Find Your Cheapest PG&E Rate Plan

PG&E has a tool that compares your rate plans, but it makes you log in, and it nudges you toward the plan PG&E prefers, not always the cheapest one for you. You can figure out the answer yourself in a few minutes once you understand how the four plans differ and what kind of household each one wins for.

I simulate these plans against real usage data constantly. Here’s the practical version.

The four plans, with real rates

PG&E offers four residential plans worth considering. These are the rates effective March 2026.

E-1 (Tiered). One price all day, stepping up after you pass your monthly baseline allowance.

Tier	Rate
Tier 1 (up to baseline)	$0.33/kWh
Tier 2 (above baseline)	$0.41/kWh

E-TOU-C. Time-of-use, peak 4 to 9 p.m. every day, plus a baseline credit of about $0.08/kWh on usage within your allowance.

Period	Summer	Winter
Peak (4 to 9 p.m.)	$0.52	$0.40
Off-peak	$0.40	$0.37

E-TOU-D. Time-of-use, but peak is only 5 to 8 p.m. on weekdays. Weekends are entirely off-peak.

Period	Summer	Winter
Peak (5 to 8 p.m. weekdays)	$0.48	$0.39
Off-peak	$0.34	$0.35

EV2-A. The home charging plan, cheapest overnight rate PG&E offers, highest evening peak.

Period	Summer	Winter
Off-peak (midnight to 3 p.m.)	$0.23	$0.23
Peak (4 to 9 p.m.)	$0.54	$0.41

Which one wins for you

The plans aren’t better or worse in the abstract. They’re better or worse for your usage shape. Here’s the quick read.

Choose E-1 if you use power steadily through the day and can’t or won’t shift load to off-peak. With no time-of-use penalty, a flat plan protects you when a big chunk of your usage lands in the expensive evening window. It’s also the simplest. The downside is there’s no cheap window to take advantage of, so your ceiling for savings is low.

Choose E-TOU-C if your evenings (4 to 9 p.m.) are relatively light and you can run major loads earlier or later. The baseline credit helps lower-usage homes. This is the best fit for a lot of households that don’t have an EV.

Choose E-TOU-D if your weekday evenings between 5 and 8 p.m. are light and you do a lot on weekends. The peak window is shorter (three hours, weekdays only) and weekends are fully off-peak, which rewards a weekend-heavy household.

Choose EV2-A if you have an EV, battery, or heat pump and can shift big loads overnight. The $0.23 off-peak rate is unbeatable for charging, but only if you keep load out of the 4 to 9 p.m. peak. I cover this case in detail in the best PG&E plan for an EV.

The mistake that costs the most

The single most expensive habit is staying on a time-of-use plan while running heavy load during the peak window. A home on E-TOU-C that cranks the AC from 4 to 9 p.m. every summer day is paying $0.52/kWh for the most expensive electricity PG&E sells, when the same usage shifted earlier would cost $0.40. If you can’t shift it, E-1’s flat rate may actually be cheaper for you, which is the opposite of what most “switch to TOU” advice assumes.

This is why a blanket recommendation is worthless. The right plan flips based on a single factor: how much of your usage you can keep out of the evening peak.

How to check without logging in

You don’t need PG&E’s portal. You need two things: your usage pattern (how many kWh you use, and when), and the plan rates above. The problem is doing the math across a full year of hourly usage by hand is genuinely hard, because seasons, baseline tiers, and peak windows all interact.

That’s what the rate-plan comparison tool is for. It runs your actual usage against every plan and ranks them by annual cost, no login. If you upload a bill, the Energy Advisor reads your usage shape and tells you the cheapest plan plus how much you’d save by switching.

For the timing details that make any TOU plan pay off, see PG&E peak hours and California TOU rate plans explained. If your bill is high no matter the plan, why PG&E is so expensive explains the part you can’t change.