Off-Peak EV Charging in 2026: What Time-of-Use Rates Actually Save You

Why the clock matters more than the kWh price

A full home charge is a big, predictable electrical load — usually 30–60 kWh for a daily top-up. Utilities know this load is flexible: unlike lights or a fridge, most EV owners don't need the car charged at 6 p.m., only by the next morning. Time-of-use (TOU) and overnight rate plans exist specifically to reward shifting that kind of flexible demand away from peak hours, when the grid is under the most strain.

Ontario's 2026 rate plans

The Ontario Energy Board sets residential electricity prices once a year, on November 1, and they hold until the following October 31 — only the hours assigned to each price bucket shift with the May 1 summer schedule. Ontario households currently choose from three plans, and the spread between them is significant:

For most EV owners who can reliably charge between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m., ULO looks like the standout option: overnight power at roughly a third of the TOU off-peak price, in exchange for a higher daytime peak rate that a charging schedule simply avoids. Hydro One's rate page has the current hour boundaries for your utility, since exact on-peak/off-peak windows vary by provider.

Why ULO doesn't automatically win

ULO's cheap overnight rate is funded by a steep on-peak rate — roughly 4 to 9 p.m. on weekdays — that runs well above TOU's on-peak price. That's fine if your EV is the only large load you can shift, but it only pays off in full if you can also move most of your non-EV household usage out of that same evening window. If dinner, cooking, heating or air conditioning, and general appliance use still land in the 4–9 p.m. block regardless — which is normal for most households, since that's simply when people are home — ULO taxes all of that at its highest rate. The EV savings are real, but they can get offset or even outweighed by the rest of the bill. Households whose evening usage is hard to shift are often better off staying on standard TOU, where the peak/off-peak spread is narrower and less punishing. The practical takeaway: don't switch plans based on EV charging costs alone — look at your full bill under each plan for at least one billing cycle before committing.

What that means in dollars

Take a 60 kWh charge — roughly what a mid-size EV needs for a substantial daily top-up. On standard TOU off-peak pricing, that's about $5.90. Charged instead during a TOU on-peak window, the same energy costs closer to $12.20. Move that same charge onto a ULO overnight rate and it drops to around $2.35. Charging a few times a week, the gap between "whenever" and "scheduled overnight" adds up to several hundred dollars a year — before accounting for any provincial rebate on the charger itself.

Beyond Ontario

The specific numbers differ by province and utility, but the pattern is consistent across most of Canada: BC Hydro, Hydro-Québec, and utilities in Alberta and the Maritimes all offer some form of time-differentiated residential pricing or are rolling it out, and EV charging is consistently the single easiest household load to shift into the cheapest window. If you're outside Ontario, check your utility's website for its current TOU or overnight EV rate plan and confirm whether opting in requires a separate application.

How to actually capture the savings

Knowing the cheap hours only helps if the car actually charges during them. A 48A charger like Voltix schedules charging automatically from its app, so the session starts at the rate window you set rather than the moment you plug in after work. That's the practical difference between a rate plan that looks good on paper and one that actually lowers your bill. For a full breakdown of how fast a 48A charger fills different EVs, see our charging time guide, and if you haven't checked what charger-specific rebates apply in your province, our Incentive Finder covers that separately from electricity pricing.