Electricity!

Ontario Hydro has been working away these past couple years installing what they call 'smart meters'.  They ready exactly how much energy your house uses and sends it directly to their offices.  You see the way it worked before is you would get an estimate bill that would look at past data and estimate how much you would be using then every few months you would get an actual reading and you would be billed accordingly.

Now everything is actual.  The wrench that they threw into this system though is now we have different rates for different times of the day and days of the week.  Ontario Hydro Rates are seen here at their website. 

Basically it means that it is most expensive during the weekday day at 9.9 cents/kWh and between 9pm and 7am it is the cheapest at 5.1 cents/kWh.  Oh and they gave us weekends and holidays at the cheap rate as well.  That was nice of them.

So it is a beautiful Sunday afternoon here and what am I doing?  You guessed it laundry and dishes so I am not up on weeknights doing it until 11pm or later.  So much for organizing a laundry schedule.  I may have to figure something out to remind me if I am doing laundry at 9pm to change it into the dryer.  We use a clothesline in the summer which will be SO much nicer and easier.  But for now I will take the new Hydro rules as a challenge, they will not be charging me extra for regular energy use!