The plan you searched for was quietly replaced
Free Nights & Solar Days is one of the most-searched plan names in Texas. TXU launched it in 2017 with a clean pitch: free electricity all night, 100% solar power all day, no panels required. It sold for nine years, heavily to apartment renters. Then, sometime in 2026, it disappeared from TXU's shelf.
Here is what txu.com looks like as of August 2026. The old Free Nights & Solar Days web address now loads a page for a different plan, Free Nights & Cool Summer: "the free nights you know and love, now with extra summer savings." TXU's plan listing still name-drops Free Nights & Solar Days in its apartments section, but click through and enter a Dallas ZIP, and the shopping page offers Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 instead, ranked first under "Recommended plans for your apartment." Solar Days is not on the list.
The old name is not fully dead. TXU's own Oncor price-history page lists Free Nights & Solar Days Flex 8pm and Flex 9pm, the month-to-month versions existing customers roll onto when their fixed contracts lapse. So if you are on Solar Days today, you are riding out a legacy contract or drifting on a Flex rate. Everyone else gets the successor. This review covers both, because the mechanics, and the math problem, are the same.
Claims vs. fine print
Four claims on the front. Four footnotes on the back. Here they are, side by side.
The mailer says
"Get free energy charges every night, all year."
The fine print says
Free runs from 9:00 p.m. through 4:59 a.m., and it credits energy charges only. The $9.95 monthly base charge and Oncor's delivery charges, including the per-kWh delivery charge on every kilowatt-hour you use at night, are billed in full. A free night still costs money.
Source: Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 Electricity Facts Label, Oncor territory, August 6, 2026
The mailer says
"...plus a 25% bonus toward daytime usage all summer."
The fine print says
The bonus is not 25% off your daytime usage. It is an extra credit equal to 25% of your nighttime energy charges in July, August, and September, applied toward daytime charges and capped at your total daytime energy charges. The size of your summer daytime discount depends on how much you burn at night. At TXU's own usage assumptions, it works out to roughly $21 a month, three months a year.
Source: Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 Electricity Facts Label, Oncor territory, August 6, 2026
The mailer says
"100% Free at Night. 100% Solar All Day." (the original Solar Days pitch)
The fine print says
The solar half of the plan is gone. Solar Days was marketed as 100% renewable, backed by solar and wind renewable energy credits. The successor plan's EFL states: "This product is 3% renewable. The statewide average for renewable content is 37%." The free-nights family went from all-green to well below the Texas average, and the marketing never mentions it.
Source: TXU launch press release (May 4, 2017); Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 EFL (August 6, 2026)
The mailer says
"18.9¢ per kWh at 1000 kWh" (the advertised average)
The fine print says
The actual energy charge is 20.6 cents on every kWh, day or night, before the night credit. The 18.9-cent average exists only because TXU assumes 41.2% of your usage lands inside the free window, the three-year average for its own time-of-use customers. Use less at night than TXU's power users do and your average climbs toward 20.6 plus delivery.
Source: Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 Electricity Facts Label, Oncor territory, August 6, 2026
The rate, straight from the EFL
TXU does not show this plan's Electricity Facts Label until you feed its shopping site a ZIP code. We did, using downtown Dallas ZIP 75201, and pulled the EFL dated August 6, 2026 for Oncor territory. The numbers: a $9.95 monthly base charge, a 20.6-cent energy charge on all kWh, Oncor delivery charges passed through on top, a 12-month fixed term, and a $150 early cancellation fee. TXU's stated averages: 20.3 cents per kWh at 500 kWh, 18.9 at 1,000, 18.2 at 2,000.
Read the fine print under those averages and you find the two assumptions holding them up. TXU assumes 41.2% of your electricity lands between 9:00 p.m. and 4:59 a.m., and that 12.7% of usage falls in the July-September bonus window. Those are averages from TXU's own time-of-use customers over three years, people who chose a night plan and presumably chase the window. If your household is closer to normal, more usage by day than TXU's night-shifters, your real average sits above the advertised one.
One more thing you should know before you shop. Power to Choose, the PUCT's official comparison site, listed exactly one TXU plan for ZIP 75201 on the day we checked, and it was not this one. The free-nights offer lives inside TXU's own shopping flow, where it is ranked first for apartments and compared only against other TXU plans. On the open market, at 1,000 kWh, the cheapest flat no-gimmick Oncor plan was 13.2 cents, as of August 2026.
Free Nights & Solar Days is closed to new enrollment as of August 2026; TXU sells Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 in its place, online at txu.com. The Electricity Facts Label appears only after you enter a service ZIP in TXU's shopping flow. Existing Solar Days customers whose contracts end roll onto month-to-month Flex 8pm or Flex 9pm rates, which TXU prices at a 2,000-kWh basis on its price-history page.
What time do TXU free nights start? 9:00 p.m., with asterisks
On the plan TXU sells today, Free Nights & Cool Summer 12, the free window runs 9:00 p.m. through 4:59 a.m., every day, all year. The EFL's words: "From 9:00 p.m. through 4:59 a.m. each day, you will receive a 100% credit on all Energy Charges." Free ends at 5:00 a.m. sharp. Run the dryer at 8:30 p.m. or the AC at 7:00 a.m. and you pay the full 20.6-cent rate.
If you are still on an older Free Nights & Solar Days contract, your window may differ. The original 2017 plan ran 9 p.m. to 6 a.m., nine free hours. TXU later sold versions with 8 p.m. starts, and its Oncor price-history page currently lists both Flex 8pm and Flex 9pm month-to-month variants. Your own EFL or bill is the only document that settles your exact hours. Worth noticing: the successor plan's window is eight hours, not nine. When TXU swapped plans, an hour of free quietly fell off the end of the night.
