France's off-peak electricity hours are moving to the afternoon from 1 December

If you're one of the nine million French customers on an off-peak/peak electricity plan, your cheap hours are about to move. From 1 December, the second phase of a reform of heures creuses (off-peak hours) kicks in.

The idea is simple: use electricity when there's plenty of it, especially from solar panels.

What's changing?

You will still get eight off-peak hours a day, with reduced prices. But some of them will shift from the night to the afternoon, when solar panels produce at full capacity.

There's a second change too. The split between off-peak and peak hours will differ in summer and in winter.

The aim is to nudge you to run your water heater or charge your car at the times that suit the power grid best.

Enedis, the company that runs most of France's electricity distribution network, has been sending letters to affected customers in recent days to explain the changes.

Do you need to do anything?

No. Everything happens automatically through the Linky meter (France's smart electricity meter), so there are no forms to fill in and no calls to make.

The rollout will be gradual and will run until October 2027. So your own switch may not happen on 1 December exactly.

What happened before?

The first phase of the reform began on 1 November 2025 and covered about one million subscribers. It shifted one gigawatt of consumption to 3 pm, roughly what a city like Paris uses.

That's the kind of effect the government and Enedis hope to repeat, now on a much bigger scale.

What's next?

Watch your mailbox for the Enedis letter, and check when your new off-peak hours start. If you run a dishwasher or washing machine on a timer, you may want to reset it once the new schedule applies to you.