Give Shift and Save a Try

by Ian Brizdle | April 13, 2023

The movement towards time-of-use (TOU) rates has already begun. The new pilot program for TOU rates, called Shift and Save, started on Feb. 1, 2024 with randomly selected customers who have had advanced meters for at least six months. This 1-year pilot program involves only about 4% of our customers on Oahu and Hawaii Island.

Any customers who were not randomly selected for the pilot can still choose to participate and opt-in to the Shift and Save program. It is my job to present this program to customers clearly on our website, and here’s my honest take on why you might want to give it a try.

Background

As a quick refresher, there are three differently-priced time periods: Daytime (9 a.m. to 5 p.m.), Evening Peak (5 p.m. to 9 p.m.), and Overnight (9 p.m. to 9 a.m.).

The pricing of the Overnight period will be comparable to what it is today for a normal residential — somewhere in the ballpark of 35–40 cents/kWh. Daytime rates will be half of that, and Evening Peak rates will be fifty percent higher.

Who can benefit from Shift and Save?

For residential customers — those who work from home full time or in a hybrid schedule, are retired, and otherwise have the flexibility to choose to do things like work, do laundry, cook food, and take a shower in the middle of the day — you may be able to benefit from the half-priced rates at that time. I currently work a hybrid schedule between the office and home, so I can opt to do laundry during the daytime on certain weekdays instead of at night. For businesses, places that naturally do their business in the middle of the day can benefit without making many changes — like schools, most offices, government buildings, and some restaurants.

For other customers, shifting will be challenging. If you work a 9–5 at your job location, you don’t have the opportunity to do your house chores in the middle of the day during the week (although you could choose to shift to the weekend since the rates are the same for every day of the week). Also, businesses like bars and some restaurants that serve the pau hana and dinner crowd cannot avoid operating mostly during the Evening Peak period.

For more information, we have a recording available of our residential customer webinar video on YouTube. You can also try our online savings tool to see how shifting some of your energy usage from more expensive to less expensive times can impact your monthly bill.

So why should you give Shift and Save a try? Here’s my pitch:

1) Bill protection credit. During the first six-months of the test period, residential bills will be capped at no more than a $10 increase compared to what would have been charged on the existing rate for the same usage. Commercial bills will be capped at no more than 4% increase. This gives you the opportunity to try to take advantage of saving money with the program without the risk of being penalized too badly. You will also have a head start getting adjusted to this different rate of the future for when this possibly becomes the norm.

2) Customer empowerment. With our standard residential rates, the cost of electricity to you is the same at any time of the day regardless of how much it actually costs to generate it. These Shift and Save pilot rates are designed to give you the ability to choose your rate and take advantage of cheaper energy in the middle of the day.

3) Provide good data for future rates. Hawaiian Electric and the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) will gather data from this pilot program and will use it to adjust future rates. If data shows that certain customers struggle with the Shift and Save pilot rates, the future version may be tweaked to account for that and evolve to become a better product for everyone.

4) Environmental and cost benefits. The environmental benefit of encouraging a shift in demand to utilize as much clean and cheap solar energy in the middle of the day is clear. In the long run, by using more power in the middle of the day, when the sun is strongest, and less at night we can help to lower the already high cost of electricity for everyone by reducing the need for expensive fossil-fueled peak generation.

If you are interested in giving Shift and Save a try, please enroll using our participation form.

Ian Brizdle is a manager of web and digital communications at Hawaiian Electric Company.