Your Electricity Has a Happy Hour

Your dishwasher can wait until noon. Under a new California experiment, that could save you money.

On October 1, Clean Power Alliance announced a pilot giving more than 4,000 households a zero electricity-generation charge from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., when solar power is abundant. Other charges still apply, and rates outside those hours matter, but the offer gives customers a reason to reconsider when they charge the car or run the laundry. Source

Travelers know this kind of opportunity. Move a trip by a few days and sometimes the same flight or hotel becomes considerably cheaper. You still get the vacation. You just weren’t committed to arriving on Friday.

Of course, if Friday is the only day you can leave, that cheaper Tuesday flight is mostly an annoyance.

That’s why flexibility matters so much to life arbitrage. A price difference is useful when you have the freedom to do something with it. Sometimes that means choosing another country. Sometimes it means changing a date or setting a timer.

I think we underprice that freedom when choosing jobs, making commitments, and organizing our lives. A little control over your schedule can be worth money repeatedly, in ways that never appear in a salary comparison.

This electricity offer is a limited pilot, so check your own utility’s rates before rescheduling the laundry. But the question travels: which things in your life really have to happen when, where, and how they do now?

There may be a few you’ve never thought to move.