Ontario Canada Electricity rates, highest in North America?
A news story today from
http://www.640toronto.com/syn/104/88985/hydro-rates-climbing-ont
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It’s now going to be just a little bit pricier to do your laundry or run the dishwasher in the middle of the day.
The Ontario Energy Board says new rate hikes came into effect on Sunday, bringing the cost of using power during peak times up to 18 cents a kilowatt hour. The peak period hydro rate is in effect from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays
The mid-peak hydro rate, from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m., and 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., on weekdays, is increasing nearly half a cent to 13.2 cents per kilowatt hour.
The off-peak rate, from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m., is increasing less than half a cent to 8.7 cents per kilowatt hour.
The changes are expected to add a little more than $3 a month to the average bill.
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And the real kicker is that this in only half of the total cost. Here in Ontario, the 18 cents/kwh is just for the actual power to be generated, we also get charged for delivery.
For instance, our last electricity bill:
Electricity: On-Peak: 188 kWh @ 17.5000 ¢ $33
Electricity: Mid-Peak: 148 kWh @ 12.8000 ¢ $19
Electricity: Off-Peak: 1,179 kWh @ 8.3000 ¢ $98
Delivery $107
Regulatory Charges $10
Debt Retirement Charge++ $0.00
HST (87086-5821-RT0001) $35
Total of your electricity charges $302
taking just the power costs $33+19+98=$150.
So in reality the actual power cost does work out to 49.7% of the total cost.
One source of prices in North America is here: https://issuu.com/hydroquebec/docs/comp_2015_en
This shows that Nova Scotia and PEI appear to have higher prices than we do.
San Francisco, Boston and New York are all about double our prices.
Montreal is the lowest listed, about 1/2 of ours.