Second Month of Utility Bills at Our New House

The September utility bills at our new house were rather discouraging.   It is a bit difficult to compare usage between the two houses as the billing periods are quite different.  They were usually 30 day bills at the old house for natural gas and hydro but quarterly for water.  The hydro and water are combined on one bill at the new house and natural gas remains the same.  Here's the breakdown for October's utility bills:

• hydro - The cost per kWh for both houses is the same and both houses are on TOU pricing (10.7¢ per kWh on peak, 8.9¢ per kWh mid peak, 5.9¢ per kWh off peak).  The usage pattern remains fairly consistent with the highest usage during off peak hours (8 PM to 8 AM and weekends). We used 430 kWh total at a cost of $66.65.  We averaged $120 per month for hydro at our old house so we are definitely using less hydro which is to be expected given we are no longer cooking with hydro and we are using less lighting.  In a comparison of homes in our new neighbourhood, 33.72% of our neighbours used less hydro than us and 66.28% used more hydro than us.  We are back into the lower end of hydro usage.  $53.35 savings
• water/sewage - Our water/sewage averaged $35 per month at the old house.  The water/sewage portion of October's bill was $42.92.  The water rates are higher at our new house (88¢ per cubic meter vs 76¢ per cubic meter) and the sewage rates are lower (75¢ per cubic meter vs $1.25 per cubic meter.  The basic water service charge was $19.50 at the old house and $15.40 at the new house however there is a sewage service charge of $18.70 where there was no sewage service charge at the old house.  $7.92 expense
• natural gas - We used 1.83 cubic meters of natural gas for a total cost of $35.54 from September 29 to October 27 at our new house.  At the old house from September 24 to October 27, 2010 we used 1.665 cubic meters for a total cost of $31.85.  Two weeks during both billing periods were spent at our vacation home and the furnace was on during the last week to ten days.  The natural gas usage will increase with cooking but decrease because the outdoor grill is no longer natural gas, we no longer have a gas fireplace and the furnace is newer than our old one.  The furnace also has a heat recovery ventilation unit so we expect heating costs to be a bit lower even though the new house is larger.   $3.69 expense

During the month of October, we paid a bit more for water/sewage and natural gas but less on hydro for a net utility savings of $41.74!  Over a year that works out to a savings of $500.88.  We know that the AC will be on more at our new house and we will use more water and hydro when the pool is open but if we continue with good energy conservation methods we should still realize a reduction in utility costs by moving to our new house.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Utility Bills

We have slowly but steadily move most of our utility bills over to online rather than paper bills.  This made a lot of sense for us on a few levels.  First going to online ebills is eco-friendly, reducing the amount of paper we as individual households consume.  Second we generally have internet access where ever we are so the bill comes right into our inbox where we can pay it immediately with a click or two.  This is really convenient!  Third, we love to travel and quite often on a whim so we don't have to worry about having anyone pick up our mail from our mailbox (rural) or having our mail held.  I should note that for use to have our mail held during our last vacation home visit it cost $60.  This is no longer a service that Canada Post offers for free!  So using ebills ends up saving us money for shorter vacations where all we are expecting are utility bills.  We really don't get much in the way of mail anyway as more and more businesses move away from paper billing.  Most times we get junk mail, flyers and the weekly newspaper.  I've been told that in town if you don't have a mailbox the mail carrier can't deliver to your home which might be one way to deal with that pesky weekly paper!

Garden Gnome
©2006-2011

Hydro-One Time-of-Use (TOU) Prices

Towards the end of 2008 there were rumours of Hydro One, our electricity provider, going to a terms-of-use (TOU) electricity rates. I think it was in February that they came out to install our Smart meter. What the Smart meter allows Hydro One to do is read the meter via satellite eliminating physical meter readings. Now if you are in town or a city in Ontario meter reading is done monthly. If you are in a rural setting it is very different in that you get two months of estimate billing and one month of actual billing so essentially in rural areas your meter is actually read quarterly. This results in some very strange readings like our last December bill that showed us using 1 kWh per day when we average about 20 kWh which is hard to average due to the estimated billing. Then the estimates take into consideration the average electricity usage which means in the summer higher bills due to air conditioning despite the fact we had our air conditioning on for all of 5 days this past year. There has been a lot of complaints regarding the TOU metering but I for one am looking forward to it because I will be able to monitor our electricity usage online and it will eliminate the estimate billing.

According to the TOU pricing off-peak cost per kWh will be 4.2¢, mid-peak cost 7.6¢ per kWh and on-peak hours 9.1¢ per kWh in comparison to our current flat rate fee of 5.8¢ per kWh upto the threshold of 1,000 kWh then 6.7¢ per kWh above that threshold. So on first glance it looks like our hydro rates are going increase considerably. About 56% of our electric bill is service charges based on kWh used. So the cost per kWh is increasing but this will not affect the service charges based on kWh used. They are saying that if you shift your energy use to off-peak hours you can save money but looking at their pie charts it's easy to see this is not quite so easy. But what does this really mean? Essentially a large majority of Ontario households will change the way they use electricity from 7 am to 9 pm on weekdays year round.

We have high efficiency (HE), EnergyStar® qualified appliances. I'm home most days so can easily shift cooking and because we have HE appliances any shifting is going to have a minimum effect. They are suggesting running the dishwasher at after 9 pm or on weekends as well as doing laundry on the weekends. Well that is fine and dandy if you are a household of 2 but really I don't see much of a shift in energy usage for us. I usually run the dishwasher after 9 pm and the washer on weekends anyway so there won't be a change for us. I will likely shift more baking and canning to the weekends when the rates are cheaper but other than that there won't be a lot of change for us.

The reality is during the winter months the weekday hours between 5 pm and 9 pm are basically the dinner and after dinner hours at the highes cost per kWh. How exactly can you defer cooking times for dinner? The solution to minimizing the costs associated with cooking will be to use energy efficient cooking methods. Use a countertop roaster rather than an oven or use the oven to cook most of the components of the meal in the oven with an extra piece of meat to be used for sandwiches during the week will help maximize the energy you are using. A crockpot (slow cooker) while not my favourite cooking appliance can be set to take advantage of the lower mid-peak prices during winter days. A pressure cooker will help put tasty meals cooked during high-peak hours on your table without using a lot energy. Get into the habit of using lids on your pots and pans and any time you can eliminate boiling anything do so. It uses less energy to steam vegetables than it does to boil them and the results are nicer. Of course if you have the option to switch to cooking with natural gas entirely or partially you will definitely save all the way around since natural gas is currently considerably less than electricity in Ontario.

The TOU will affect people without HE appliances, those with children or on fixed income the most. Hydro One has a cute applet that helps you determine how much various electrical appliances will cost you to run based on the new TOU rates. This will give you an idea of what appliances could be switched to the low rate times. Now this tool is just a guide. For example the lowest time setting for the coffee maker is 1 hr but we use a purcolator or the espresso machine neither of which run more than 15 minutes. It also allows for 13 lights with no way to alter the number and a maximum of 12 hours on. Due to the design of our house we have 7 CFL on most days from about 8 am to midnight. It only gives 2 options for television, 50 - inch plasma or conventional and there is no allowance for hot boxes like cable or satellite. There are a lot of little energy users like phone adapters, alarm clocks and always on night lights that eat up electricity 24/7 that the applet doesn't account for either but it is a good start towards saving electricity.

Garden Gnome
©2006-2009