Ontario has an electricity oversupply problem

This graph from the Independent Electricity System Operator's website says it all:

Honey, I left the light on

In our garage, we have three 60W incandescent light bulbs. I have chosen not to change these bulbs out because there is no economic reason to do so, since they are on so rarely and for such short periods, and switching compact fluorescent (or any fluorescent for that matter) is a sure way to promote premature bulb failure.

But one night, those lights did get left on overnight. And sure enough, the time-of-use graph told the tale. Since there's 180W of lighting, leaving it on for 10 hours cost us 30 cents, because we're still paying flat rates until the time of use gets activated! Time to get that motion sensor installed in the garage like we had at our previous house.

The ugly truth about wind and solar: $

Parker Gallant has an excellent blog called "Ontario's Power Trip" hosted by the Globe and Mail that is a definite read for the lay person who wants to get to the bottom of and try to understand the energy mess that Ontario is in.

He writes this letter to the Meaford Independent, rebutting a previous editorial that was published in the paper.

Dryer deathmatch - electric vs. natural gas

In our home, the electric clothes dryer is by far the greatest consumer of electricity. So naturally, in any energy audit, we target the largest consumer of energy first, because usually it offers the best return on investment, the biggest opportunity to save, and the biggest impact on the bottom line.

Before we can determine which energy source is better and by how much, we need to first figure out how much energy does it take to dry a typical load of laundry? We can't use a plug-in type meter on a dryer because there aren't any for 220V loads, but we don't need one because the Hydro web portal gives us that information.

Let's take another look at a laundry day in the graph. On this particular day, my wife starts the dryer just before taking the kids to school. Then again later in the afternoon at 2pm, and finally in the evening around 7pm. Notice here is that it takes about 4kWh to dry a load of laundry. Your consumption per load might vary depending on things like the ability of the washer to extract water from clothes, the size of the dryer, the amount and type of clothes dried per load, how plugged the lint filter and dryer vent are, etc. It's going to take more energy to dry a load of towels and jeans than it would for some socks and t-shirts. Regardless, the outcome of this exercise will allow us to see the order of magnitude of savings, and then consider the cost of procuring and installing a gas dryer over the electric one currently in service.

To make this fair, a spreadsheet was used to break out the true cost of energy and exclude the fixed monthly customer charge from each utility, since that amount is not affected by the amount of energy consumed. The spreadsheet allows us to run various scenarios depending on how many loads are dried in a week. The average TOU line gives a rough idea of what it would cost to dry clothes if dryer use is somewhat random during waking hours.

The results aren't even close. Gas wins by a wide margin. In this scenario, a gas dryer handling six loads a week would save $143 to $188 annually. On the other hand, a single person running one load a week would only save $20 to $31 annually.

Now let's consider the cost of a new gas dryer, supposing the old one has reached it's end of life and a new one must be purchased anyway. Most gas dryers carry a $50 cost premium over the electric model. A 120V receptacle needs to be installed for the gas dryer, since the electric one uses 240V. An electrician can do this work for something in the order of $200 unless you are able to do it yourself or there is a spare receptacle nearby. And a gas fitter must run a new gas line to the dryer location. Count on $350 to $500 for this work depending on length and difficulty to install. Let's assume your venting is already metal and suitable to vent the lint, moisture, and products of combustion. So total cost premium for gas is in the order of $550 to 750. At a savings of $143 to $188 mentioned above, payback for this is three to five years. This payback will decline rapidly if electricity prices continue to rise rapidly, or you can get the work done cheaply.

So the bottom line is that gas wins, but only if there is a lot of dirty laundry. With smaller laundry demands, electricity, despite the painfully difficult to swallow electricity prices, may still be the better option for you.

Or just put up a clothesline and fight the relentless rain and birds. Hmmm. Maybe $200+ a year to dry clothes worth thousands of dollars isn't such a bad idea after all.

The cost of careless dryer use

Here's a great example of what happens when you run a large load during on-peak and mid-peak periods, like say, the dryer.

If I download this data in Excel format, which the HydroOne portal offers, I can rearrange the numbers to see the result of different scenarios. Let's suppose the three dryer runs had all been done during off-peak instead. The savings amount to about 53¢. Repeating this "mistake" every week would cost us an additional $27 per year.

Doesn't seem like much to one person, but consider the impact if everyone in Ontario ran their dryer like this. How many more powerplants, windmills, or solar panels do we need?

Next we will explore the savings of gas dryers vs. electric.

