FERGUS – Centre Wellington Hydro is among the first utility providers in the province to offer a new “ultra-low” hydro rate for customers who opt-in to the program.
The new program provides hydro at 2.4 cents per kilowatt hour from 11pm to 7am – ideal for customers who do shift work or who own an electric vehicle and want to charge it overnight.
They pay the same rates as time-of-use customers during off-peak and mid-peak hours.
But the rate jumps to 24 cents per kilowatt-hour during peak hours, which are 4 to 9pm on weekdays.
“This third, new rate is to incentivize people to use electricity overnight,” said CW Hydro president Wayne Dyce in an interview.
“We use mostly renewables at night. During peak hours, we use natural gas to create electricity.”
Currently customers are offered two options and those options will remain.
Time-of-use rate
With the time-of-use option, customers are charged different rates for electricity use during peak, mid-peak or off-peak hours.
Off-peak hours are weekdays between 7pm and 7am and on weekends/holidays. The charge for hydro during off-peak hours is 7.4 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Mid-peak hours are weekdays from 7 to 11am and 5 to 7pm and the charge is 10.2 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Peak hours are weekdays from 11am to 5pm, at 15.1 cents per kilowatt-hour.
Dyce said most CW Hydro customers use the time-of-use program.
Tiered use
With the tiered use payment structure, residential customers are charged 8.7 cents per hour for their first 600 kilowatts and then 10.3 cents per kilowatt hour for the rest of the month.
Businesses in the tiered-use system pay 8.7 cents for the first 750 kilowatts per month and 10.3 cents per kilowatt hour after that.
Ultra-low
The new third option offers an ultra-low rate of 2.4 cents overnight, but the rate jumps to 24 cents per kilowatt hour during peak hours.
So it’s not for everyone, Dyce said, adding it would mostly appeal to electric vehicle (EV) owners who are not home during the day.
“EVs take a lot of energy to charge,” Dyce said.
“This is really a move to raise the sales of EVs as the federal and provincial governments work toward climate action.”
Ontario Energy Minister Todd Smith announced the new rate on April 11.
He said Toronto Hydro, London Hydro, Centre Wellington Hydro, Hearst Power, Renfrew Hydro, Wasaga Distribution, and Sioux Lookout Hydro will offer the new pricing effective May 1.
All utility companies in the province will be required to offer it within six months.
If it sounds like a lot of calculations to see if the new pricing rate is for you, well, it is, Dyce said.
“It can be complicated to figure out which plan will save the most money,” he said.
“I urge people to visit the Ontario Energy Board website and use their calculator to figure out which program is best for them.”
The bill calculator can be found at oeb.ca (under the “consumer information and protection” tab, then click the “bill calculator”).
Centre Wellington Hydro also has a portal that allows customers to see their energy use in real time.
This information is also useful in calculating if the ultra-low rate will save money.
It can be found at cwhydro.ca (click on “my account-customer connect”).
