SCE's October 2026 rate change: what it means for your bill

If you are a Southern California Edison customer, your electricity got a little more expensive on Oct. 1, 2026. SCE says its average residential rate moved from 34.4 cents to 34.5 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh, the unit your meter counts). For a typical home, SCE puts the change at about $2.79 a month.

Here are SCE's own estimates for a residential customer on the TOU-D-4-9PM time-of-use plan using 500 kWh a month:

Standard residential: $185.85 before, $188.64 after, an increase of $2.79 (1.5%).

CARE (the income-qualified discount): $111.06 before, $111.25 after, an increase of $0.19 (0.2%).

If you use more than 500 kWh, your increase will be a bit larger, and if you use less it will be smaller. As a rough example, a home using 1,000 kWh a month would see about twice SCE's figure, a little under $6 a month, assuming the same mix of peak and off-peak use.

Why did rates move? SCE lists several pieces that pull in opposite directions. Costs tied to the Woolsey Fire went up: about $49.7 million in restoration costs and about $140.1 million in recovery bonds. SCE's 2022 ERRA review, which looks back at its energy procurement costs (Decision 26-01-003), added about $59.7 million. Working the other way, about $628.1 million in costs that have now been fully paid off came off customers' bills.

One more piece explains why the residential number rose even though some big costs dropped. Under SCE's 2025 rate case Phase 2 decision (Decision 26-04-033), the total SCE collects goes down, but a larger share shifts to residential customers. That shift is what keeps the household rate inching up.

The change is small, but over twelve months it adds up to roughly $33 for SCE's typical home. If you are on a time-of-use plan, the cheapest way to absorb it is the same as always: move flexible use like laundry, dishwashing and EV charging outside the 4 to 9 p.m. peak window.

Today's step: find the "Total kWh used" line on your last SCE bill and compare it with SCE's 500 kWh example. That tells you whether your own increase will be smaller or larger than $2.79.