policytou is a shorthand some people type for a time-of-use (TOU) electricity policy — the on-peak, off-peak, and other period windows published in a utility tariff. It is also sometimes used for privacy policy + terms of use (ToU).

What does a time-of-use policy include?

A TOU policy defines named periods (on-peak, off-peak, mid-peak, super-off-peak, critical-peak), the clock hours they apply, which days of the week, and any seasonal variants. It does not, by itself, tell you the ¢/kWh price.

Does tou.tools return electricity prices?

No. tou.tools returns period names, boundaries, and forward schedules only. It does not return $/kWh values, bill amounts, or tariff rider calculations.

policytou

policytou is a shorthand some people type for a time-of-use (TOU) electricity policy — the on-peak and off-peak windows a utility publishes in its tariff. This page is that lookup.

What a TOU policy actually is

A time-of-use policy is the schedule layer of an electric rate plan. The utility (or the PUC that approved the tariff) divides the clock into named periods so usage in high-demand hours is billed differently from usage overnight. The policy answers when, not how many cents.

Typical ingredients, all of which vary by utility and by rate plan:

Named periods (on-peak, off-peak, and anything in between)
Start and end times for each period
Which days they apply (weekdays only, or every day)
Seasonal variants (summer vs winter clocks are common)
Holiday rules (many tariffs treat observed holidays as off-peak)

The ¢/kWh attached to each period lives in a different part of the tariff — riders, baselines, customer class. tou.tools does not return those prices.

Period names

Across U.S. tariffs the labels are not standardized, but they collapse to a small set. tou.tools normalizes them to:

Period	Meaning
`off_peak`	Lowest-demand window, and the implicit default.
`mid_peak`	Shoulder between off-peak and on-peak.
`on_peak`	Highest-demand window.
`super_off_peak`	Deepest discount window, often overnight or midday solar hours.
`critical_peak`	Event-based critical-peak window, called only on designated days.

Look up a policy

tou.tools resolves a U.S. ZIP code or street address to the serving utility, then returns the active period and when it changes. Full schedules (every period, every season) are available for each rate plan. REST and MCP both use the same data.

Browse every utility we track on coverage. Call-level detail is in the API docs. Periods only — no price values.

If you meant privacy policy + terms of use

ToU is also a common abbreviation for Terms of Use, and policytou shows up as a concatenated slug for privacy policy plus terms. Those pages on this site are Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.