Green / Eco-Friendly

How many KWh do you use in a day?

  • Last Updated:
  • Apr 27th, 2021 2:23 pm
Tags:
None
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Jan 6, 2002
6826 posts
7572 upvotes
Toronto
tarteaucitron wrote: My point is, I prefer reasonable clarity and would be happier to see a break down of the costs. So, when this delivery charge represents the most expensive item in my bill, I would naturally want to find out HOW it is being calculated and whether it makes sense ;)
The information is easy to find and review online: https://www.torontohydro.com/sites/elec ... Rates.aspx

Not sure why they don't break it down by line item on the bill itself, though, probably because some people's heads would explode because too many numbers.. To summarize from that page:

Usage Charges:
* TIme of Use pricing of $0.129/kWh peak, $0.109/kWh midpeak, and $0.072/kWh off-peak

Delivery Charges:
* Transmission Charge of $0.01368/kWh
* Distribution Charge of $0.01521/kWh
* Customer Charge of $19.11 per 30days
* Smart Meter Management Charge of $0.78 per 30 days
* Recovery of foregone revenue of $0.07 per 30 days
* Recovery of foregone revenue of $0.00005/kWh
* Refund of Variance Account Charge ($0.00058/kWh)
* Refund due to Tax Changes ($0.0001/kWh)

Regulatory Charges:
* Wholesale Operations Charge $0.0056/kWh
* Standard Supply Service Charge $0.25 per 30 days

Government Charges:
* Debt Retirement Charge of $0.007/kWh
* HST charge of 13% applied to all of above
* Ontario Clean Energy Benefit of (10%) applied to all of above
Si Tacuisses, Philosophus Mansisses
Jr. Member
May 10, 2009
198 posts
16 upvotes
hoob wrote: The information is easy to find and review online: https://www.torontohydro.com/sites/elec ... Rates.aspx

Not sure why they don't break it down by line item on the bill itself, though, probably because some people's heads would explode because too many numbers.. To summarize from that page:

Usage Charges:
* TIme of Use pricing of $0.129/kWh peak, $0.109/kWh midpeak, and $0.072/kWh off-peak

Delivery Charges:
* Transmission Charge of $0.01368/kWh
* Distribution Charge of $0.01521/kWh
* Customer Charge of $19.11 per 30days
* Smart Meter Management Charge of $0.78 per 30 days
* Recovery of foregone revenue of $0.07 per 30 days
* Recovery of foregone revenue of $0.00005/kWh
* Refund of Variance Account Charge ($0.00058/kWh)
* Refund due to Tax Changes ($0.0001/kWh)

Regulatory Charges:
* Wholesale Operations Charge $0.0056/kWh
* Standard Supply Service Charge $0.25 per 30 days

Government Charges:
* Debt Retirement Charge of $0.007/kWh
* HST charge of 13% applied to all of above
* Ontario Clean Energy Benefit of (10%) applied to all of above

Thanks hoob. I was wondering if Carma Billing charges an extra service charge on top of all this, in using Toronto Hydro (presumably) as its Local Distributor. But this sounds about right for my bill. I agree that including all this info on the bill would make anyone's head explode.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Jan 6, 2002
6826 posts
7572 upvotes
Toronto
tarteaucitron wrote: Thanks hoob. I was wondering if Carma Billing charges an extra service charge on top of all this, in using Toronto Hydro (presumably) as its Local Distributor. But this sounds about right for my bill. I agree that including all this info on the bill would make anyone's head explode.
I haven't dealt with CARMA Billing since late 2011 but as I recall at the time, their bills were very "lightweight" with not much information at all. CARMA has other problems too, e.g. their system has no restrictions on me seeing the current usage of the new owner of my condo, based on the online portal credentials I had back when I owned the condo!
Si Tacuisses, Philosophus Mansisses
Jr. Member
May 10, 2009
198 posts
16 upvotes
hoob wrote: e.g. their system has no restrictions on me seeing the current usage of the new owner of my condo, based on the online portal credentials I had back when I owned the condo!

