Every Texas house has a rush hour. Yours probably starts mid-afternoon — the AC digging in against the heat, then the oven, the dryer, the dishwasher as everyone gets home.
TXU Free Nights & Solar Days prices all of it at a premium. The free window runs 8:00 p.m. through 4:59 a.m., which means every big appliance in your house does its heaviest work during the fifteen hours you pay for.
That mismatch is the whole plan. But free nights, solar days is one of the most-searched pitches in Texas electricity, and it’s good enough to deserve a full teardown. Here it is — with one plot twist up front: TXU cancelled this plan for new customers in June 2026. Thousands of homes are still riding out contracts on it, and its replacement runs the same engine. So the teardown stands.
Plan status and rates checked August 6, 2026.
The plan on one card
| Status | Discontinued for new signups since June 2026; existing contracts run to term |
| Free window | 8:00 p.m.–4:59 a.m. — energy charge only |
| Paid window | 5:00 a.m.–8:00 p.m., matched with solar certificates |
| Contract | 12 months |
| Base charge | $9.95/month (per Texas Electricity Ratings’ plan data) |
| Cancellation fee | $150 — waived in the first 60 days under TXU’s guarantee |
| Price at 1,000 kWh | ~18–22¢/kWh all-in in the ComparePower marketplace; ~19.5¢ on its last fact sheets |
| Gimmick level | High |
What TXU was actually selling
Two things, fused into one plan name. If you’re still under contract, both still work exactly this way.
Free nights. From 8:00 p.m. through 4:59 a.m., the energy charge on your usage drops to zero, per the plan’s pricing fact sheet (the EFL — the document Texas requires every plan to publish). Nine hours a night, every night, all year.
Solar days. From 5 a.m. to 8 p.m., TXU buys solar renewable-energy certificates from Texas solar farms to match your usage. Certificates — not panels, not a different wire to your house. Your daytime power is the same grid mix as everyone else’s; TXU just retires paperwork that says an equal amount of solar got produced somewhere in West Texas.
The quiet June 2026 swap
TXU cancelled Free Nights & Solar Days in June 2026, per plan-tracking site ElectricityPlans — and the plan’s old web address now sells Free Nights & Cool Summer: free nights year-round, plus a 25% discount on daytime usage in July, August, and September.
Two details in the new fine print deserve a flashlight:
- The eligibility door narrowed. TXU’s own plan page: “Customer exclusions include homes with rooftop solar panels, electric vehicles or batteries.” Hold that thought — we’ll come back to who got locked out.
- The window may have shrunk. August 2026 listings disagree on whether Cool Summer’s free nights start at 8 p.m. or 9 p.m. An hour matters; it’s the hour your dishwasher was waiting for. The pricing fact sheet on your exact offer is the tiebreaker.
The badge changes. The engine underneath doesn’t — so everything below applies to whichever free-nights name TXU is wearing this quarter.
Nine free hours. Fifteen loaded ones.
Here’s how the bill actually computes.
Every kilowatt-hour you use gets a timestamp from your smart meter. Nighttime units get a 100% credit on the energy charge. Daytime units pay full freight — and the freight is the story.
At 1,000 kilowatt-hours of monthly usage, this plan ran around 18–22 cents per kilowatt-hour all-in in the ComparePower marketplace; its last fact sheets advertised about 19.5 cents. Meanwhile, plain 12-month fixed plans averaged near 13 cents at the same usage in August 2026, per market rate trackers.
Why so high? Because TXU knows something about your house that the plan name glosses over: it sleeps at night. Overnight, most homes coast — the AC cycles down, nobody’s cooking, the TVs are off. TXU is giving away power during the hours you were barely going to use it, and charging a premium during the hours you can’t avoid.
And “free” is narrower than it sounds. The credit erases the energy charge only. Delivery fees — the charges your local utility bills for the wires, which every company passes through — still apply to every nighttime unit.
So does the base charge: $9.95 a month on this plan’s fine print, per Texas Electricity Ratings. Midnight power isn’t free. It’s discounted.
The math, on a real-shaped home
Say you use 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month, with 30% of it at night — a normal profile for a family that’s home evenings and asleep by eleven. The free-nights credit is already baked into the plan’s advertised average, so the comparison is one row of arithmetic.
