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.
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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.
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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.
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January 7, 2010 at 11:22 am
Sandy Manners
Philip,
I am the Director of Corporate Communications for Horizon Utilities. We provide electricity to 230,000 homes and businesses in Hamilton (including Flamborough and Waterdown) and St. Catharines.
I wanted to thank you for letting customers know that they can take advantage of our peaksaver program (free programmable thermostat) and that we provide lots of energy conservation and energy shifting tips on our website. In addition to the link you provided, your readers may find the information on the attached link of help in learning how to best manage their electricity costs under time-of-use pricing. http://www.horizonutilities.com/HHSC/html/tou/tou_shiftToSave.jsp
One thing I would like to point out, however, is that under time-of-use rates, over the course of a year, the average consumer should only see a minor change on their bill, even if they make no effort to shift any of their electricity consumption to mid-peak or off-peak times. (This is a far cry from the doubling of the bill that you suggested.)
If people are curious to see what impact time-of-use rates will have on their bill when they move to time-of-use rates, all they have to do is take a look at their household’s data online at http://www.horizonutilities.com. If customers are not yet registered for online account access, they will have to register first. Our Customer Care Department at 1-800-458-1236 can assist if anyone has any difficulty.
Essentially all of our customers now have a smart meter. We will be migrating customers over to time-of-use rates in batches throughout 2010 and into 2011. The first batch of 10,000 customers shifted to time-of-use rates at the end of 2009.
Last but not least, I would like to caution customers not to simply look at one bill and come to any conclusions. Comparisons of fixed rate charges versus time-of-use charges should be made on an annual basis due to the fact that energy use patterns change as our seasons change.
If your readers have questions regarding time-of-use pricing, I would encourage them to drop us a note at timeofuse@horizonutilities.com.
I hope this information is helpful.
January 7, 2010 at 2:58 pm
philip
Thank you Sandy! There are some great tools on horizon utilities website. I also looked at the charts that the site is capable of comparing before and after scenarios’s, just disappointed that they didn’t total for me to know exactly how much I would be affected.
In fairness the last person I spoke to experiencing a huge increase had teenagers, all with their own tv’s (probably computers also)all running during peak times and doing loads of laundry practically every day. There is definitely room for a few habit changes here. The people I am most concerned about are the people with electric heating and also on fixed incomes, this will be a little tougher for them to absorb I would think.