Consumption thus far

So now that I've had access to this data source for the last two weeks, I've noticed that the data typically lags two or three days behind. Today is April 30 and I don't have April 29 or even the 28th available to me yet. This makes it harder for me to see the results of little tweaks I do in the house because after a few days go by, I tend to forget about what exactly I did and when I did it.

PS, it's obvious when we did laundry, and also obvious which days there wasn't really anybody home throughout the day. Keep in mind we aren't paying TOU rates yet, so we aren't taking care of when exactly the dryer gets run.

$ and ¢ - Saving with TOU

Let's look at this graph again, this time with dollar amounts included. At this point, these numbers represent what I would be paying under Time-Of-Use rates. On April 15, we had twice as much on peak consumption as April 14, yet the total amount of energy consumed on each day is about the same. The cost difference between the two is a whopping 10 cents.

One of the huge challenges with Energy Management and saving money is that it takes a long time to see results. Saving 10¢ a day doesn't sound like much, but multiply it by 365 days a year and it totals $36.50, which is 3% of a $1200 annual electricity bill. If I told a commercial client they could reduce their annual electric bill by 3%, I think they would be interested in hearing more. Unfortunately, these graphs do not put that into perspective.

TOU Rates are here - for me, again, that is.

After moving last June, I've missed being able to see my daily and hourly consumption trends that I had at my previous home. Now, I have this data again as Hydro One continues their province-wide roll out of TOU rates to those customers that are within reach of data collection points.

I've been anxious to see what my night time base load is, what with even more electronic devices in a larger home. So far, looks like I'm at around 260 to 350 watts. Not much worse than my previous home which was around 200, especially considering we added a chest freezer, but I definitely think there is room for improvement.

Manitoba Hydro invades Ontario?

I'm surprised it hadn't ever happened yet, but Manitoba Hydro finally decided to collect some guts together and apply for an electricity wholesaler license in the province in Ontario.

http://hydro.mb.ca/regulatory_affairs/electric/noah_ew_manitoba_20110203.pdf
http://www.rds.oeb.gov.on.ca/webdrawer/webdrawer.dll/webdrawer/rec/245889/view/

What this essentially means is that any hydro customer in Ontario could buy their electricity from Manitoba, although the customer would be on the hook to pay the provincial benefit AKA global adjustment, making any such venture most likely financially disadvantageous.

Is Hydro Quebec next?

OEB Consultation on Time Of Use Rates

Not to steal any thunder from the massive storm surrounding UBB, but I thought you should all be aware of the other pending Ontario rip-off. The Ontario Energy Board has undertaken a consultation process to determine if changes need to be made to the time-of-use rate structure for electricity so that some of the Board's and the Government's goals can actually be accomplished. They started by having some consultant write a report about it, then asked for comments. BOY, did they get comments! Here are the highlights:

Advocacy Centre for Tenants Ontario: The Board should not proceed with the roll-out of TOU pricing to low-income customers before a comprehensive examination of this vulnerable sector’s energy use characteristics and the most effective ways to reduce their energy use without putting these individuals in financial or physical risk


Consumers Council of Canada: Moving all of the solar and wind costs, for example, to peak is not consistent with how those resources are run. The Council is concerned that arbitrarily increasing the peak price would unfairly increase the cost burden for those that cannot shift their load.


Direct Energy: To successfully implement time of use pricing and achieve targeted demand reduction goals, Ontario must first, integrate all generation costs into the wholesale price, and then, match the time of use cost with individual consumer loads....Without such a reform, time of use rate setting will not be able to fairly allocate the costs of peaking generation to peaking consumption; exacerbating existing consumer inequities and making the Board’s mission to guarantee just and reasonable rates impossible to accomplish.

Just Energy: mid-peak and peak periods are too close in price

London Property Management Association: The Board has no comprehensive, long-term, province-wide data upon which it can evaluate the impact of the current TOU pricing structure.

Ontario Non Profit Housing Assoc:The report did not specifically examine or report on the potential impact of TOU pricing on low-income households in any of its case studies.

Pollution Probe: While Ontario’s peak demand occurs on hot summer afternoons on a province-wide basis, it is important to remember that northern Ontario actually experiences its peak electricity demand during the winter instead

Ontario Power Workers Union: The policy decision that embarked Ontario on the smart metering and TOU pricing path was made in the absence of any robust research on the costs and benefits of this undertaking.....the increase in intermittent renewable supply that requires fossil-fuelled generation back-up for system reliability...has narrowed the RPP TOU price ratio and the increase in intermittent renewable supply contemplated in Ontario’s Long Term Energy Plan will exacerbate the problem by further reducing this differential.

