Hydro One came out to install our new smart meter on February 4, 2008. Silly me, I though somehow it would be activated well before April of 2010! I'm not sure when the meter was actually activated only that it showed up on our April's hydro bill. Notice the yellow highlighted that says actual? Up to this point we have been living with estimate billing in rural Ontario with actual readings only once every three months. This made it extremely difficult to determine actual daily kWh usage without making the effort to read the meter daily at the same time each day for at least the entire month. Taking a daily reading at the same time every day for a month is a bit more difficult than you would think because quite frankly life gets in the way. Eliminating the estimate meter readings is a very much welcomed improvement to our electricity services. It will help us prepare better for the new TOU rates that will be implemented in the very near future. At the same time eliminating meter reader is going to reduce the amount of gas used to read the meters especially in rural areas. I would like to see some type of rebate or cost per kW reduction to compensate for this savings but that is highly unlikely.
In fact in Ontario the only real incentive for saving on electricity is to reduce the kWh used. Our recent (April 2010) bill was $83.37 with only $32.61 actual kWh used and the rest is service charges and taxes. This is one reason why we have a renewed interest in getting off the grid entirely. We are almost at half the average household usage so are already good candidates for going completely solar. That is our 5 year goal but in the meantime we still have to deal with Hydro One.
Garden Gnome
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