"Free" also has a narrow meaning. The credit covers energy charges only. The $9.95 base charge bills every month no matter when you use power, and Oncor's delivery charges, including the per-kWh delivery charge, apply to every kilowatt-hour around the clock. Nighttime kWh on this plan are discounted, not free.
The Cool Summer piece works backward from what the banner implies. In July, August, and September you get an extra credit equal to 25% of your nighttime energy charges, applied toward daytime charges and capped at your total daytime energy charges. To earn a bigger summer daytime discount, you have to use more electricity at night. That is the whole trick of this plan family in one footnote: every reward is indexed to behavior that suits the seller.
Do the math on 8 free hours
Start with the ceiling. The window covers 8 of 24 hours, exactly a third of the day. TXU's own EFL assumes its time-of-use customers, self-selected night owls, put 41.2% of their usage inside it. Even for them, nearly six of every ten kWh bill at the full 20.6-cent energy charge plus delivery. Most Texas homes lean harder into daylight than that: the AC fights the afternoon sun, not the midnight air.
Now the bills, using nothing but TXU's published averages. At 1,000 kWh a month, 18.9 cents all-in comes to $189. The cheapest flat no-gimmick Oncor plan at 13.2 cents comes to $132. That is $57 a month, about $684 a year, at TXU's own assumed night share, with the summer bonus already baked into TXU's number. At apartment-scale usage of 500 kWh, TXU's own average is 20.3 cents, $101.50; the same flat plan averages 13.6 cents at that usage, $68.00. That is $33.50 a month for the smallest homes this plan is aimed at.
Could you beat that? Only by moving well over half your usage past 9 p.m., every month, for a year, without slipping. TXU's own three-year customer average says even committed night-plan households land at 41.2%. The free hours are funded by the day rate, the day rate is set by TXU, and the window is set by TXU. Two of those three numbers you cannot control, as of August 2026.
9:00 p.m.
When free nights start on the plan TXU sells today; they end at 4:59 a.m. (EFL, August 2026)
41.2%
Night-usage share TXU's EFL assumes to turn a 20.6-cent day rate into an 18.9-cent average
$57/mo
Extra cost vs the cheapest 13.2-cent flat Oncor plan at 1,000 kWh, using TXU's own EFL averages (August 2026)
3%
Renewable content on the successor plan's EFL; Solar Days was marketed as 100% renewable
Fine print, decoded
The five footnotes on the back of the mailer, translated into plain English.
| What the footnote says | What it means |
|---|---|
| "From 9:00 p.m. through 4:59 a.m. each day, you will receive a 100% credit on all Energy Charges." | The free window is 8 hours and ends at 4:59 a.m., not sunrise. The credit touches energy charges only, nothing else on the bill. |
| "TDU charges, taxes, and other applicable fees are not included in the credit and will be billed separately." | Oncor's delivery charges apply to every kWh, including the free-window ones. Nighttime power on this plan is discounted, never zero-cost. Add the $9.95 monthly base charge on top. |
| "During July, August, and September, an additional credit of up to 25% on nighttime Energy Charges may apply and will be used toward daytime Energy Charges." The credit "will never exceed your total daytime energy charges" and has no cash value. | The "25% summer daytime bonus" is computed on your nighttime charges. Use little at night and the bonus shrinks with it. It is capped, it expires with September, and you cannot cash it out. |
| "Type of Product: Fixed Rate. Contract Term: 12 Months. Early Cancellation Fee: $150.00." | Leaving early costs $150. The 60-day "Total Satisfaction" window TXU advertises ends long before your first summer bill arrives. |
| "This product is 3% renewable. The statewide average for renewable content is 37%." | The plan that replaced "100% Solar All Day" is one-twelfth as renewable as the average Texas plan. The sun is gone from everything but the nostalgia. |
| "Customers with electric vehicles, batteries, and/or solar panels are ineligible." (EFL; the plan card says only "Rooftop solar and other customer exclusions apply.") | TXU bars the households best equipped to win this plan. Solar homes make daytime power that would dodge the day rate. EV and battery owners, who could pack the free window with overnight charging, are shut out too. |
Why TXU points renters at this plan
Tell TXU's shopping site you live in a Dallas apartment and Free Nights & Cool Summer 12 appears first, under "Recommended plans for your apartment," with a $100 Visa prepaid card attached. The same page runs a win-up-to-$10,000 sweepstakes whose official rules limit entry to people enrolling at "a qualifying multifamily premise," and TXU's True Fit Guarantee footnote on that page ends "Rental property customers only." This plan family is aimed at renters by design, not accident.
Apartment usage is small, and small usage makes the fixed costs loom larger: the $9.95 base charge alone adds about 2.0 cents per kWh to a 500-kWh month before you buy any electricity, which is why TXU's own EFL average climbs to 20.3 cents at 500 kWh. On the same shopping page, TXU's own Simple Rate 12 was quoted at 17.2 cents and Simple Value 12 at 16.2 cents, both below the free-nights plan's 18.9. TXU's shelf undercuts its own headliner; the headliner is the one with "free" in the name.
What to do instead
Every free-nights plan prepays the giveaway through the hours that are not free; our free-nights guide shows the same engine across brands, and our TXU Free Pass review covers the free-days cousin. For contrast, here is the live Oncor market on the day we published (August 2026). The cheapest all-in plan at 1,000 kWh was 7.0 cents per kWh, though it gets there with a bill credit that punishes low-usage months; bill-credit plans cut both ways. The cheapest flat plan with no credits and no tiers was 13.2 cents. Every plan below publishes its full Electricity Facts Label before you enroll.