This table is an illustration: it applies each plan’s August 2026 advertised average at 1,000 kWh flat across usage levels. Your fact sheet will differ by usage level and utility territory — the point is the gap, not the pennies.
| Monthly usage | Solar Days at ~20¢ all-in | Plain fixed at ~13¢ all-in | The premium |
|---|---|---|---|
| 500 kWh (small apartment) | ~$100 | ~$65 | ~$35/month |
| 1,000 kWh (typical home) | ~$200 | ~$130 | ~$70/month |
| 2,000 kWh (big house, hot August) | ~$400 | ~$260 | ~$140/month |
Run the typical home for a full 12-month contract and you’ve paid roughly $800 extra — for the pleasure of watching a third of your usage get a discount you already funded.
That’s the trade. Not hidden — it’s all in the fact sheet. Just arranged so the word “FREE” does the talking and the day rate does the collecting.
Who this plan actually fits
An honest answer, because there is one.
Unless at least 35% of your power burns between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m., a plain fixed rate beats this plan. That’s the break-even, per ComparePower’s analysis. And here’s the tell: TXU’s own fine print assumed typical customers use 34.3% of their energy at night, per Texas Electricity Ratings — the average customer lands just under the line. The plan misses for most homes by design.
Some homes genuinely clear the bar:
- Night-shift workers who sleep through the expensive hours and live through the cheap ones.
- EV owners who charge overnight, every night — a big, movable block of usage. (Note the irony: the Cool Summer replacement now excludes EV homes, per TXU’s own plan page. TXU noticed who was winning.)
- Pool owners who run the pump on a timer after 8 p.m.
- Disciplined households that batch the dishwasher, laundry, and car charging into the free window like it’s a part-time job.
If that’s you — genuinely, provably, based on your smart-meter history and not your intentions — this plan can work. For everyone else, the AC decides, and the AC works days. You can’t schedule a Texas afternoon.
We covered this pattern across every company in our free nights and weekends guide: the free window is real, the rate pays for it, and the house’s habits pick the winner before you ever sign. Reliant and Direct Energy run the same nighttime play — we took apart Reliant’s Truly Free Nights and Direct Energy’s free-nights plan too.
Three numbers beat any free-nights pitch
You don’t need this review for the next plan with FREE in the name. You need three numbers:
- Open the plan’s pricing fact sheet (the EFL) and find the average price at 1,000 kWh. The free hours are already baked into that number, computed on the usage pattern the company chose.
- Find any plain fixed plan’s average at the same 1,000 kWh row. Lower number wins, no lifestyle change required.
- Pull your nighttime share from Smart Meter Texas (smartmetertexas.com — your meter logs every 15 minutes). Under 35% between 8 p.m. and 5 a.m.? You’re done. The free-nights plan loses on your house, whatever the ad says.
What the plan name leaves out
The exit is free for exactly 60 days. Credit where due: TXU’s Total Satisfaction Guarantee lets new customers switch to another TXU plan or leave TXU entirely with no cancellation fee in the first 60 days, per ComparePower’s guarantee roundup — you owe only for power used. The catch is the calendar. Sixty days is two bills, and if you signed up in March, the guarantee expires months before your first August bill shows you what the day rate really costs. After day 60, leaving runs $150 on the standard 12-month terms.
The solar part is a certificate, not a savings. Solar renewable-energy certificates are legitimate — they fund real Texas solar farms. They also cost TXU pennies relative to the day-rate premium you’re paying. If green power is your goal, several companies sell 100% renewable plans at plain fixed rates for less.
TXU rarely wins on price, period. This isn’t unique to Free Nights & Solar Days. TXU is the biggest name in Texas electricity, with the widest plan variety in the state — and rates that run 15–25% above budget companies for the same power on the same wires, per ComparePower’s rate analysis. Their free-days sibling pulls the same move with different hours — we took that one apart in our TXU Free Pass review.
What to do instead
Your homework, in four steps:
- Pull your usage by time of day. Smart Meter Texas shows it, and so does your online account with your current company. If less than a third of your power burns after 8 p.m., stop considering free-nights plans entirely — including Cool Summer.
- Compare all-in cost at your usage, not plan names. ComparePower shows every plan’s real average price at your usage level — including TXU’s plain fixed plans, which usually beat their headline plans.
- If you’re set on a big brand, see how TXU stacks against cheaper companies in TXU vs Gexa and TXU vs Frontier.
- If you want green power, compare 100% renewable fixed-rate plans head-to-head. Certificates cost the same wherever you buy them; the day rate doesn’t.
A plan that charges you the same boring rate at 2 p.m. and 2 a.m. has nothing to give away — which is exactly why it usually costs less.
Why this page exists
This page answers: “Was the TXU Free Nights & Solar Days plan — the free nights, the solar days — ever a good deal, and what does its cancellation mean for me?”
It doesn’t answer: “What’s the cheapest plan in your ZIP code today?” Prices change weekly. For that, compare actual prices on ComparePower.