Hydro. For those of you not familiar with the term, that's Canadian for "electricity", especially in southern Ontario, where so much of the electricity was originally generated via hydro-electric power at Niagara Falls.
A little over a year ago, we were put on time-of-day metering programme with huge incentives to use electricity during the off-peak periods, and some minor incentives to use electricity during non-peak daytime periods. The peaks are different in the summer (afternoon is the peak) and the winter, when the early morning and early evening are the peaks.
Here is our electricity use during the past 13 months.
Two things stand out:
- We use electricity the most during off-peak periods, regardless of the season.
- It was much cooler this July than it was last July.
Time-of-day pricing makes good sense, especially now that it is feasible with low-cost technology. It encourages people to shift their usage to the non-peak periods and hence place less pressure on the capacity of the system, reducing the costs of providing electricity to everyone over the year.