A home time-of-use rate sheet is a dense document, and most of it does not matter for charging an EV. Four lines do: the price in the cheapest window, the price you would pay if you miss it, the fixed monthly charges, and the add-on riders that the headline price leaves out. This guide shows where to find each one on three real, current rate plans (PG&E's EV2-A, Duke Energy Florida's RST-1, and Georgia Power's Overnight Advantage) and which number goes into which box of the home charging cost calculator.
Your utility's time-of-use rate sheet answers one question that matters for an EV: what does a kilowatt-hour cost at the time my car will actually charge? The sheet is usually two to seven pages, most of it is eligibility language and billing rules, and the answer is in a handful of lines. This guide shows which lines, using three current rate plans from three different utilities, and which numbers to type into the home charging cost calculator.
If you do not yet know whether your utility offers a time-of-use plan or when its cheap hours are, start with best time to charge your EV at home, then come back here with the sheet in hand.
1. The price in the cheapest window. This goes in the calculator's "Off-peak rate" box. Use the lowest per-kWh price on the sheet that your charger can realistically reach, which is usually an overnight or midday window.
2. The price you pay when you miss it. This goes in the "Peak rate" box. Sheets with three or more price periods do not map to two boxes cleanly, so pick the price you would most likely hit on a day the charge slips outside the cheap window. If your car is scheduled and plugged in every night, that is a small share of your charging, and the "Percent charged off-peak" box is where you say how small.
3. The fixed monthly charges. A customer charge, a base services charge, or a minimum bill is billed whether or not you charge. The calculator's rate boxes are per kWh only, so keep these out of them. They matter when you compare plans, because a plan with a lower per-kWh price and a higher fixed charge can lose to your current rate.
4. The riders. The headline price is often not the full price. Fuel cost recovery, franchise fees, taxes and similar adders are billed on top and are listed on separate sheets or in a "related tariffs" list. They change more often than the base rate, so find them before you trust a comparison.
PG&E's Home Charging rate, filed as Electric Schedule EV2 and billed as EV2-A, applies one rate to your whole home, car included, by default. The filed rate sheet, in the rates effective June 1, 2026, lists three total energy prices per kWh:
| Period | Summer (June to September) | Winter (October to May) |
|---|---|---|
| Peak | $0.53809 | $0.41099 |
| Part-peak | $0.42760 | $0.39428 |
| Off-peak | $0.22558 | $0.22558 |
The periods are the same every day, including weekends and holidays: peak is 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., part-peak is 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. to midnight, and off-peak is every other hour, so midnight to 3 p.m.
Where each number goes: off-peak rate is $0.22558. For the peak rate box, the summer peak of $0.53809 is the conservative choice, since a missed charge most often lands in the evening. The sheet also lists a base services charge per customer per day, by income tier: $0.19713, $0.39688 or $0.79343 (Tier 3, for households that do not qualify for the lower-income tiers, works out to roughly $24 a month). These are bundled-service prices; if a community choice aggregator supplies your generation, your generation prices differ, so read the rates on your own bill. PG&E uses that charge to lower the per-kWh energy prices, which is why its prices are not directly comparable to a plan without one. Leave it out of the calculator's rate boxes and count it when you compare plans.
One eligibility line to look for: customers whose use over the last 12 months exceeds 800 percent of their baseline allowance cannot stay on EV2-A.
Duke's Residential Service Optional Time of Use rate, Rate Schedule RST-1 (the sheet in effect from October 1, 2026), has three price periods, and the price table is short:
| Period | Non-fuel energy charge |
|---|---|
| On-peak | 11.155 cents per kWh |
| Off-peak | 8.263 cents per kWh |
| Discount | 5.013 cents per kWh |
The sheet also lists a $14.43 customer charge per month and a $30 minimum monthly bill. The periods are defined below the table. On-peak is 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays year-round, plus 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekdays from December through February, excluding six holidays. The discount period is midnight to 6 a.m. every day from March through November, and midnight to 3 a.m. every day from December through February. Everything else is off-peak.
