[Travis]

My energy provider (SDGE in Southern California, USA) takes a fairly straightforward tiered approach to energy cost. First, they take your house arrangement (sqft, year built, etc.) and compare to similar homes. This establishes a baseline energy usage for your house profile.

Using 0-100% of your "allocation" is one price. It's about 2x the cost to use 101-149%. 150-199% is an even higher rate. Etc.

Doesn't solve peak usage or distribution issues, but it's a (relatively) easy concept to understand. The detailed statements pretty clearly explain how much each "allocated unit" of energy costs.