Can Smart Home Savings Offset the Duke Energy Rate Hike?
Duke Energy residential customers in NC, SC, IN, OH, and KY are facing 2025-2026 rate increases, while Florida's 2026 bills are dropping. Each territory's dated hike math is matched to verified smart-home savings — thermostat scheduling, smart plugs, off-peak shifting — so you can see how much of your increase is realistically offsettable and what remains.
If your Duke Energy bill went up, the useful question is not whether a smart thermostat can “save up to” some tidy percentage. The question is how much of your actual increase sits on charges that shrink when you use fewer kWh or therms, and how much sits on fixed charges, approved base-rate changes, or pending riders that a gadget cannot erase.
That is why any savings advice for a Duke rate hike has to start with service territory. Florida is the counterexample: Duke Energy Florida customers saw higher bills in 2025, but Duke announced 2026 reductions tied largely to storm-cost-recovery removal, including about a $44.16 decrease beginning in March 2026 compared with February and later a roughly $50, or about 25%, reduction for June through September compared with January for a residential customer using 1,000 kWh [1][2]. Kentucky needs a different correction: the officially sourced 2026 increase is a natural-gas base-rate increase, not a verified electric increase, with the residential gas customer charge moving from $17.50 to $20.00 [3].
First, find the Duke bill you actually have
As of Aug. 25, 2026, Duke customers are not all facing the same rate story. Some increases are approved. Some are pending. Some are fuel or purchased-power riders that move with usage. Some are supply-price changes. One widely repeated Kentucky electric-increase claim remains unverified against the official record. Blending these into one “Duke rate hike” number makes the savings math look cleaner than it is.
| Duke territory | What changed or is pending | What smart-home savings can realistically touch |
|---|---|---|
| Duke Energy Florida | Bills rose in March 2025 by about $21 to $32 per month at 1,000 kWh, then Duke announced 2026 reductions: about -$44.16 beginning in March versus February and about -$50, or roughly -25%, June through September versus January [1][2]. | There is no simple 2026 electric-rate-hike offset story here. Smart-home controls can still cut usage, but Florida does not fit the “everyone’s Duke bill is going up in 2026” frame. |
| Duke Energy Kentucky | The officially sourced 2026 increase is natural gas: a 9.61% PSC-approved base-rate increase, effective January 2026, with the gas customer charge rising from $17.50 to $20.00 [3]. | Electric smart plugs and LEDs do not offset a gas customer charge. A thermostat may reduce heating usage if it controls gas heat, but it does not remove the fixed gas customer-charge increase. A separate Duke Kentucky electric increase remains unverified here. |
| North Carolina — Duke Energy Carolinas | Duke Energy Carolinas originally sought up to a 15.8% average residential increase; a July 2026 settlement reduced that to a proposed 9.5% cumulative increase, split into 5.9% in year one and 3.6% in year two, or about +$6.53 per month on Jan. 1, 2027 and +$4.66 per month on Jan. 1, 2028 for a 1,000-kWh customer, pending NCUC approval [4][5][6]. A separate June 1, 2026 fuel-cost filing added about +$6.90 per month for DEC [7]. | Usage cuts can reduce exposure to the fuel and purchased-power rider and to usage-based energy charges. They do not cancel fixed charges, and the base-rate settlement was still pending as of Aug. 25, 2026. |
| North Carolina — Duke Energy Progress | Duke Energy Progress sought 18.5%. A separate 6.8%-over-two-years settlement was rejected by North Carolina Attorney General Jeff Jackson on Aug. 12, 2026 [8]. The June 1, 2026 fuel-cost filing added about +$7.88 per month for DEP [7]. | The fuel rider is the clearest current usage-based target. Final base-rate offset math should wait until the DEP case is resolved. |
| South Carolina — Duke Energy Progress | A settlement cut the Feb. 1, 2026 increase from Duke’s requested $21.66 per month to $11.23 per month. A new eRSA filing seeks another roughly $10.20 per month beginning Aug. 1, 2026 [9][10]. | The approved increase is real; the additional eRSA amount is a separate filing. Smart-home savings can help against usage-based pieces, but should not be booked against pending charges as if already final. |
| Ohio — Duke Energy Ohio | The Price to Compare rose from 8.02 to 10.445 cents/kWh on June 1, 2025, about a 30% supply increase or roughly +$8 per month at 1,000 kWh. It then moved from 10.0819 to 10.7016 cents/kWh on June 1, 2026, about +$6.20 per month at 1,000 kWh. Ohio’s consumer advocate also lists Duke’s distribution case 26-0132-EL-AIR as proposing about +$8.32 per month more for 2027 [11][12][13]. | Supply-price increases are directly usage-sensitive: fewer kWh means less exposure. A proposed distribution increase is a different bill component and should not be treated as identical to supply. |
| Indiana — Duke Energy Indiana | The IURC order is reported by the state utility consumer counselor page as approving about $295.7 million in annual revenue. Citizens Action Coalition reports $244.1 million, 8.04%, and about +$19.16 per month for a typical residential customer. Fox59 reported about $395.7 million. A second step landed in early 2026 [14][15][16]. | Do not average those revenue figures. Use the figure from your bill notice, the IURC order, or the source you are relying on. Smart-home savings can reduce usage-based exposure, but the headline revenue number alone is not enough to calculate your household offset. |
Why the line item matters more than the advertised savings percentage
A residential bill is not one bucket. A thermostat schedule lowers heating and cooling use. A smart plug can kill standby draw at a television, game console, office setup, or audio rack. LEDs lower the consumption of the fixtures you actually use. Those savings flow through kWh- or therm-based charges. They do not reduce a monthly customer charge just because the house behaved well.