:cheesygri :cheesygri I recall Telus (providing internet services) allowing me to log in to see the new owner's account info too!
Newbie
Jan 20, 2014
11 posts
Pete_Coach wrote: As you noted before, it is not your "heat" that is costing you all the money. It is your hot tub, pumps, air exchanger etc. Your electricity costs are from all the extra things you have running. Turn them off, save some kilowatts.
Cant turn off the heat tub in the dead of winter unless I want it to break and freeze, same for the pump on the septic (warranty issue and we could be fined if they came to inspect it and it was not on), air exchanger, not sure what would happen if we turned that off, and the air to air, we did turn off last month and it saved us $100 on the hydro and cost us $437 extra in propane.. not sure that helped any :o
Banned
User avatar
Jun 22, 2012
4737 posts
722 upvotes
Shhanada
hoob wrote: It's somewhat amusing to realise that it was indeed an "all in pricing": at some point in the not too distant past, and then all the agitators started complaining that the pricing was not "transparent enough" and that all the costs had to be broken down. Can't win, can't lose on this, apparently.
I don't believe these bills are a response to 'agitators'. Utility companies do this for a variety of reasons, but satisfying agitators isn't something they ever do.

They like to break things up to confuse people and to make it seem like they are rendering a whole bunch of services, and that their business is just so advanced and complicated. Dividing and conquering the numbers also lets them lie using statistics and math. They can say "our rate is only going up 1 cent per KWh", which is only $2 for the average person!" Of course they neglect to mention all the related fees that rise in reaction and in aggregation to that one tiny increase.

It also lets them increase one fee this year, one in six months and one next year. That way they can say "we've kept our carriage fee the same for 3 years!" while carefully sidestepping the fact they've raised all kinds of other constituent fees along the way.
Newbie
Oct 25, 2010
41 posts
6 upvotes
Belleville
I am using an average of 15 KWh / day.

1200 Square foot detached home with full finished basement in Belleville.
Gas heat and water. Electric Stove / dryer
21C setting all day and night
Family of 3. both gf and newborn home all day

Same house this time last year before Baby - 9 KWh / day.
Differences was less laundry and furnace was lower during the day while we were not home, and it wasn't as cold of winter.
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
31267 posts
17274 upvotes
LOL I just got my bill. A hair shy of 10000 kWh over 2 months.
Deal Addict
May 31, 2006
1109 posts
120 upvotes
Burlington
death_hawk wrote: LOL I just got my bill. A hair shy of 10000 kWh over 2 months.
Still heavily mining, I presume? :cheesygri
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Jan 6, 2002
6826 posts
7572 upvotes
Toronto
CenturyBreak wrote: Still heavily mining, I presume? :cheesygri
i wonder if 'mining' is the new excuse for 'grow ops'... "No officers, all that heat signature and power using is my data farm mining virtual currency. Really!"
Si Tacuisses, Philosophus Mansisses
Deal Expert
Aug 22, 2006
31267 posts
17274 upvotes
hoob wrote: i wonder if 'mining' is the new excuse for 'grow ops'... "No officers, all that heat signature and power using is my data farm mining virtual currency. Really!"
I've always wondered about that actually.
It's not the first time my power bill has been >$400 in a month either, even before mining.
Deal Expert
User avatar
Aug 2, 2010
15196 posts
5016 upvotes
Here 'n There
I try to keep my electrical costs down by not using my dryer (I dry everything on a rack indoors, also makes the clothes last longer) and only having lights on in the rooms I am using.
Deal Addict
Feb 26, 2012
2318 posts
620 upvotes
MISSISSAUGA
hoob wrote: My last month of usage... Single person in a condo apartment with electric appliances and in-unit AC. I run two computers 24/7.

[IMG]http://hoob.smugmug.com/Random-Stuff/St ... teA-X1.png[/IMG]

Edit: here's the weather charts for my location for the same time period, for comparison.

[IMG]http://www.wunderground.com/cgi-bin/wxS ... showtemp=1[/IMG]
How do you keep track of your usage if ya don't mind me asking? I would love to be able to output graphs like that of our energy usage.

All we have is the energy saver monitor.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Jan 6, 2002
6826 posts
7572 upvotes
Toronto
Crzyrio wrote: How do you keep track of your usage if ya don't mind me asking? I would love to be able to output graphs like that of our energy usage.
That graph was provided by the website for CARMA Billing Services, the electricity billing company used for many condo and apartment builds where the units are metered individually but the entire building is served by a single primary utility account.

However, with Toronto Hydro and pretty much any other smart meter provider, you can now log onto your utility provider's website and get similar data, and in some cases even download it in raw data form to use in your own spreadsheets. For example, here is my "View your consumption data" by hour and by day and by month:

[IMG]http://hoob.smugmug.com/Random/Stuff/i- ... hourly.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://hoob.smugmug.com/Random/Stuff/i- ... _daily.png[/IMG]
[IMG]http://hoob.smugmug.com/Random/Stuff/i- ... onthly.png[/IMG]

Conveniently, the daily graph provided by TOronto Hydro includes the temperature indications from Environment Canada. Infortunately, Daily is only listed up until your most recent bill (whereas Hourly is current to the previous day.)

