We Are Now on Hydro One's TOU Pricing

We received a letter from Hydro One mid-August that said our Smart Meter would switch over to Time of Use (TOU) pricing on September 8.  We've had the meter since February 4, 2008 then activated on May 5, 2010.  The period between May and September was likely a testing period for Hydro One to make sure all meters installed at that time were working properly before switching over to TOU pricing.  Now that we are on TOU pricing we can go to Hydro One's website, sign into our account then check out electricity usage which is rather interesting.

The home page for the TOU pricing shows a pie graph of your electricity usage for the last 30 days.  I'm pleased to say that 55% of our electricity usage over the last 30 days has been in the off-peak hours at the cheapest cost per kWh of 5.3¢.  Twenty-seven percent of our electricity usage was in the mid-peak hours (8¢ per kWh) and the remaining 18% was at the on-peak hours (9.9¢ per kWh).  Really this is rather good considering we had to have our air conditioning on a few times over the last month.  Clicking a tab took me to the hourly electricity usage which is again quite interesting.  I noticed a spike between 8 and 9 pm when I decided to deep fry chicken wings for an evening spike.  It wasn't a big or costly spike just noticeable.  The next tab shows a bar graph of daily electricity use and the following tab show the monthly bar graph both divided into the three peak hour designation.  These visuals will help bring awareness to energy usage. 

In all honesty not much will change here in the way we use electricity because we have been energy conscious for quite some time.  We are part of the every kWh counts challenge and we are constantly looking at ways to reduce our electricity consumption.  We are gradually moving towards solar with a goal of being off the grid within 5 years.  Over the last 30 days we used a total of 653 kWh and that's with the AC on a few times.  The average house hold use is a little over 1,000 kWh each month so we are well below that level making us very good candidates for going solar. 

Garden Gnome
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