Fuel and purchased-power riders deserve special attention because they are not fixed fees. In North Carolina, Duke’s 2026 fuel-cost filing was designed to recover $809 million in fuel and purchased-power costs, adding about $6.90 per month for DEC and $7.88 per month for DEP beginning June 1, 2026 [7]. Because those riders are tied to consumption, a household that trims kWh also trims some exposure to that rider. That is different from a customer charge, which stays on the bill even in a very efficient month.
This is also where percentage claims get slippery. If a smart thermostat saves a percentage of heating and cooling costs, that is not the same as saving the same percentage of the entire Duke bill. ENERGY STAR says certified smart thermostats save, on average, about 8% of heating and cooling bills, or roughly $50 per year, with savings around $100 per year in homes unoccupied much of the day [17]. ENERGY STAR also says heating and cooling account for roughly half of a typical home’s annual energy bill [18]. Good savings, wrong denominator if someone applies it to every bill line.
The verified smart-home levers, matched to the charges they can affect
| Lever | Verified savings basis | Bill component it can affect | What it cannot do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Smart thermostat scheduling or eco modes | ENERGY STAR estimates average savings of about 8% of heating and cooling bills, or about $50 per year; homes empty much of the day may average about $100 per year [17]. A 7°F to 10°F setback for 8 hours per day can save up to about 10% per year on heating and cooling [19][20]. | Heating and cooling kWh or therm use; usage-based energy charges; fuel or purchased-power riders where applicable. | It does not reduce a fixed customer charge. It also does not turn an HVAC-only savings percentage into a whole-bill savings percentage. |
| Smart plugs for standby loads | Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates standby power at 5% to 10% of residential electricity use [21]. | Plug-load kWh, especially always-on electronics and chargers clustered around entertainment or office equipment. | It does not touch HVAC, gas customer charges, or base fees. A smart plug on a tiny load is still a tiny savings. |
| LED swaps in the most-used fixtures | ENERGY STAR estimates replacing the five most frequently used fixtures or bulbs with ENERGY STAR models can save about $40 per year [18]. | Lighting kWh in rooms where lights run often. | It will not offset a large base-rate case by itself, and replacing rarely used bulbs first makes the math worse. |
| Off-peak shifting and pre-cooling | Savings depend on the exact rate plan, peak window, season, and household load shape. | Time-of-use or demand-sensitive charges, where the plan actually rewards moving load away from peak periods. | No North Carolina TOU dollar estimate should be used here without re-verifying live tariff details. If you are on a flat rate, shifting time without reducing kWh may do little or nothing. |
| Qualifying thermostat program credit | Duke Power Manager has been listed with a $150 initial credit plus $50 per year for enrolling a qualifying smart thermostat; Duke said 520,000 Carolinas customers were enrolled in Power Manager as of January 2026 [22][23]. | A bill credit can offset dollars more directly than energy savings, if your jurisdiction, equipment, and account qualify. | Terms vary and change. Live eligibility should be re-checked before treating the credit as guaranteed. |
For a quick comparison, ENERGY STAR’s $50-per-year average smart-thermostat savings is about $4.17 per month when spread across a year [17]. The five-fixture LED estimate is about $3.33 per month [18]. A $150 initial thermostat-program credit is different: if you spread it over the first year only for comparison, it is $12.50 per month, before the separate $50 annual credit. But the credit is not the same thing as lower usage, and it should not be counted unless your Duke account is eligible and the current program terms still match what is listed.
North Carolina: the base-rate cases are moving, but the fuel rider is already a usage target
For Duke Energy Carolinas in North Carolina, the cleanest dated comparison is this: the proposed settlement would add about $6.53 per month on Jan. 1, 2027 and another $4.66 per month on Jan. 1, 2028 for a 1,000-kWh residential customer, if approved by the NCUC [4][6]. That would sit on top of the June 1, 2026 fuel-cost rider impact of about $6.90 per month for DEC [7].