The weather graph is is of course from Weather Underground. The neat thing is, Wunderground has links to a lot of local private weather stations, so you can usually find one quite close to you. For example, here's one a few streets over from me, for the past month (April 2014):

http://www.wunderground.com/personal-we ... 430/mmonth
Si Tacuisses, Philosophus Mansisses
Deal Addict
May 3, 2005
2660 posts
1369 upvotes
Woodbridge
Just stumbled upon this thread and wanted to get people's input on a little odd thing I noticed. Having received my latest Powerstream bill I was curious why it seems that no matter what I do I can't seem to lower my usage. I try to turn off most things and have some things on powerbar timers too. Well I started looking at my usage graphs on their website and I got curious about the power outages we had this past December. Looking at the graphs for that week I noticed that the day we lost power (Dec 22) we still showed usage. I drilled down to that particular day to see the hourly usage and surprisingly I had usage during those hours!

[IMG]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/803 ... 281%29.png[/IMG]

It looks like we lost power at around 3AM that day and I know we had zero electricity in the house up until mid afternoon when the power came back. If that's the case then why does it show that there was usage (around 0.5kWh and bursting to 1.5kWh at noon) during those times? It has me wondering if I somehow have some kind of electrical leak or if Powerstream is not reading our meter correctly.

A friend showed me his power usage during that day (he's with Toronto Hydro) and there's zero usage shown for the graphs during the hours of the outage.

Any thoughts or comments?

Lobo
Deal Addict
May 23, 2009
3681 posts
2388 upvotes
Mississauga
Bumping an old thread since I was looking at how much hydro my Christmas lights consumed. Six strings of C9 incandescent bulbs, so may be around 144 bulbs.

I installed them the weekend of Nov 21st and took them down the weekend of Jan 2nd. It was mostly on 6hr timer except around Christmas (24th-26th) when I bumped it up to 14 hr timer.

Image
Deal Addict
User avatar
Dec 20, 2004
4267 posts
5185 upvotes
Montreal, QC
Well, if I remember correctly, C9 incandescent bulbs vary from 7W to 10W each... For calculations sake, lets just assume 7W each. So at 144 bulbs.. That means it is 1008W (So about 1kW). If you had them on for 6hrs/day, you would have been using about 6kWh on those days, and then 14kWh between the 24th and 26th... So 40 days @ 6kWh and 3 days at 14kWh... Comes to 162kWh

This is one application where having switch to LED lights would have really saved a bundle.. LED C9 are about 0.5W each (sometimes less)... Which would have been a total of 72W for the whole set... So that would gave been 432kWh on the 6hr days, and then about 1kWh for the 14hr days.. So total would have been (40*.432kWh)+(3*1kWh) which would be just over 20kWh for the whole period..

So to compare, that's 162kWh (for incandecent) and 20kWh (for LED) for a difference and potential savings of 145kWh (or more). So depending how much you pay per kilowatthour, it may have been more beneficial to just buy some LED lights to replace the incandescent ones... Hey, some places still have xmas clearance sales on them.. :)
Deal Addict
May 23, 2009
3681 posts
2388 upvotes
Mississauga
Funny you mentioned that as I just bought these incandescent lights to replace led Christmas lights. I used the led ones for about 4 seasons before I donated them and bought this. It's hard to explain but the led christmas light just look weird to me while the incandescent ones have a different glow which I prefer. Both were warm white
Deal Addict
User avatar
Dec 20, 2004
4267 posts
5185 upvotes
Montreal, QC
Well, I agree that they have a different glow... However there are many different kinds..

I find that the typical faceted globe versions just look "off".. But they now also have smooth globe versions, which somehow feel a little warmer... The have them in both smooth/transparent and in frosted varieties. I don't have them, but a buddy of mine has them and they definitely look a lot nicer than the classic faceted ones you find in most box stores.

And depending at what rate you are paying the criminal Hydro company, it can be an expensive difference between LED and Incandescent.
Deal Fanatic
User avatar
Jan 6, 2002
6826 posts
7572 upvotes
Toronto
bubuski wrote: Image
Someone sure had a party on Christmas Eve! :D
Si Tacuisses, Philosophus Mansisses

Top

Thread Information

There is currently 1 user viewing this thread. (0 members and 1 guest)