Ontario Hydro electricity pricing change last October.

[ssfc72]

I am just curious if anyone else has opted to change their home electricity rate, from Time of Use ( TOU ) to a Tier pricing.

I used the Hydroone calculator, on their website,  https://www.hydroone.com/rates-and-billing/rates-and-charges/customer-choice ,  to see what the cost difference would be for my usage of hydro and it came out at about $1.20/ month cheaper, to switch from TOU to a Tier pricing system.
This savings is negligible for me but by switching to the Tier pricing, the electricity rate would be a constant 12.6 cents/kWh( for the first 1000 kWr per month) any time of the day.  This means I would not have to put off using the clothes dryer or using the oven for cooking during the daytime Peak pricing, that I did with the TOU pricing.
In the summer, I should see some greater cost savings in electricity, when the house air conditioning is running during the daytime.

[Jason]

I switched us to Tier pricing. Did you just use the estimate or did you enter all the months? I did the latter and it came out to about $30/year cheaper. So I switched. When TOU pricing came in, we never really changed our habits anyway. I use the oven when I want, I have the lights on when I want. And obviously, I'm using the computer regardless of the time of day. The washer and dryer are coin-operated.  The one thing that uses a lot of energy is our electric heating. And it's pretty hard to control that unless we wanted to be cold during peak and mid-peak periods (with TOU).

I actually think that offering tiered pricing is going to come back to bite the government in the butt. During peak times, the government has to pay more for electricity, a lot more. But I suppose with the tiered pricing they're hoping to keep households under that 1000 kWh/month and lessen the demand overall. If the price is about the same, and I suspect it is for most then they've done a good job of averaging it out.

[ssfc72]

I just used their calculator on my previous months electrical bill.    My electricity usage runs between about 300 kWh for the summer month and 360 kWh for the winter month. I have a gas furnace and water heater.

[Jason]

I'm really impressed with your figure during the summer months especially considering that you use air conditioning and have a house. We have a 1-bedroom apartment and just fans then. In the summer months for us, we're in the 400s, 406 to 490.

The time when we use the fans the most, July, is the highest in that period, understandably but it shouldn't be a 25% increase. The fans must be really inefficient although maybe it's because we use so little power for the rest of the time so fans jump up the use. Besides that, we only have lighting (all LEDs) and a couple of computers which are turned off when not in use.

From November to May, it goes from a low in the 700-900 to over 1300 in the winter. We have equal billing so we don't face mammoth bills in the winter.

Anyway, I'm really impressed that you only use around 300 in the summer. Do you sit in the dark a lot? ;-)

[William]

Bill, thanks for heads up.  I didn't know we could opt back to Tier plan.

Jason, your usage is high because of "electric heating".  I have gas furnace and water heater, like Bill.  So, what we save in electricity bill, we use it on gas.  HydroOne calculator says I save about $2/month, so that's $24/year. 

[ssfc72]

You are welcome, William.  Seasons Greetings!

[Jason]

Jason, your usage is high because of "electric heating".  I have gas furnace and water heater, like Bill.  So, what we save in electricity bill, we use it on gas. 

My total usage is higher because of that, yes, but I was talking about how he only uses about 300 kWh in the summer each month while I use in the 400s during the same period. I don't use electric heat during that period. So it has to be something else. But it could be the water heater. I didn't think of that. We have a pretty efficient heater; it was just replaced a couple of years ago and it's on a timer. But it could be the highest usage appliance we have in the summer.

Now I want to get one of those devices that measure how much energy you use and test it with everything.

I would also like to wish you both Happy Holidays. Hopefully, 2021 will be a much better year, too.