Wannabe

It's 5.6 for up to 1000kWh/month in the winter (Nov 1 to Apr 30), and up to 600kWh/month the rest of the year.

My $12.74 is actually for two months. Heating is included in my rent.

iaink

Is Hydro One a rip off?

Of course it is.

Debt retirement charge...Hydro one charge you for there own failure as Ontario Hydro that the tax payer ( ie me!) has already picked up the tab for! This must be unique in business to pay off the debt of another legally seperate, long defunct company?

Regulatory charges for a free market that simply does not exist, there is only one available local supplier for most people in Ontario!

My average bill at present is probably about $120 a month (@ 5.6c/kwh), but over half is fixed costs for delivery, debt retirement etc etc etc.

Drives me a bit nuts, but ultimately other than reduce consumption what choice do I have? There is no one else I can buy from, and if I could, I would still pay H1 for the right to deliver, which is half the bill.

And now to find they have been giving my money to dbd....that's it, I'm going to buy a wind generator

Tim Steer

Interesting information here...So does anyone have a wind generator and what sort of size / price are we talking about to be totally self sufficient and free from such crazy bills?
Cheers
Tim

iaink

I know two guys who live off grid. Both do it on principal, not for financial gain...as there is none by the time you get set up and pay for replacement kit over the years.

One was very smug during the blackout that affected the eastern seaboard a few years ago. He was less smug a few month later when his home was hit by lightening causing over $30ks worth of damage to his generation and storage equipment and regulators, and several weeks without power (which also means no well water too until you get a gas generator hooked up to take care of the pump.)

A decent wind generator is about $3-5k, although you can get cheaper ones, then there are all the deep cycle 24V batteries and regulation equipment, and maintainence and upgrade costs.

Its probably more cost effective to own property with a wood lot and use that to heat over the winter, and to make sure you are well insulated etc...

My boss has a 14kW propane powered backup generator with automatic switch over capability. It was about $14k by the time it was installed. Seemed like a lot of money to me to keep his tropical fish alive in the event of a blackout, but its not my money... My generator is 5kW and cost $500 second hand...and I have to lug it out of the garage and fire it up, then back feed it into my breaker panel (after tripping the main breaker to the outside world) if we have a severe outage. At least we have water then , and the furnace and fridge run , but the noise from it is horrendous, and the gas tank only lasts about 6 hours or so.

Tim Steer

Thanks IainK...Food for thought..
Cheers
Tim

Souvenir

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who can't understand his Hydro Quebec bill.

dbd33

Better yet, I had a contract there for getting on for twenty years "shadowing" an employee who was hired to meet the ethnic quota but who never did his job. You got to pay him $100,000/year (averaged, less in the 80s, more now) to be ethnic, and me $n per hour to do the job, for all that time. You also got to buy sails for Ms. Kaplin's yacht and to contribute to that hippy guy commuting from Colorado to "run" the place. And this is an organization operating nuclear power plants.

OH could take lessons in efficiency and production quality from Lada.

Novocastrian

I once owned a Lada. It's worrying that H1 deal with high voltages.

dbd33

We had no power last Sunday (outages for multiple hours happen most months, outages requiring reprogramming the coffee machine happen two or three times a week). The oven is gas but the control system is electric so I couldn't make bread (ok, reheat Ace bread) for breakfast. I drove into town to get some bread noticing along the way that maybe a third of the houses I passed had generators on the driveway throbbing and clattering. I can't help but think a reliable supply of electricity in Ontario would be a step toward reducing global warming; all those machines, all that petrol fetched in trucks.

iaink

**** it, I'm going to get solar cells too!

Tim Steer

My parents had a Lada when I was a kid..The estate version..Riva or Niva or something...They loved that car, went on forever and started first time every time..Sure it was crude inside and you needed a run up to go up hills...They traded it in for another one which the engine block cracked on That'll be the quality you mention

Tim Steer

Am I the only one thinking this sounds like the power station where Homer Simpson works?

iaink

Mr Burns isnt that generous, and no one seems to cover for Homers inadequacies

dbd33

Ha! A true story of something that would happen to Homer:

When leaving the plant everyone must step up to a machine something like a combination of Woolworths "I Speak You Weight" and "See The Bones in your Feet" machines. You hold on to some handles and it scans to see how much radiation you've been exposed to. In theory a computer system tracks exposure and warns long term employees of impending mutant children, imminent penile atrophy and so on.

Plants work shifts and one day we happened to be coming out of the plant at shift change time. My colleague, a bulky woman, was mortified to be surrounded by a baying mob who wanted out of the plant but who couldn't leave because the machine wouldn't let her go; she clung to the handles and squished her belly against it but still it chirped in the voice of a Japanese car door "Stand more closely, please".

Tim Steer

Thats not a pleasant thought...but still funny mind