Free Nights and Weekends Plans in Texas: How They Work and When They Save Money

What is a free nights or free weekends plan?

A free nights or free weekends plan is a type of time-of-use (TOU) electricity plan where your REP charges $0 for some or all of the energy used during specific hours. Typical windows run from late evening through early morning, or across Saturday and Sunday. Outside those hours, you pay a higher per-kWh rate to compensate.

The sales pitch for time-of-use plans is simple: shift your usage to off-peak hours and pay less overall. But the details vary wildly between plans. Two plans both labeled "free nights" can have different free windows, different peak rates, and different rules about whether TDU delivery charges (those from your transmission utility like Oncor or Centerpoint) apply during the free period. That last part matters more than most people realize.

Texas homes in deregulated areas have a smart meter that records usage in 15-minute intervals. That's how your REP knows what you used during free vs. paid hours.

What are 5 types of free nights or weekends plans in Texas?

We reviewed 10 TOU plans from 7 REPs, all for Oncor territory, and found 5 distinct structures. Rates and availability vary by territory. If you're in the Houston area or another service area, the peak rates will differ, but the structures work the same way.

1. Free nights (energy only waived)

Your energy charge (the portion charged by your REP) drops to $0 during nighttime hours, but you still pay full TDU delivery on every kWh, all day, all night. Peak rates ranged from 8.5¢ to 21.6¢/kWh among plans we reviewed. Free windows typically span 7 to 9 hours, like 9 PM to 6 AM. Plans like Chariot Bright Nights 12 and CleanSky Free Nights 12 fall into this category.

2. "Truly free" nights or weekends (energy and TDU waived)

Both the energy charge and TDU delivery drop to $0 during free hours. But peak rates climb to 19.9–24.3¢/kWh to compensate. The REP is absorbing your delivery cost and baking it into the paid-hours rate. Reliant Truly Free Nights 12, Direct Energy Twelve Hour Power 24, and Gexa Free 3 Day Weekends 12 use this structure.

3. Free weekends (energy only waived)

Same idea as free nights, but the free window covers Saturday and Sunday (or parts of them). TDU delivery still applies around the clock. Peak rates tend to be lower, around 12.9¢/kWh among plans we reviewed, because weekend generation is naturally cheaper. Champion Free Weekends-24 and Chariot Free Weekends Plus 12 are examples.

4. Discounted nights (reduced rate, not free)

No hours are free. Nighttime kWh cost less than daytime, but you're paying something around the clock. The spread is smaller (8.6¢ off-peak vs. 10.6¢ peak on one Oncor plan we reviewed), which means less risk if your usage doesn't skew heavily to nights.

5. Multi-period time-of-use (load-shifting)

Multiple rate tiers based on time of day, with no free hours at all. Off-peak rates can be competitive (5.4¢/kWh on one plan), but on-peak evening rates (6–10 PM) climb steeply (19.6¢/kWh). This structure rewards people who can actively shift usage away from peak demand hours. Rhythm PowerShift 12 is one example.

What does "free" actually cost? The TDU delivery question

Your electricity bill has two main parts: energy charges from your REP and delivery charges from your TDU. When a plan advertises "free nights," it almost always means free energy charges from your REP. The TDU delivery charges, which run 5.6¢ to 7.2¢/kWh depending on your territory, often still apply to every kWh you use, day and night.

That means "free" electricity actually costs between 5.6¢ and 7.2¢ per kWh on most plans. Each territory charges a different delivery rate.

But some plans go further. Among the 10 plans we reviewed, 4 waive TDU delivery during free hours too. We verified this by reading the actual EFL language:

• Reliant Truly Free Nights 12: "Oncor Electric Delivery Nighttime Delivery Charges: $0.00 per kWh"
• Reliant Truly Free Weekends 12: "Oncor Electric Delivery Weekend Delivery Charges: $0.00"
• Direct Energy Twelve Hour Power 24: "All delivery charges will be prorated and the customer will not be billed for any TDU delivery charges during the Designated Free Period."
• Gexa Free 3 Day Weekends 12: "TDU Delivery Charges: 0.0000 ¢ per kWh - Weekends"

Plans that waive TDU make up the cost with peak rates of 19.9–24.3¢/kWh, compared to 8.5–12.9¢ on plans that charge TDU during free hours. The REP is paying your delivery costs during free hours and passing them back through the peak rate. Whether that trade works in your favor depends entirely on how much electricity you actually use during the free window.

