Free nights and weekends electricity plans in Texas: are they worth it?

A free nights plan gives you electricity at no energy charge inside a fixed window, usually overnight or at the weekend, and charges more than usual for every kWh outside it. Whether one is worth it comes down to a single number: the share of your kWh that falls inside the free window. For a typical home the labels themselves put that share around a third, and at a third the plan costs more than an ordinary fixed-rate plan. If you charge an electric car overnight, or the house is empty all day, it can come out ahead. Here is how to work it out for your own home.

How a time-of-use plan works

Most are sold as fixed-rate plans, with a term, an early termination fee and an Electricity Facts Label like any other. The difference is on the label’s energy-charge line: one price for daytime kWh and zero, or a deep discount, for kWh used inside the window. Reliant’s current overnight window, for example, is 9 pm to 6 am; a weekend plan’s window is the weekend, as the label defines it. Delivery charges are a separate matter. They belong to the utility that owns the wires, not to the provider, and on most labels they apply to every kWh, night included, so a “free” night kWh costs the delivery charge rather than nothing. A few plans fold delivery into one all-in price instead; the label says which. Read that line first.

The label’s three average prices, at 500, 1,000 and 2,000 kWh, have to include every recurring charge, so the provider has to assume how much of your usage falls at night to calculate them. Reliant’s current free-overnight label, as quoted by comparison sites, assumes 32% of usage in the 9 pm to 6 am window and charges about 19.4¢ for daytime energy before delivery; other labels assume 35% to 41%. If your real share is lower than the assumption, your real price is higher than every number on the label, and nothing on the label tells you so.

The break-even arithmetic

If a plan charges an energy rate of E per daytime kWh and nothing at night, the energy part of your average price is E multiplied by the share of kWh that is not at night: with a 60/40 split you pay E on 60% of your electricity and nothing on 40%, so the energy part is 0.6 × E. Delivery is then added on every kWh. Take the 19.4¢ daytime energy charge above and Oncor’s 6.8673¢ delivery charge: a Dallas–Fort Worth daytime kWh costs about 26.3¢ all in, and a night kWh about 6.9¢. Here is what that works out to at five night shares, against the cheapest flat-rate plan of 12 months or longer for a typical home this month:

The free-nights rows charge delivery on every kWh and leave out monthly charges (Oncor’s $4.06 and any base charge on the plan), which make the plan slightly dearer than shown. If a label folds delivery into its price, use its daytime price in place of the 26.3¢ here. The flat plan’s price is all in, priced month by month on a typical Dallas–Fort Worth year averaging 1,000 kWh.

The cheapest flat full-year plan for that home in November 2026 is True Value 12 from True Power at 12.0¢ all in. To match it on the free-nights plan above you would need about 73% of your kWh inside the free window. Reliant’s label assumes 32%. That is far above the 32% to 41% the labels themselves assume for a typical customer. Each percentage point of night share is worth about 0.19¢ per kWh on average, or about $23 a year on 12,000 kWh.

What a study of real meters found

A 2024 study by EnergyBot, a comparison site, compared what 501 Texas households would have paid on free-nights, bill-credit and low-cost fixed-rate plans, using 12 months of 15-minute meter data from each home. It found free-nights plans cost about 30% more over the year than a low-cost fixed plan, and bill-credit plans about 24% more. The study was industry-sponsored, so treat it as one estimate. The arithmetic above gives an even bigger gap for a home with a third of its usage at night; the plans and the homes differ, and both point the same way.

Who it can suit

• An electric car charged at home overnight. The car can be the largest single load in the house, and all of it lands inside the window. This is the clearest case.
• Nobody home in the day, with the thermostat set high while the house is empty.
• A smart thermostat that pre-cools before 6 am and lets the house drift up through the day. It works best in a well-insulated house.
• Timed loads: an electric water heater on a timer, laundry after 9 pm, a pool pump scheduled overnight.

A weekend plan suits the opposite household, one away on weekdays. Two days of seven is about 29% of the week’s hours, so even usage lands below break-even; it only works if the weekend is when you are home.

The catch

Air conditioning. It is the biggest load in a Texas home, and it runs hardest in the afternoon and early evening, when it is hottest and the window is closed. The EIA’s monthly series puts about four in ten of a Texas home’s kWh in June through September, the months when that afternoon load is largest. The 9 pm to 6 am window is nine of the day’s 24 hours, 37.5%, so even a home that used electricity evenly round the clock would sit just under 40%; a home weighted to the afternoon sits around a third, which is what the labels assume. Moving the laundry to 10 pm does little against that, because the laundry was never where the money was. And at a 19.4¢ daytime energy charge, a home that overestimates its night share by ten points pays about 1.9¢ per kWh more than it expected.

Why WattaWatt doesn’t rank these plans

Pricing a plan honestly means running your usage through its label. For a flat or bill-credit plan, twelve monthly totals are enough. For a time-of-use plan they are not: 1,000 kWh in a month could be 25% at night or 50%, and the bill differs by a third. Guessing a share would mean ranking the plan on a number we made up, so the comparison leaves free-nights and free-weekends plans out and says so.

You can price one yourself with your own data. Smart Meter Texas has your meter’s 15-minute readings going back more than a year; the usage guide explains how to set up an account and download them. Compare the result with the cheapest flat plan on the rates page for your area, using your area’s delivery charge in place of Oncor’s.

Before you sign

• Download 15-minute data from Smart Meter Texas for a summer month and a spring month.
• Add the kWh with timestamps inside the free window and divide by the month’s total. That is your share.
• Multiply the label’s daytime energy charge by one minus your share, then add your utility’s delivery charge. Compare that with the all-in price of the cheapest flat plan for your size of home.
• Check the label for how delivery is charged, the base charge, the term and the early termination fee. See how to read an EFL.
• No electric car and nobody out all day? A flat plan is almost certainly cheaper.

For every other kind of plan, upload a bill or type in your 12 monthly kWh figures, and WattaWatt prices each one sold where you live on your own year.