LADWP Rates Explained: Tiers, Zones, TOU, and Why Your Bill Looks Like That (2026)

• A fixed Power Access Charge of $2.30, $7.90, or $22.70/month rides on top, set by your highest-usage month in the past year. > - LADWP still nets solar exports 1:1 against consumption at your retail rate — unlike SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E under NEM 3.0.

We read LADWP bills for a living, and even we keep the rate tables open in a tab. The structure isn't complicated once you see it — a tiered energy rate, a fixed access charge, and a stack of pass-through adjustment factors — but LADWP presents it in a way that buries the number people actually want: what am I paying per kilowatt-hour? This guide answers that with LADWP's own published 2026 figures, then shows how the TOU and EV options and net metering plug into it.

The three pieces of every LADWP bill

Strip out taxes and an LADWP residential bill is three things. First, a tiered energy charge — the per-kWh price that steps up as you use more. Second, the Power Access Charge (PAC), a fixed monthly fee introduced in the 2016 rate ordinance to cover grid costs. Third, adjustment factors — seven separate pass-through charges (energy cost, reliability, renewables, and so on) that are layered onto the base rate and updated every January, April, July, and October.

Here's the part that makes LADWP bills genuinely confusing: the base energy rates haven't changed since July 1, 2019 — Tier 1 is still nominally 7.1¢/kWh. But nobody pays 7.1¢. The adjustment factors add roughly 17–19¢ on top, which means the majority of what you pay per kWh isn't the "rate" at all — it's the adjustments. When your bill creeps up without any announced rate increase, that's the factors moving. We track those movements in our LADWP rate changes tracker.

Tiers and zones: how much cheap power you get

LADWP divides the city into two climate zones and gives hotter neighborhoods a bigger allotment of lower-priced power. Zone 1 is the cooler part of the city (generally coastal and central LA); Zone 2 is the hotter areas, most of the San Fernando Valley included. LADWP publishes a zone lookup map and table if you're not sure which you're in.

Rate tier	Zone 1 (monthly)	Zone 2 (monthly)
Tier 1	First 350 kWh	First 500 kWh
Tier 2	Next 700 kWh	Next 1,000 kWh
Tier 3	Above 1,050 kWh	Above 1,500 kWh

Two wrinkles. LADWP bills most homes every other month, so on a real bill those allowances are doubled (700 kWh of Tier 1 in Zone 1, for example). And the tiers only fully matter in the high season, June through September — from October through May, Tier 2 and Tier 3 are priced the same, so the punishing top tier is really a summer phenomenon.

What R-1A actually costs in 2026

These are LADWP's published total consumption charges — base rate plus adjustment factors, the number that actually hits your bill (excluding taxes):

2026 period	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
January – March	$0.24771	$0.30630	$0.30630
April – May	$0.24362	$0.30221	$0.30221
June	$0.24362	$0.30221	$0.38922
July – September	$0.26408	$0.32267	$0.40968
October – December	Not yet posted (factors reset Oct 1)

So a Zone 1 home using 750 kWh in a summer month pays about 26.4¢ on the first 350 kWh and 32.3¢ on the next 400 — roughly $221 in energy charges before the PAC and taxes. Heavy summer users who reach Tier 3 pay nearly 41¢/kWh on the top slice, which is SCE-peak-pricing territory. If you want to see how these numbers translate into whole bills at different usage levels, our average LA electric bill guide runs the math at 500, 750, 1,000, and 1,500 kWh.

The Power Access Charge

The PAC is the fixed charge people call us about most. It's set not by this month's usage but by your highest single month over the past year, sorted into the same tiers:

Your peak monthly usage lands in	Monthly PAC
Tier 1	$2.30
Tier 2	$7.90
Tier 3	$22.70

Every October 1, LADWP re-scores you based on the prior 12 months. One blistering August with the AC pinned can put you in the $22.70 bracket for a full year — and one thing solar does quietly well is pull that peak month down a tier or two.

The adjustment factors, briefly

Per the LA Office of Public Accountability's guide, the stack includes the capped Energy Cost Adjustment (fuel and purchased power), the Variable Energy Adjustment, two renewable portfolio adjustments funding LA's clean-energy buildout, two reliability adjustments funding grid infrastructure replacement, and a small Energy Subsidy Adjustment for assistance programs. You don't need to memorize the acronyms. What matters is the mechanics: they're updated quarterly, approved as expenditures by the LADWP Board rather than as headline "rate increases," and they're where nearly all recent bill growth has come from.

