I'm in the PNW and I pay 11c/kWh (well, I would, if I didn't have solar). Seattle is 13c, King County averages 16c. Where are you paying 5c/kWh? That's exceptionally cheap.
Doesn’t picking the variable rate plan mean your day time costs are priced higher? It does where I am. It’s 10c/kWh on the regular plan but on variable it’s 14c during the day and 7c off hours.
So you're paying a marginally higher rate almost all day on variable-rate, but substantially higher 5-9pm. The math pencils if you have a home battery you can use to load-shift, or perhaps drive an EV a lot.
(Also: this structure is clearly designed around summer cooling load, but peak load is actually winter heating. I don't know what SCL is thinking.)
Honestly my biggest draw is charging my car, so I scheduled that. I do have a 3kWh LFP battery I have as an emergency supply, and since it's in my office anyway I charge my laptop off it, and schedule the wall plug it's on. I scheduled the AC to move the house temp up or down at night. On especially hot or cold days I'm sure I'll use it more at other times. :)
Correct me if I'm wrong but doesn't PG&E charge one rate for the first ?? kwh and then more for the rest? Perhaps OP made a mistake of using the base rate (which you will blow past if you have too many computers or AC)
They do and how they do the price tranches has changed a lot in the last 5 years. It used to be 4 tranches, 10, 20, 30 and 40. It was very hard to get into the 20 tranch for a single home (maybe if you were bitcoin mining or something). Now the tranches are multiple times higher and its easier to get into the higher tranches. Look on PG&E's website for the specifics.
[1]: This alone will increase costs by something like 4c/kWh from these 70 year old dams: https://www.king5.com/article/news/investigations/skagit-riv...