School Energy Coalition: the Report proposes that certain costs be assumed to arise only in the summer (wind and solar), when it is clear that is not actually the case

Vulernable Energy Consumers Coalition: since consumers typically need to make investments in either equipment or lifestyle changes in order to affect load shifting, if the TOU differentials overstate the benefits then the cost of the investments made to achieve load shifting are likely to exceed the associated benefits, resulting in a loss in economic efficiency.

Mr Honey:...nearly half of my annual consumption is for heat

Mr Reynolds: Delivery, regulatory, and debt retirement charges on Ontario electricity bills are based on cumulative consumption during the billing period, and are therefore are not affected by customer efforts in shifting demand.....This means that residential customers are able to impact less than one-half of their electricity bills by leveraging TOU rates.

Mr Weir: TOU pricing will not reduce electricity use and this is evidenced by the Brattle Group stating there is no pricing that will benefit anything unless more studies/pilots are completed. We are now entering the 7th year of "Smart Meter/TOU" roll-out without a definitive answer.

All the respondents brought up great points that I think have left the OEB scratching it's collective head because it's just another example as to how messed up things really are.

Why Wind Energy is Hopeless

Ontario's screwed-up energy policy explained in 4 minutes

The real cost of TOU

The utilities and the government are nonchalantly brushing off claims that hydro customers in Ontario can't save money by shifting their consumption to off peak hours. The reason for that is simple, the TOU rates quoted don't include the fixed base charges, which include delivery, regulatory fees, and debt retirement charges. And the HST.

Once you factor in those added costs, off-peak use only has a 33% advantage over on-peak. Also consider that under the old system, the cost of electricity at any time was about 5.5 cents, it's no wonder that TOU is a losing proposition for the consumer.

How to tell if you're on a fixed-rate gas contract

What your Enbridge bill looks like if you're purchasing your natural gas from Enbridge at regulated market prices approved by the Ontario Energy Board. These prices are subject to change every three months.




What your Enbridge bill looks like if you're on a fixed rate natural gas contract. In this particular case, the name and contact information of the company you are purchasing your natural gas from appears in the gray box. The customer charge and delivery charge go to Enbridge, while the gas supply charge goes to the company you're under contract with.

Note that this bill does not include the gas cost adjustment. That's because you forfeit that privilege under a fixed rate contract.

If you're still not sure, call Enbridge to confirm if you're on a contract or not.

The new reality of electricity prices in Ontario

I've said many times to my friends, family, and colleagues that the price of electricity in Ontario is going to be the biggest issue in the next provincial election.

Case in point, I received my bill for the month of July. Now understand that July was one of the hottest July's on record in Ottawa, and extremly humid, too, with 150.8 cooling degree days. Compare that to all of 2009 that saw only 180 cooling degree days! So the air conditioning was humming for sure, and given we are in a bigger house with a slighly older air conditioner and less efficient furnace fan, it was the most expensive hydro bill I've ever paid at $124. But it's not the amount, it's the aggregate kWh rate.

Now the popular definition of the kWh rate are the rates set by the Ontario Energy Board. Right now, those are 6.5 cents/kWh for the first 600kWh, and 7.5 cents/kWh for anything above that. But that doesn't help the homeowner understand the total amount of the bill, which beyond the kWh also includes delivery, regulatory, debt retirement, and taxes. So by aggregate rate I mean take the total amount of your bill, and divide by the number of kWh consumed to get the REAL $/kWh rate.

In 2004, my aggregate rate was 12.8 cents. In July 2008, my aggregate rate was 13.1 cents. In July 2009, my aggregate rate was 14.5 cents. Now in July 2010, it's 16.6 cents! And we're not even talking about TOU rates yet at my new home; this is still regulated price plan. Regulated indeed.

Use a timer for bathroom fans

Here's an idea to conserve energy. Install a hard wired timer for bathroom fans. Wait, these aren't your dad's mechanical-turn-past-15 timers. They're electronic and almost silent.

While it's important to get rid of humid air before it can cause damage, There's no sense in running bathroom fans longer than necessary; not only are you consuming energy from the fan motor, it's also exhausting valuable conditioned air from your home, that your air conditioner or furnace has already treated.

This idea was such a hit in my previous home, that my wife asked me to put one in right away in the new place.

Use a motion sensor in your garage

It never fails, you're in the garage and you've got your hands full - with garbage, tools, materials, groceries, kids, etc. So a motion sensor makes good sense for convenience and energy savings. I use incandescent lights in my garage because they're still the best option for cold weather in my opinion, and unlike fluorescent, you can turn them on and off rapidly without premature failure or worrying about warm-up time. This timer is set at a low interval, so the light shuts off after the garage has been vacant for about three minutes. Easy to install as a replacement for an existing switch.

