4,000 Southern California Homes Will Test Zero-Cost Daytime Electricity
A two-year pilot aims to find out whether cheaper midday power can change how households use energy.
Clean Power Alliance (CPA) is launching a program that gives more than 4,000 Southern California households a $0-per-kilowatt-hour generation rate from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day.
CPA is a not-for-profit electricity provider serving 38 communities across Los Angeles and Ventura counties.
The pilot is called TOU-SMART, and it's a research collaboration with UCLA.
How the rate works
During those daytime hours, participants pay no CPA generation charge.
Prices go up elsewhere to nudge behavior, with generation charges already higher from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Charges will also rise slightly overnight, from 9 p.m. to 8 a.m.
The goal is to shift flexible energy use to daytime, when solar power is most abundant.
Think EV charging, laundry, dishwashing, pool pumps, and heating and cooling.
What could you save?
CPA estimates that households could save hundreds of dollars a year by shifting some overnight use to the daytime.
Moving some use out of the 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. window could save even more, according to the utility.
Those figures are CPA's own estimates, and the pilot itself is designed to test how people actually respond.
The announcement also covers only the generation charge, so it doesn't say how other parts of a bill might be affected.
A safety net for participants
Participants get bill protection, so no one should end up paying more for joining.
If a household would have paid less on its previous TOU-D-PRIME rate, CPA will credit the difference at the end of each 12-month period.
Customers can also leave the pilot at any time.
Home EV charging customers may find extra savings by enrolling in CPA's EV SmartCharge program.
What researchers want to learn
The study will track whether people actually change when they use electricity, and whether those changes last.
Participants will receive different kinds of messages, with some focused on saving money and others on environmental benefits.
Researchers will compare which approach works better.
They'll also look at how results vary by household, including EV ownership, pool pumps, heat pumps, housing characteristics and climate.
UCLA's Magali Delmas of the Anderson School of Management and the Institute of the Environment and Sustainability helped refine the study design, starting in fall 2025.
Delmas called the pilot a rare chance to run a rigorous field experiment on how households respond to a strong daytime price signal.
She says the findings could help shape the daytime rates expected as solar becomes a bigger share of California's grid.
Why it matters
California keeps adding renewable energy, including solar that peaks in the middle of the day.
Time-based rates can steer customers toward those hours, but it's still unclear how much people will shift and for how long.
CPA CEO Ted Bardacke said the pilot is about testing the idea in the real world and learning from the results.
Those lessons could guide future rates and programs aimed at making clean energy more affordable.
Sources: Clean Power Alliance press release, "Clean Power Alliance Tests Zero-Cost Daytime Electricity" (Oct. 1, 2026), and The Cool Down's original coverage by Kim LaCapria (Oct. 9, 2026).
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