Ontario Hydro | General financial discussion | Discussion forum

pooreva said
It all depends on prices for tiered vs. TOU prices.

I am wondering if anybody of this board uses more than 1000kW/month in winter time? Unless you are in rural area where there is no gas line and you have to use electricity to heat your dwelling how could you use 1000kW/month? I can understand if you have to run medical equipment 24/7, though...
Modern TVs use very little electricity so you can get your ad/propaganda fix 24/7, no problem. On the other hand, I can see houses having all possible lights on (including externals) all night. But then again, most light are LED so HOW can somebody use 1000kW/month?  

Someone with some high end class A monoblock amplifier and blast it 24/7 ? 🙂

I have to read the 600kW vs 1000kW twice to make sure I understand 1000kW is indeed for winter (My hydro bill is 3 times the amount in summer vs winter)...

But yeah without seeing the actual tiered rate, not possible to even guesstimate which pricing is better...

But yeah without seeing the actual tiered rate, not possible to even guesstimate which pricing is better... 

My guess is that the Tiered pricing will be the Mid-Peak rate for the first 600 kWH in summer or 1000 kWh in winter and then the On-Peak rate for usage over those amounts.

Info from the OEB's website:

Bill Calculator
There is no guarantee you will save money if you switch from TOU to Tiered prices. The total bill impact of switching will vary depending on how much electricity is consumed in a month and when it is consumed during the day.

Check back later this month, when we will post a bill calculator that will allow you to see side-by-side what your total bill would look like under both TOU and Tiered prices, taking into account the other rates charged by your electricity utility."

https://www.oeb.ca/rates-and-your-bill/electricity-rates/choosing-your-electricity-price-plan

Today's info:
https://www.oeb.ca/newsroom/2020/ontario-energy-board-sets-new-electricity-prices-households-and-small-businesses

Alexandre said

60% of my household electricity consumption is at off-peak time, so my guess would be TOU will result in smaller electricity bill for me, comparing with Tiered pricing.

Ran new online calculator, and surprise: TOU is more expensive for me!

I will save $3.66 in the Winter and $1.37 in the Summer, monthly, after fees and taxes.
Savings are not that large, so I'll stay with TOU, why bother switching.

I wonder if Utilities think same way: what is the point of all of this? Why not just TOU for everyone, cuts on administrative costs of managing different billing clients.
Must be one of those Ontario government good intentions.

Kidd said
On your tiered calculations you (they) are using the winter max of 1,000kw with a usage of 806kw. During the summer, the max is only 600kw. The overage price is 14.6 cents per kw.  

I hadn't thought about doing the summer calculation so thanks for the reminder. My highest consumption bill during this past summer was 840 kWh for the period from Jun 11 to Jul 11.

Tiered Pricing works out to be the more economical plan for me year-round.

The OEB also provides an annual calculator. The yearly savings for me on the Tiered Plan vs TOU, using the data from my last 12 bills, would be just under $54.00.

Agreed, probably just a few bucks difference per month, and because of seasonal variances you'd have to do a 12-month comparison of usage in each of the 3 price categories to see what's best on an annual basis (though I suppose you can opt in and out if different seasons cause a big difference for you, e.g. some people have cottages and may be there for many months of a year - obviously have to do separate calculations for separate properties), so probably way too much effort for minimal gain. Also your last 12 month history may not be representative of the future as (due to the China virus) many folks have been at home during the day a lot more than going forward. In general, during peak time working folks are out of the house more than retired ones so the former might be more likely to benefit from TOU pricing.

The OEB site says "Historically, the typical residential customer who paid TOU prices has used nearly two thirds of their power at off-peak times – the time when the lowest TOU price applies. The other third of their power use was typically split equally between on- and mid-peak times", so if you think you're "typical" you can just use those ratios for purposes of the online calculator.

Just run a few scenarios, this is basically the math:

Even if 2/3 of your usage is off-peak, then the tiered pricing will provide some savings. I am surprised to see that but this is according to the calculator on the site. This is due to the extra "delivery charge" under TOU, which is already embedded in the Tiered pricing. Look at the detail on that screen and you will see what I mean.
The above statement is only untrue if u are a big power user (>> 1200 monthly).
For my household, we are about 600-700 in the winter, peak summer months about 1200-1300 (my wife likes to blast the aircon to feel like the arctic).
So unless you have electric baseboard heating and electric water heater, chances are tiered pricing will be a net saver for you, with the added benefit of not adjustment your power usage to line up with TOU pricing as well.

There should be an incentive to use TOU and switch load to off peak time. If customer uses 2/3 of their power at off peak time and still does not see substantial difference between TOU and Tiered - that's wrong.

It tells me off peak TOU price is set too high, or Tiered too low.

We just calculated that the annual savings for choosing Tiered would be... $7.58 !

WOW!!! Is that what all the fuss was about?

We have gas heat, gas clothes dryer, and gas water heater.
We have never exceeded 1000Kwh/month.

I expect our electricity usage to go down next summer because we just finally got rid of that cursed thermostat that automatically re-sets every so many hours. We've gone back to a DIY thermostat, where, when you tell it what to do, it sticks with it until you tell it to do something else. Ah the joy of the simple pleasure of a thermostat that doesn't have a mind of its own!