That distinction changes the savings answer. A thermostat schedule, standby-load controls, and LED swaps can reduce the kWh that runs through fuel and usage-based energy charges. They cannot make the pending base-rate settlement disappear. If a DEC household with a qualifying thermostat receives a $150 initial Power Manager credit, that credit could more than cover the first-year comparison value of a $6.53 monthly increase for a year, but that is a program-credit offset, not proof that the home reduced enough energy to erase the rate change [22].
Duke Energy Progress customers in North Carolina have an even less settled base-rate picture. DEP sought 18.5%, and the 6.8%-over-two-years settlement was rejected by the state attorney general on Aug. 12, 2026 [8]. The fuel-cost rider, however, is not hypothetical: the June 1, 2026 DEP fuel impact was about +$7.88 per month [7]. For DEP customers, any “offset” estimate should separate the current rider from the unresolved base-rate case.
Time-of-use automation in North Carolina should be handled carefully. Pre-cooling before a peak window, delaying a water heater, or shifting an EV charge can make sense on the right plan. But exact dollar math depends on the live tariff, territory, season, and peak window. Without re-checking those terms at publication time, the honest label is “investigating,” not “this will save $X.” For the mechanics of cooling schedules rather than Duke-specific tariff math, see smart thermostat pre-cooling in a heat advisory and how to time your smart home cooling for heat waves.
South Carolina: one increase is approved, another filing is separate
For Duke Energy Progress in South Carolina, the February 2026 settlement matters because it cut the requested increase from $21.66 per month to $11.23 per month [9]. That is still an increase a household has to pay. The separate eRSA filing seeking another roughly $10.20 per month from Aug. 1, 2026 should be kept in its own box until its status is clear [10].
The practical smart-home answer is similar to North Carolina, but the bill math should not be copied across the state line. Thermostat savings apply to HVAC use. Standby-load savings apply to plug loads. LED savings apply to lighting. A qualifying thermostat credit, where available and verified for the customer’s account, can offset dollars more directly. None of those turns an approved rate settlement plus a new filing into a single percentage that can be canceled with one device.
Ohio: supply and capacity movement makes kWh cuts more visible
Ohio’s Duke story is not mainly a Carolinas-style base-rate settlement. The Price to Compare rose from 8.02 to 10.445 cents/kWh on June 1, 2025, which ElectricityRates.com described as about a 30% supply increase and roughly $8 per month at 1,000 kWh [11]. On June 1, 2026, it moved again from 10.0819 to 10.7016 cents/kWh, about $6.20 per month at 1,000 kWh [12]. The 2025 movement was tied partly to the PJM capacity auction, which cleared at a record $329.17/MW-day [11].
This is one of the cleaner places to understand why usage matters. A higher cents-per-kWh supply price means every avoided kWh avoids more supply cost than it did before. A scheduled thermostat during peak cooling months, smart plugs on standby-heavy electronics, and LEDs in high-use fixtures all push against a usage-sensitive increase. The separate Ohio distribution case, which the Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel lists as proposing about +$8.32 per month for 2027, should be evaluated separately because distribution charges do not behave exactly like supply prices [13].
Indiana: do not blend the reported revenue figures
Indiana is the territory where the public numbers most need labels. The Indiana utility consumer counselor page says the IURC order approved about $295.7 million in annual revenue [14]. Citizens Action Coalition reports $244.1 million, 8.04%, and about $19.16 per month for a typical residential customer [15]. Fox59 reported about $395.7 million [16]. Those figures should not be averaged into a fake consensus.
For a Duke Energy Indiana customer deciding whether to buy smart-home gear, the right move is to use the bill notice or the order figure that applies to the specific rate step, then apply savings only to usage-sensitive charges. If the household’s biggest controllable load is summer cooling, thermostat scheduling deserves attention. If the home has always-on entertainment or office equipment, smart plugs may be more useful than another thermostat feature. If most lighting has already been converted to LED, the remaining lighting savings are probably small.
Kentucky: gas math is not electric smart-plug math
The officially sourced Duke Energy Kentucky increase in the materials is a natural-gas base-rate increase approved by the PSC, effective January 2026, with a 9.61% increase and a residential gas customer charge rising from $17.50 to $20.00 [3]. Duke Kentucky electric rates were last set in a separate electric case, and the sourced Kentucky report says electric bills currently carry monthly fuel-cost-adjustment credits [3].