Where each number goes: the discount price of 5.013 cents is the off-peak box, and the 8.263 cents off-peak price is a sensible peak box value, because for most households a missed overnight window means charging at the standard off-peak price. A charge that slips into the weekday 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. window, or the winter 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. window, pays 11.155 cents. Two details change your answer: the discount window is only 6 hours in most of the year and only 3 in winter, so a long charge on a big battery runs past it, and the energy charge is labeled "non-fuel." The fuel cost recovery factor is a separate line, set on Duke's billing adjustment sheets, so the table above understates the real per-kWh price.
Georgia Power's plan page (not the filed tariff, which the page links as a PDF) lists three prices:
| Period | Hours | Price per kWh |
|---|---|---|
| Super off-peak | Every day, 11 p.m. to 7 a.m. | $0.023 |
| Off-peak | All other hours, plus weekends, July 4th and Labor Day | $0.104 |
| On-peak | June to September, weekdays, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m. | $0.303 |
The plan carries a 12-month commitment and a $30 new account fee.
Where each number goes: $0.023 is the off-peak box. For the peak box, the answer depends on the month. Outside the summer, a missed overnight charge costs $0.104, and only from June through September on weekday afternoons does the $0.303 price apply. The page's list of "Related Tariffs, Taxes, and Fees" names a time-of-use fuel cost recovery rider, a municipal franchise fee, a local tax adjustment, and environmental compliance and demand-side management riders. The headline prices above do not include them, so a real bill per kWh will be higher than the table.
Say you charge about 300 kWh a month, roughly 1,000 miles of driving, and 90 percent of it happens in the cheap window (a stretch for Duke in winter, when the discount window is only three hours). In the calculator, turn on time-of-use pricing and enter the cheap price, the miss price and 90 percent. Type the values: the slider ends are only a guide and some of these prices fall outside them, and the calculator rounds slider positions, so its answer can differ by a fraction of a cent from the hand math below. The blended price is 0.9 times the cheap price plus 0.1 times the miss price:
These three numbers are not a ranking of the utilities. The Duke and Georgia Power figures leave out riders that the PG&E total rate already includes, and the plans differ in fixed charges. The point is the method: cheap price, miss price, share, and then a separate check of the fixed charges and riders for the plan you are comparing. For a state-level comparison of what charging costs on average, see the cheapest and most expensive states to charge an EV at home.
Read the sheet's eligibility and term lines. Some plans require a 12-month commitment or limit how often you can change plans, some bar customers with very high use, and some are not available if you have solar net metering. Rate sheets are revised often, so confirm the effective date at the top of the sheet you are reading and compare it to your latest bill.
Last factually verified: November 1, 2026. Sources: PG&E Electric Schedule EV2 (Sheet 2, rates effective June 1, 2026) and PG&E's electric vehicle rate plans page; Duke Energy Florida Rate Schedule RST-1 (Forty-First Revised Sheet No. 6.140, effective October 1, 2026); Georgia Power's Overnight Advantage rate plan page. Rider values for Duke and Georgia Power were not added; read them from the utility's current billing adjustment sheets.
evcharginghelp.com is editorially independent and receives no compensation from any company mentioned.
This article draws on 4 primary sources, cited inline where each figure appears. We re-check the numbers when incentive amounts, regulations, or product availability change.
Last updated Nov 1, 2026
Using EIA residential rates averaged over August 2025 through July 2026, driving 1,000 miles on home electricity costs about $36 in North Dakota and about $125 in Hawaii, with the national average near $52. California is second most expensive at about $95. The cheapest ten states sit between 12.5 and 13.9 cents per kWh; the priciest ten run from about 24 cents to nearly 44.
The 30C tax credit gave homeowners 30% of EV charger purchase and installation costs, capped at $1,000 per item. It was nonrefundable, so you needed federal tax liability to use it, and it was only available if your home sat in an IRS-designated eligible census tract, a disqualifier that caught many suburban addresses. The credit ended June 30, 2026 under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. ENERGY STAR certification was not required for the residential credit. It was claimed on IRS Form 8911.
State and utility incentives for home EV charging vary widely and, with the federal 30C tax credit now ended, are the incentives that remain. The four best places to look are the AFDC Laws and Incentives database, the DSIRE database, your utility's EV page, and your state energy office. Demand-response and managed-charging programs pay ongoing bill credits for letting the utility shift your charging. Always verify a program is currently funded and confirm whether it requires pre-approval before you buy.
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