The TOU option: R-1B

LADWP's optional time-of-use rate swaps tiers for time periods, plus a $12/month service charge:

Period	When	Jul–Sep 2026 price
High Peak	Weekdays 1:00–4:59 p.m.	$0.35124/kWh
Low Peak	Weekdays 10 a.m.–1 p.m. and 5–8 p.m.	$0.29284/kWh
Base	Weekdays 8 p.m.–10 a.m., all weekend	$0.26540/kWh

Note how different this is from SCE's 4–9 p.m. evening peak: LADWP's high peak is just 20 hours a week, in the early afternoon — exactly when solar panels are producing hardest. LADWP itself suggests R-1B for households that consistently hit Tier 3, and for solar customers who are consistently banking credits, since exports during the 1–5 p.m. window earn credit at the highest price of the day. Whether R-1A or R-1B wins for your house depends on your load shape; it's one of the things we model in a custom design and savings estimate.

EV owners get a metered discount

LADWP's EV rate is a 2.5¢/kWh discount on base-period charging, but the catch is real: the EV charger must be separately metered from your house and billed on a TOU rate, with a $10/month minimum on that meter. For many homeowners the second meter isn't worth the plumbing, and the practical alternative is simply charging overnight — or better, charging from your own solar. LADWP also runs EV charger rebates that come and go; check current status before counting on one.

How solar interacts with all of this

This is the punchline of LADWP's rate design. Under LADWP's Net Energy Metering rider, your meter simply nets kWh out against kWh in over the billing period, and any surplus is credited at your applicable rate schedule's own pricing — your retail rate, not a discounted "avoided cost" rate. Credits roll forward to future bills (they can't offset taxes or minimum charges, and unused balances are zeroed out if you close the account), and systems up to 1 MW qualify.

That's the 1:1-style deal SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E customers lost when the CPUC's NEM 3.0 took effect — and as of our last check in July 2026, LADWP has announced no plan to change it.

Tiers make it better still: solar production offsets your most expensive kilowatt-hours first, so a system that erases your Tier 3 and Tier 2 usage is saving you 32–41¢/kWh in summer, not the 24–26¢ headline Tier 1 number. The full program details live at our LADWP net metering page, and if you want the math run on your actual bills — we've done this for hundreds of LA homeowners (175 Google reviews, 4.9★) — start with a free design and savings estimate.

Frequently asked questions

What are LADWP's residential electric rates per kWh in 2026?

Under the standard R-1A rate, 2026 prices including adjustment factors run from about 24.4¢/kWh (Tier 1, spring) up to about 41¢/kWh (Tier 3, July–September). Winter 2026 rates were 24.8¢ Tier 1 and 30.6¢ Tiers 2–3. October–December 2026 figures weren't posted as of our last check, since adjustment factors reset October 1.

What's the difference between LADWP Zone 1 and Zone 2?

Zone 2 covers the hotter parts of the city — most of the San Fernando Valley — and gets larger tier allowances to account for heavier cooling loads: 500 kWh of Tier 1 per month versus 350 kWh in the cooler Zone 1. The per-kWh prices within each tier are the same in both zones; only the amount of cheaper power you're allowed differs.

Is LADWP still cheaper than SCE?

Generally yes, but the gap has narrowed. A typical LADWP household now pays an effective 26–31¢/kWh all-in before taxes, while SCE's average residential rate has been running in the mid-30s. LADWP's bigger structural advantage for solar shoppers is retail-rate net metering, which SCE customers no longer get.

Should I switch to LADWP's TOU rate (R-1B)?

Maybe — if your bills consistently show Tier 3 usage, or you have solar and bank credits, R-1B can come out ahead because its high-peak window (weekday afternoons, 1–5 p.m.) aligns with solar production rather than evening consumption. Households with heavy 1–8 p.m. weekday usage and no solar usually do better staying on R-1A.

Is LADWP on NEM 3.0?

No. NEM 3.0 is a CPUC tariff that applies only to the investor-owned utilities — SCE, PG&E, and SDG&E. LADWP is a municipal utility that runs its own net metering rider with retail-rate kWh netting, and as of July 2026 it has announced no transition away from it.