Chugach will charge you less at night, if you actually move your usage

Starting Oct. 1, Chugach Electric members can opt into a pilot that prices power by the hour. From 9 am to 9 pm, electricity costs 21.595 cents a kilowatt hour, about a third more than the standard residential rate of 16.182 cents. Overnight, it costs 10.833 cents, about a third less.

Whether that saves anyone money depends entirely on when they run things. The expensive window is exactly half the day, so the break-even sits at roughly half a household's usage. Move laundry, the dishwasher and vehicle charging past 9 pm and the bill goes down. Sign up and keep doing what you were doing, and it goes up slightly.

Chugach says so itself, twice on the program page: "Energy bill savings are not guaranteed, and your monthly bill may be higher" or lower depending on usage.

Small businesses can enroll too, at 20.034 cents on-peak and 10.267 off, against a standard 15.145. Chugach's program page does not mention that class in its text.

Three groups cannot enroll: members on budget billing, community solar subscribers, and anyone with net metering who sells power from their own panels back to the cooperative. Chugach cites a systems limitation and says it may revise those exclusions as its billing and metering software is updated.

The pilot is capped at 500 customers, according to the Regulatory Commission of Alaska's public notice on the tariff filings. Chugach's own page says only that spaces are limited. The cooperative has not said how it will choose among applicants if more than 500 apply, how long the pilot runs, or what rate a participant goes back to when it ends.

Members can compare the pilot rates against their own billing history starting Oct. 1, using the Compare My Rates tool in the online account portal, and apply from the same place. Chugach notes the comparison covers energy charges only, not the whole bill.