How much more will you pay under TOU?

Looking back on my electric meter's historical data downloaded from HydroOne, I have done a quick analysis to see how much more I would have paid under the new structure compared to the old.

Taking data from March 16 to March 29, I used a total of 254 kWh. At a cost of 6.5 cents/kWh under the old pricing scheme, this amounts to $16.51. Under the new TOU structure which came into effect as of May 1 2010, I would have paid $18.64, which is 12% more. This isn't taking into account other additional charges, such as the smart meter charge, delivery, regulatory, and debt retirement charges.

I also did another hypothetical analysis, where I took each hour of extreme high consumption during peak periods and moved it to an off peak time. For example, I ran my dryer, dishwasher, or other major appliance. Hypothetically speaking, if I had run major appliances only during off peak times, then I would only pay 45 cents more under TOU. A more modest increase, but still an increase none the less.

Summer update

So I moved in late June, just a few days before I was scheduled to be switched to TOU rates. My new home is also in HydroOne territory, but the meter is not yet being read wirelessly, and therefore HydroOne is not in a position to bill me under the TOU rate structure, or even give me access to my hourly meter reads. So no more cool charts and graphs for a while.

The switch to time of use rates is on

I received the inevitable letter today from HydroOne informing me I will begin paying time of use rates at my current address on June 26. Good thing I'm moving and the house closes on June 25! I hope the new owners will be able to cope. I applied the two reminder labels with the TOU charts to the dryer and fridge that are staying with the house.

One interesting thing I noticed is that the letter and labels have the Ontario government logo on them. I guess HydroOne wants to remind you who's behind this whole scheme.

Smart Meter Data Collector

Here is an example of a Smart Meter data collector that was installed by Hydro One. In this particular neighbourhood, all the power lines are underground, so Hydro One does not have a utility pole of its own to attach a data collector to. This particular installation piggy backs on the meter serving a Bell Canada DSLAM for high speed Internet. This is a good place to install this since there is no homeowner to complain about this ugly thing attached to the side of their home.

This data collector relays all data via standard cellular telephone technology, and it supports almost every cellular technology, so Hydro One isn't tied to a particular cell phone provider. Must be some kind of cell phone bill!

Vampire Loads

I've been looking at the base load of my electricity consumption. The base load is the sum of all the things you have running continuously in your home. Most of this load is the refrigerator/freezer, but the rest of it can be comprised of what are popularly known as vampire loads or phantom loads. Many of these loads can be only one or two watts, but add those up and they can be significant.

Presently, my base load is 0.19kWh per hour, which equals 190 Watts. So even when we're sleeping, we have 190 Watts worth of stuff in our house running, which is like having two 100 Watt light bulbs lit 24 hours a day. To put this in perspective, 190W of stuff running 8760 hours per year will cost the average Ontario rate payer $233 a year! In this graph which shows one weekday of my electricity usage hour-by-hour, the base load is 40% of the daily total. The base load is the easiest thing to reduce and offers the most "bang for the buck" since these aren't typically user controlled things like lights.

To determine what makes up this 190 Watts, I decided to go through my home with a Kill-A-Watt plug-in meter and measure the draw of every device when it's plugged in but powered "off." I only listed devices that had an idle draw of at least one watt. Here are the results of my findings:




Interesting to note that the Bell TV receivers use the same amount of power whether they're on or off, since they are constantly updating the programming guide or looking for new software updates, both of which only occur when the unit is "off." The price we pay for convenience. I guess it beats buying a copy of TV Guide every week. I wonder how much power nationwide Bell's receivers are consuming...

So, out of the 190 Watts I've only been able to track down 135 so far. There are other things in the house that are directly connected to the power supply or run off 220V that the Kill-A-Watt can't connect to:

• Dishwasher
• Stove
• Dryer
• Furnace
• Central Air Conditioner
• Doorbell Transformer (rated for 5 VA)
  

So to determine the load for each these, I will shut them down on alternating nights and see what the difference is on the TOU portal page.

55 Watts to go - that's as much load as my refrigerator!

No update on the portal discrepancy

No word from HydroOne on my inquiry regarding the TOU discrepancy. I checked the old numbers and graph I quoted originally; they haven't changed. However, newer graphs seem to be accurate, within a fraction of a killowatt-hour or two. Not sure when the change was made - or if it was a daylight savings time thing all along, and still is.