That makes the common “buy electric smart-home devices to offset the Duke hike” advice especially weak for Kentucky. A thermostat can reduce gas heating usage if it controls the heating system and is scheduled well. It cannot reduce the gas customer charge. Smart plugs and LED bulbs lower electric consumption, which may still be worthwhile, but they are not a direct answer to a gas base-rate increase. A separate 2025 electric-increase claim was not verified against the official record used here, so it should not be used for offset math.
Florida: still save energy, but do not pretend 2026 is a hike year
Duke Energy Florida customers had a real 2025 increase, with bills rising about $21 to $32 per month at 1,000 kWh in March 2025 [1]. But the 2026 story moved the other way because of storm-cost-recovery removal and later reductions under the 2025-2027 multiyear agreement [1][2].
A Florida customer with a heat pump, pool pump, EV, or heavy summer cooling load can still save money by scheduling loads and tightening thermostat behavior. The reason for doing it in 2026 is lower consumption and resilience against future bill changes, not offsetting a current Duke Florida electric-rate hike. That difference matters.
What to do before buying anything
Open the Duke bill and identify the operating company first: DEC, DEP, Duke Energy Florida, Duke Energy Ohio, Duke Energy Indiana, or Duke Energy Kentucky gas/electric. Then separate fixed charges from usage-based charges. If the increase is a customer charge, efficiency will not erase that line. If the pressure is supply, fuel, purchased power, or energy usage, cutting kWh or therms has a direct place to land.
- If HVAC is the largest controllable load, start with thermostat scheduling, occupancy behavior, and seasonal setpoints. For more detailed thermostat savings methodology, see how much a smart thermostat may save in an El Niño winter or smart thermostat settings for a triple-digit heat wave.
- If the home has clusters of always-on electronics, use smart plugs where they shut off real standby load, not where they add another device to save pennies.
- If the five most-used fixtures are not LED yet, that is a cleaner savings move than replacing rarely used bulbs first.
- If a Duke thermostat program credit is available in your jurisdiction, verify the live terms before counting it. A $150 initial credit can change first-year offset math much more than ordinary monthly energy savings, but only for eligible customers and devices [22].
- If you are on a time-of-use plan, shift cooling, water heating, EV charging, laundry, or dishwashing only after confirming the actual peak window and price spread. For seasonal automation ideas, see Super El Niño smart home energy saving tips by region and smart thermostat settings for the 2026-27 Super El Niño.
The sober answer is that smart-home savings can absorb a meaningful share of the increase in many Duke territories, especially when a qualifying thermostat credit is available and the main pressure is usage-based. But the remainder is real. Rate hikes are not one number, and a saved kWh only saves the charges that are actually tied to that kWh. Identify the territory, separate fixed from usage-based charges, apply the verified levers to the parts of the bill they can touch, and label anything else pending or unverified.
References
- Duke Energy Florida announces significantly lower bills in 2026; residential customers using 1,000 kWh to see approximately $44 decrease beginning in March, Duke Energy News
- Duke Energy Florida implements third rate reduction to lower residential customer bills by approximately 25% in 2026, Duke Energy News
- State PSC approves Duke Energy Kentucky’s rate increase for NKY service area, NKyTribune, December 2025
- Duke Energy and state reach agreement on lower rate increase request, Axios, July 20, 2026
- Duke Energy residential rate hike public hearing, WRAL
- Duke Energy trims proposed rate hike, customers remain concerned, ABC11
- Duke Energy announces plans for $809M rate hikes in June, WUNC, April 17, 2026
- Attorney General Jeff Jackson won’t sign second Duke Energy settlement that will cost families 6.8% in rate hikes, North Carolina Department of Justice, Aug. 12, 2026
- Duke Energy Progress proposes new rates to support ongoing efforts to build a smarter energy future for South Carolina customers, Duke Energy News
- S.C.D.C.A. representing customers against rate hikes, Spectrum News, May 6, 2026
- Duke Energy Rate Increase June 2025, ElectricityRates.com
- Duke Energy Rate Increase June 2026, ElectricityRates.com
- Duke Energy Ohio rate increase 26-0132-EL-AIR, Office of the Ohio Consumers’ Counsel
- Duke Energy Rate Case, Indiana Office of Utility Consumer Counselor
- Duke Rate Hike 2024, Citizens Action Coalition
- Duke Energy gets approval to raise rates in Indiana, Fox59
- Smart Thermostat FAQ, ENERGY STAR
- Low- and No-Cost Tips, ENERGY STAR
- Summer of Savings: Duke Energy offers ways to lower your energy use, Duke Energy News
- Setback Temperature Control, North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality
- Standby Power, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
- Duke Energy Power Manager Smart Thermostat Program, GreaterGrid
- Duke Energy helps customers stay energy smart as temperatures plunge with programs and tips to save money and energy, Duke Energy Investor Relations, Jan. 16, 2026