SCE rates 2026: cost per kWh by plan

Southern California Edison is the second-largest electric utility in California, serving about 15 million people through roughly 5 million accounts across central, coastal and southern California. Its average all-in residential rate is about 35 cents per kWh in 2026, below PG&E but well above the US average. This page walks through the tiered Schedule D plan, the default TOU-D-4-9PM, the narrower TOU-D-5-8PM, and TOU-D-PRIME for electrified homes, with current cents per kWh, peak windows and example bills.

The four SCE residential rate plans

SCE residential customers choose among four plans. Tiered Schedule D is the legacy non-time-varying plan, priced by how much you use rather than when. The three time-of-use plans (TOU-D-4-9PM, TOU-D-5-8PM and TOU-D-PRIME) price power by the hour, charging much more during the late-afternoon and evening peak when the grid is most stressed and solar output has fallen off. Since SCE's default transition, new residential connections land on TOU-D-4-9PM unless they opt out, but every household can switch plans once per year with no penalty.

The cents-per-kWh figures throughout this page are SCE's blended per-period rates effective January 2026, which already fold in the generation, delivery and regulatory components of the bill. They are CPUC-approved tariff figures and update on roughly an annual cadence, with smaller quarterly true-ups; check SCE's published rate schedules for the exact current number before making a switching decision.

Tiered Schedule D: the baseline-allowance plan

Schedule D charges about 31 cents per kWh for everything within your monthly baseline allowance (Tier 1) and about 42 cents for everything above it (Tier 2). The baseline allowance is a per-day kWh quantity that varies by climate zone and season; inland zones with heavy summer cooling get a larger allowance, but the gap rarely keeps a large inland home in Tier 1 through July and August. There is no time-of-use signal, so a kilowatt-hour costs the same at 2am as at 6pm. For households that cannot or will not shift load away from the early evening, that simplicity often produces the lowest annual bill of any SCE plan.

A coastal household using 500 kWh a month, mostly within baseline, pays roughly $155 to $170 on Schedule D. An inland household running central AC through the summer and using 1,200 kWh, much of it in Tier 2, pays closer to $450 to $480 in a peak month. The variation across SCE territory is enormous, driven almost entirely by AC load in the inland valleys and the high desert.

TOU-D-4-9PM: the default plan

TOU-D-4-9PM is the plan most SCE customers are on by default. In summer (June through September), weekday power from 4pm to 9pm is on-peak at about 58 cents per kWh; all other hours, plus all weekend hours, are off-peak at about 34 cents (about 24 cents after the 10 cent per kWh baseline credit). In winter the same 4pm to 9pm weekday window becomes mid-peak at about 51 cents, with off-peak around 37 cents and an overnight super-off-peak around 33 cents (about 27 and 23 cents respectively after the baseline credit).

The plan rewards moving discretionary load (laundry, dishwasher, pool pump, EV charging, pre-cooling the house before 4pm) out of the five-hour peak window. A household that runs almost nothing between 4pm and 9pm comes out ahead of Schedule D; a household that cooks, runs AC hard and does laundry in that window can pay more. The single most valuable habit on this plan is a smart thermostat that pre-cools to a lower setpoint by 3:30pm and then coasts the house up through the peak.

TOU-D-5-8PM: the narrow-peak alternative

TOU-D-5-8PM trades a steeper peak price for a shorter peak window. Summer on-peak (weekdays 5pm to 8pm) runs about 74 cents per kWh, materially higher than the 58 cents on the 4-9PM plan, but the window is only three hours instead of five, and the off-peak rate is essentially identical at about 34 cents. The math favours this plan only for households that can genuinely keep load out of the narrow 5-8pm slot. If you can shift dinner cooking, laundry and any EV charging clear of 5-8pm, the shorter window saves money; if you have unavoidable early-evening load, the 74-cent peak punishes it harder than the 4-9PM plan would.

TOU-D-PRIME: the plan for electrified homes

TOU-D-PRIME is designed for households that have already electrified: an EV, rooftop solar, a home battery, or a heat-pump HVAC or water heater. It carries a fixed basic charge of 79 cents per day (about $24 in a 30-day month) and offers no baseline credit, in exchange for lower per-kWh rates that reward heavy off-peak and super-off-peak usage. The fixed daily charge is the catch: a household that does not actually shift much load, or that lacks the EV or battery to exploit the lower rates, pays the $24 a month and gets little back. But for a home that charges an EV overnight and runs a battery through the 4-9pm peak, TOU-D-PRIME typically produces the lowest bill of any SCE plan.

The decision tree is straightforward. No EV, no battery, modest evening load: stay on Schedule D. New customer with mild load and the discipline to dodge 4-9pm: TOU-D-4-9PM. Able to fully avoid a narrow 5-8pm window: consider TOU-D-5-8PM. Own an EV plus solar or a battery: TOU-D-PRIME. SCE's rate-plan comparison tool models your actual interval data against every plan and will usually confirm this framework for your specific usage.

CARE, FERA and the income-tested discounts

SCE's CARE program (California Alternate Rates for Energy) gives income-qualified households about a 32 percent discount on the bill, applied as a line credit on whatever plan they are on, along with a reduced basic charge. Eligibility is income-tested against state limits that scale with household size and update annually. FERA (Family Electric Rate Assistance) applies an 18 percent discount for households of three or more whose income exceeds CARE limits but still falls under a higher threshold. Both enroll via self-certification on SCE's CARE/FERA portal, with periodic verification, and the discount applies from the enrollment date, so it is worth checking the income limits after any job change, retirement or new child.

Community Choice Aggregators in SCE territory

California does not let residential customers shop for an independent retail supplier, but much of SCE's territory is now covered by a Community Choice Aggregator. The largest is Clean Power Alliance, serving much of Los Angeles and Ventura counties; smaller programs include Apple Valley Choice Energy, Pomona Choice Energy, Rancho Mirage Energy Authority and others. A CCA buys the generation portion of your electricity on behalf of all residents of its territory, while SCE keeps the wires, sends the bill and handles outages. When a CCA launches, residents are auto-enrolled with an opt-out window; the all-in cost is typically a percent or two below SCE's default, with a 100 percent renewable upgrade option priced slightly higher. A Power Charge Indifference Adjustment (an exit fee recalculated annually by the CPUC) partly offsets the supply-side saving.

SCE versus PG&E and SDG&E

Among California's three big investor-owned utilities, SCE sits in the middle. SDG&E in San Diego has the highest residential rates in the state (often above 45 cents per kWh all-in); PG&E in northern and central California runs north of 40 cents; SCE is the least expensive of the three at about 35 cents, though still nearly double the US average. The structural drivers are the same across all three: wildfire mitigation and grid-hardening cost recovery, the cost of meeting the state renewable portfolio standard, and tight climate-zone baseline allowances. When comparing across utilities, always use total bill divided by total kWh rather than the headline supply rate, because the non-shoppable delivery and regulatory charges differ materially.

Sources and further reading

• SCE 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)
• PG&E full rate plans
• 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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