How do you calculate whether a free nights or weekends plan saves you money?

Three numbers determine whether a TOU plan beats a fixed-rate plan:

1. Your free-period usage percentage: what share of your monthly electricity falls in the free window
2. The plan's peak rate: what you pay per kWh during paid hours
3. The comparable fixed-rate price: what you'd pay on a straightforward plan with no time-of-use gimmick

For plans where TDU delivery applies during free hours, you need a higher free-period percentage to break even because TDU eats into the savings. Take a plan with an 18.1¢/kWh peak rate, no base charge, and Oncor delivery (5.58¢/kWh + $4.23/mo fixed). At 1,000 kWh with a 10.5¢/kWh fixed-rate alternative, you'd need 75% of your usage in the free window to break even. That's sleeping with every appliance running and barely touching electricity during the day.

For "truly free" plans where TDU is also waived, the breakeven drops because each free-hour kWh saves you more — you're dodging both the energy charge and the delivery charge. A plan with a 24.3¢ peak rate and TDU waived during free hours requires about 66% of usage in the free window to match a 10.5¢ fixed-rate plan. Lower than the 75% above, but still far beyond what most households actually achieve.

The table below compares breakeven thresholds across the plan types we reviewed, using a competitive 10.5¢/kWh all-in fixed rate at 1,000 kWh in Oncor territory (as of February 2026):

The "Typical Home Actual" column is from real Smart Meter Texas data. In every case, the actual free-period usage falls well below the breakeven threshold.

What does real usage data show?

Free-night windows captured 15–40% of total usage depending on the plan's hours and the household. Free-weekend windows captured 28–43%. The widest free window we tested was Gexa's 3-day weekend (Friday through Sunday), which captured 42–43% of both homes' usage. But even that fell 25 percentage points short of its 69% breakeven.

The EV charger was an interesting case. Unscheduled charging overlapped 38% with the widest free-night window (8 PM to 6 AM) but only 10% with the narrowest (11 PM to 6 AM). Most charging sessions started before 11 PM. Even with optimized EV scheduling, the rest of the house still used 60–85% of its electricity during paid hours.

For the full plan-by-plan breakdown with bill comparisons for both households, read our analysis of two North Texas homes.

How do you check your own usage pattern?

You don't have to guess. Your smart meter records exactly when you use electricity, down to 15-minute intervals. Getting the data takes four steps.

1. Register at smartmetertexas.com with your ESID (a 17–22 digit number on your bill) and meter number
2. Export your 15-minute interval data as a CSV (Green Button format)
3. Filter by the free-window hours of the plan you're considering (e.g., 9 PM to 6 AM)
4. Add up the kWh in those hours and divide by your total monthly kWh to get your free-period percentage

Compare your percentage against the breakeven from the table above. If your actual percentage is higher, the TOU plan saves money. If it's lower, a fixed-rate plan costs less every month.

Who might benefit from a free nights or weekends plan?

TOU plans aren't designed for the average household. They reward specific usage patterns:

• Night-shift workers who are home during the day and asleep at night. A truly flipped schedule means a genuinely flipped usage pattern.
• Homes with large schedulable loads: pool pumps, EV chargers on a timer, or other equipment you can set to run overnight or on weekends.
• Active usage managers willing to run the dishwasher, laundry, and dryer after 9 PM instead of after dinner.

And who probably won't benefit:

• Typical 9-to-5 households where most usage happens during daytime and evening hours.
• High-AC homes in summer where air conditioning runs hardest during the hottest part of the day, not at night.
• Anyone who doesn't want to think about when they flip a switch. If watching the clock before running the dryer sounds exhausting, a fixed-rate plan removes that mental load entirely.

Even with a schedulable EV charger, our data showed the home's baseline usage was still 60–85% during paid hours. The EV savings alone weren't enough to overcome the higher peak rate on the rest of the house's electricity.

If you're not sure a TOU plan makes sense, compare what you'd pay on a standard fixed-rate plan first. In Dallas and Fort Worth, competitive 12-month fixed rates were around 10.5¢/kWh all-in as of February 2026.