Hey fellow OC neighbors,

I am not selling anything, affiliated with any company, or shilling for SCE. In an ideal world, I believe electricity is a public good that should be run as a public/regulated system rather than an investor-owned, profit-driven utility. My only goal here is neighbor-to-neighbor education: showing how to use the data and tools already sitting in your SCE account portal to keep more money in your pocket.

I see constant posts in this sub venting about astronomical power bills, but almost none of them include actual usage figures, square footage, or rate plan breakdowns. A $600 bill means very different things depending on whether you used 800 kWh or 2,500 kWh.

To show what’s possible with basic rate optimization, here is my own case study from the current heat wave:

* Location: Orange County
* Home: \~1,400 sq ft, 3-bedroom townhome
* Solar: None
* A/C Usage: Kept turned on practically 24/7 during this cycle (on/running as needed, not constantly compressor-cycling 24/7)

Usage:

* Billing Period: Aug 13 – Sep 14 (4 days left)
* Total Usage: 577 kWh (\~20.6 kWh/day)
* Projected Bill: $195

Pre-Cooling & Rate Structures

Take a look at the attached daily usage chart from SCE:

* Off-Peak (Green): Lowest rates.
* Mid-Peak (Yellow): Moderate rates.
* On-Peak (Orange/Red): Peak pricing - by far the most expensive electricity of the day.
* Weekend/Holiday (Pale Yellow): Off-peak structure.

Notice that nearly all of the daily bar height is Off-Peak (green), with only tiny slivers during On-Peak.

I run a pre-cooling schedule: dropping the thermostat low during the morning and early afternoon when rates are cheap, cooling down the thermal mass of the home. When the 4:00 PM – 9:00 PM peak window hits, the thermostat bumps up several degrees. The A/C rarely kicks on during the most expensive hours of the day, and the house coasts on the pre-cooled air.

If you log into your portal, SCE has a rate comparison tool, but keep one big limitation in mind: it calculates your costs strictly on your *past* usage patterns. If your historical behavior had you blasting the A/C at 6:00 PM on a standard flat tier, a Time-Of-Use (TOU) plan might look more expensive on paper. But if you are willing to shift high-draw appliances (A/C, laundry, dishwasher) outside of peak hours, TOU plus pre-cooling can save significant money.

Insulation, exposure, layout, and household size vary wildly, but before writing off a crazy bill as unavoidable, log in and look at:

1. Your total kWh (not just the dollar amount)
2. Your current rate plan (Tiered vs. TOU-D-4-9PM vs. TOU-D-5-8PM, etc.)
3. When your spikes are happening throughout the day

Sharing real numbers helps everyone figure out whether they have an efficiency issue, a rate plan mismatch, or just standard SCE baseline pain.

Edit: Also including some additional detail that has come up several times in the comments:

* Thermostat Settings & Pre-Cooling Schedule:
   * Overnight: 69°F (we like sleeping cool)
   * Daytime / Off-Peak: 73°F (pre-cooling the house before rates spike)
   * On-Peak (4–9 PM): Set to 85°F to effectively lock out the compressor during peak hours. The house usually cruises through the late afternoon in the mid-to-high 70s, though during the worst of this heat wave, it has hit 80 inside.
* The Climate Credit: Yes, there is a $36 California Climate Credit applied to this projected cycle. Even without it, the bill lands at \~$231 for nearly full-time cooling in late-summer heat.
* HVAC & Window Specs: Last year we converted our old gas furnace to a fully electric 3-ton, 19 SEER2 heat pump (paired with a smart communicating thermostat and heavily subsidized by state rebates/federal credits). The air handler is in the attic to pull rising hot air. We also upgraded to dual-pane, low-E windows last year, which make a difference in holding the pre-cooled air.
* Townhome Age & Insulation: Built in the 1980s with standard/average insulation. Only our uninsulated garage shares a wall with a neighbor (so shared walls aren't acting as a big thermal buffer), though mature exterior trees do give us partial shade. Both of us work from home full-time, so computers, monitors, and gear run all day.
* Location, Coastal Baseline & TOU Baseline Credit: We're in Costa Mesa (SCE Region 6 / Cool Coastal). For context on TOU plans (like TOU-D-4-9PM or TOU-D-5-8PM), baseline doesn't work as a "cheap tier 1 vs. expensive tier 2" cutoff like standard tiered billing does. Instead, it determines your Baseline Credit - a flat discount per kWh applied to your usage up to a monthly baseline cap. Because Region 6 has a low summer baseline allocation (\~11.4 kWh/day compared to 14–19+ kWh/day inland in Regions 9/10), our monthly allowance for that discount is quite small. Once you burn through those discounted kWh, every additional unit is billed at full TOU price, which makes avoiding expensive on-peak rates even more critical to keeping bills low. The way these bills work is insanely complicated.

OC Energy Bill Reality Check - how my 1400 sqft townhome bill is under $200, despite running A/C the entire month