Households that recently changed jobs, retired, or had a baby may newly qualify; it is worth checking the income limits at any life event because the discounts apply retroactively from the enrollment date.

Wildfire mitigation and the line items you cannot avoid

The bill itself includes several non-shoppable charges that drive the per-kWh figure higher than the headline supply rate would suggest. The wildfire-related charges are broken out variously: WMCE (Wildfire Mitigation and Catastrophic Events) is a small adder, but the bulk of wildfire cost recovery is embedded in the general rates. Other line items include the DWR Bond Charge (a legacy debt from the 2001 energy crisis, still being paid down), the Public Purpose Programs (PPP) surcharge, the Energy Cost Recovery Amount (ECRA) and the Nuclear Decommissioning Charge for Diablo Canyon.

Most rate-comparison tools (PG&E's own bill calculator, the CPUC's portal) show you a blended per-kWh number that already includes these. If you are comparing PG&E bills to a sister utility (SCE, SDG&E, or to a different state's utility) using the headline supply rate alone, you will materially understate the all-in cost. Always compare on the total bill divided by total kWh, which is the cents-per-kWh figure we use throughout the rest of this site.

Community Choice Aggregators in PG&E territory

Roughly 80 percent of PG&E's residential territory is now covered by a Community Choice Aggregator, the structures California enabled under AB 117 (2002) and AB 1110 (2016). A CCA buys the generation portion of your electricity on behalf of all residents of its territory; PG&E continues to own the wires, send the bill and respond to outages. The CCA typically prices generation at a small discount to PG&E and offers a 100 percent renewable upgrade option. The big CCAs include MCE (Marin and parts of the East Bay), East Bay Community Energy / Ava Community Energy (Oakland and surrounding), Peninsula Clean Energy (San Mateo County), Silicon Valley Clean Energy (Santa Clara County south of Mountain View), San Jose Clean Energy (San Jose) and Sonoma Clean Power (Sonoma and Mendocino).

When a CCA launches, residents are auto-enrolled with an opt-out window. The bill still arrives from PG&E, but a Generation Credit appears showing the CCA replacing PG&E's generation charge with its own. For most households the all-in cost is a couple of percent lower on the default product and a couple of percent higher on the 100-percent-renewable option. The Power Cost Indifference Adjustment (PCIA) charge, an exit fee designed to ensure CCA customers do not stick PG&E with stranded long-term contracts, partly offsets the supply-side savings; it has been controversial and is recalculated annually by the CPUC.

Picking the right plan: a practical decision tree

Use PG&E's online rate-analysis tool first, which models your actual 12-month interval data against every plan. The framework below summarises the conclusion that tool will reach for most households. Households below baseline with no EV and no solar: stay on or switch back to E-1. Households at or above baseline with no EV, with mild AC needs and the ability to shift laundry and cooking: switch to E-TOU-C and use a smart thermostat. Households with solar and battery: E-TOU-D, because the battery can carry the 5-8pm peak. Households with at least one EV: switch to EV2-A and schedule charging to start at midnight. Households that newly qualify for CARE or FERA: enroll first; the income discount applies on top of whichever plan you pick.

Sources and further reading

• PG&E residential rate plans (rate schedules and current per-period prices)
• CPUC (rate-case decisions, NEM 3.0, CCA orders)
• EIA Electric Power Monthly (state and IOU level retail rates)
• California state electricity cost page
• NEM 3.0 net-metering math
• EV TOU rate plans across the major utilities
• How we source and verify these numbers

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