The name you are looking for is Residential Time-of-Use. A lot of customers are not aware that their utility company offers Residential Time-of-Use rate plans. Some even offer multiple options, but many do not advertize it. If you are not subscribed to a Residential Time-of-Use plan, you are over paying.

[–] SomeoneSomewhere@lemmy.nz 5 points 3 days ago

That depends on how the plans are set.

At least in NZ, the law forbids cross-subsidisarion i.e. customers on one plan paying more/less than is proportional to the cost of serving them, averaged across the group.

This means that here, if you are a cookie-cutter use-power-at-peak-times household, it's going to be cheaper to use a flat 24hour plan than a ToU plan, because the peak rate will be higher than the 24UC rate.

If you have an EV, you'll almost certainly be better off on a peak/off-peak plan.

Note that for a while, plans where you pay the current wholesale spot price were called ToU and those can be painful to be on.