Salt River Project Peak Hours Explained

Salt River Project runs three distinct seasonal schedules on its standard residential TOU plan, and the winter one looks nothing like the summer one. Winter has two separate peak windows, morning and evening. Summer collapses into one long afternoon block at a much higher rate.

E-26: SRP’s Standard Residential TOU Plan

Season	Months	Peak hours	Peak rate	Off-peak rate
Winter	Jan–Apr, Nov–Dec	5–9am and 5–9pm	11.5¢/kWh	8.9¢/kWh
Shoulder	May–Jun, Sep–Oct	2–8pm	22.7¢/kWh	9.0¢/kWh
Summer	Jul–Aug	2–8pm	25.9¢/kWh	9.1¢/kWh

Winter’s spread is genuinely mild, an 11.5¢ peak against an 8.9¢ off-peak is barely a 29% gap. Then, starting in May, the structure flips entirely: the two morning-and-evening windows merge into one 6-hour afternoon block, and the rate more than doubles. By July and August, peak costs nearly 3x off-peak.

SRP sells over a dozen residential TOU and demand-based variants (E-21, E-22, E-25, E-27, and EV-specific plans among them); E-26, labeled “Standard” on SRP’s own rate sheet, is the plain energy-only version without a demand charge and the clearest starting point for comparison.

What Shifting Is Worth, in Dollars

Take a summer afternoon: dishwasher and laundry, about 4 kWh, run inside the 2–8pm peak window.

At peak: 4 kWh × $0.259 = $1.04 Same load shifted to after 8pm: 4 kWh × $0.091 = $0.36

That’s $0.68 saved per shifted routine, a 65% cut. Over 60 days in July and August alone, that’s roughly $41 just for the two hottest months; extending the same discipline through the May-June and September-October shoulder season (using the slightly lower shoulder rate) adds meaningfully more across a full 5-6 month stretch.

Winter Isn’t Worth the Effort, Summer Is

Given how small the winter gap is, there’s little reason to reorganize a household’s schedule from November through April. The entire case for behavior change on this plan lives in the May-through-October stretch, and especially July and August, when the afternoon rate triples relative to off-peak.

Should You Switch to E-26?

This plan rewards households that can specifically avoid the 2–8pm window during Arizona’s hottest months, when air conditioning naturally runs hardest anyway. If pre-cooling before 2pm and easing off the AC during the peak window is workable for your home’s insulation and comfort tolerance, the summer savings are substantial. If you need the AC running hard through the entire afternoon regardless, run the comparison against SRP’s standard rate before switching.

For more ways to cut the bill beyond the rate plan itself, see how to lower your electric bill.

For a broader diagnosis of what’s driving a high bill in the first place, see why is my electric bill so high.