Choosing Your Electricity Pricing

Hungry Machines saves money by moving energy use into your cheapest hours — so it needs to know what you actually pay, and when. That’s the single biggest lever on your savings. Set it in the panel under Settings → Pricing source.

Note

If your electricity costs the same all day (a flat rate), there’s no cheap-versus-expensive signal to shift load toward, so savings will be small no matter what. Hungry Machines works best on a time-of-use or daily-varying plan.

Static (time-of-use zone)

The simplest option: pick a preset rate plan from the catalog. It covers common US utility time-of-use plans, each with its own off-peak, mid-peak, and peak windows. Choose the one that matches your utility and plan, and Hungry Machines optimizes against those rates.

Your own hourly rates

If none of the presets matches your bill, switch on hourly rate overrides and enter your own price for each hour of the day in ¢/kWh. This is the most precise option — it’s exactly what your plan charges.

Tip

Don’t see your utility or region in the catalog? Email info@hungrymachines.io and we’ll look at adding it. In the meantime, the hourly override lets you enter your plan’s prices directly.

Dynamic (changes daily)

Some utilities bill residential customers on wholesale prices that change every day rather than a fixed time-of-use schedule. If you’re on one of those plans, choose Dynamic and Hungry Machines follows the day-ahead prices for your grid region automatically.

Two fields appear when you pick Dynamic:

• Region — your grid region. Supported regions today are ComEd (Northern Illinois) and Ameren Illinois (Power Smart Pricing). More may be added over time.
• Delivery charge estimate — a flat ¢/kWh you add on top of the wholesale price to approximate delivery, capacity, and taxes — the parts of your bill that aren’t the raw energy price. Check a recent bill to estimate it.

Tip

On a daily-varying plan in a region that isn’t listed yet? Email info@hungrymachines.io — and until it’s added, the Static → hourly rate overrides option is a good stand-in for a typical day.

Which should I choose?

Your situation	Pick
Your utility offers a named time-of-use plan and it’s in the catalog	Static → the matching preset
You know your exact hourly prices but no preset fits	Static → hourly rate overrides
Your plan’s prices change every day with the wholesale market	Dynamic → your region
Your electricity is a flat rate all day	Any option — but expect modest savings (there’s little to optimize)

Next steps

• Day-to-Day Use — comfort and savings settings that work alongside your pricing.
• Your Dashboard, at a Glance — the price bars behind your schedule chart come from the plan you pick here.