If you live in Ontario, you'll pay less for electricity, effective today
CBC
Ontarians struggling with the rising cost of living may notice something unusual when they look at their next hydro bill.
The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) has announced a decrease in the cost of electricity for residential and small business customers, which takes effect Tuesday. Depending on the pricing plan, people will see drops in price of as much as two cents a kilowatt hour (kWh).
The drop in price is mainly due to changes in the market, says Joel MacDonald, the founder of Energyrates.ca., a website that compares energy prices.
"Peak grid demand is over the summer ... generally that's driven by air conditioners," MacDonald said.
"So, it would be typical to see a slightly lower rate over the winter than it would over the summer."
MacDonald says the drop is not a significant one compared to last winter's decrease in Ontario, but he points out other provinces are raising their rates — for example, Albertans are seeing increases ranging from three cents to 28 cents per kWh.
Prices for both time-of-use and tiered plans will go down, according to the province's electricity and natural gas regulator. That change will remain in effect until the end of April next year.
The OEB announced time-of-use (TOU) plan decreases, where customers are billed different amounts depending on when they use electricity, across the board. Customers using electricity on weekdays during on-peak hours (7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.) will now pay 15.1 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh), which is down from last winter's pricing of 17.0 cents per kWh.
The mid-peak rate (weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.) has dropped from 11.3 cents to 10.2 cents per kWh. The off-peak rate (weekdays from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. and all day on weekends and holidays) also dropped to 7.4 cents from 8.2 cents per kWh.
Tiered pricing, where customers pay a flat rate for the first 1,000 kWh during winter months and a higher rate if they exceed that amount, has also gone down by just over one cent per kWh.
MacDonald says this is a good time for Ontarians to reassess whether they want to be on a TOU or tiered plan.
Ontario introduced smart metres in 2005, says MacDonald, which measure not just the amount of electricity usage but the time of day electricity is being used.
He credits these metres for lowering the amount of electricity Ontarians have used since their introduction.
However, in the first year of the pandemic, the OEB gave residential and small business customers the option of being billed by TOU or tiered plans.
