Energy tips

I have had a few people express a little bit of horror at their most recent hydro bill and not  aware of our new time-of-use billing. I am probably a fairly energy conscious person but a couple of changes we will encounter with energy this year in Ontario are making it worth being that much more aware.

1.  First of all the change to HST on July 01/10 will be a direct increase of 8% on our current energy bills to start.
2. Time-of-use billing rates. Most of us are not conscious at all what time of day we use electricity but once the smart meter installed on your home gets turned on, which it has in a number of area’s and will be completed everywhere by the end of the year. You need to start monitoring and adjusting a few habits unless it does not matter to you if your bill doubles. Our cheapest current rate is 5.8cents a kilowatt and worst case scenario is the new peak rate is 9.3cents a kilowatt, an increase of 62%.

A couple suggestions: 

• At least be aware of some cost changes to your bill by your most common appliances – check out this document created by horizon utilities to see some of the dollar and cents differences and some useful tips on energy shifting:               http://www.horizonutilities.com/pdf/TOUBrochureIntroducing.pdf
• If you have electric heating – Might be worth programming multiple times of day into your programmable thermostat to take advantage of off-peak times, if you have central A/C the “peaksaver” program may be an option for a new very programmable thermostat free of charge.
• If you are close to replacing your clothes dryer and you have natural gas already– might be worth upgrading to a natural gas dryer (don’t forget you will have to have a gasfitter put in a gas line for you also– one time charge)
• If your forced air furnace is older and you are thinking of replacing– Might be worth upgrading circulating fan to a DC motor. These fans are much more efficient with electricity consumption among other benefits. Standard furnace fans use between 300-700 watts and a DC motor on low speed might be less than 100 watts. This will result in considerable electrical savings over the life of the furnace.                                                                      

NOTE: Check into government grants before replacing the furnace and if applicable (Some are in place until Jan 31/10), a home energy audit MUST be done first to be applicable for any grant.