This article (“Hydro prices ‘going up like a rocket’, August 22, Ottawa Citizen) is an excellent piece by Don Butler about the immediate rate outlook for Ontario households and discusses Ontario rates in comparison with US power rates.
In the comments for this article, I posted the following note:
Almost all of the costs for power in Ontario for the next several years are already locked in by government contracts. Ontario consumers are paying full price for giant amounts of power deliberately spilled or sold below cost to neighbouring utilities while the government signs more long term supply deals for wind, solar and nuclear at insane prices. Total electricity sales are dropping and will keep dropping as rates rise. Conservation is doing little to cut the overall spending of Ontario consumers for electricity, although it is changing who pays what share.
Many Ontario residents have property in Florida. Here is how power bills of Florida’s largest utility FPL compared with bills in Ontario.
A residential customer of FPL using 1000 kWh/month would be charged $91.46 (US). The same usage in Toronto would cost you $149.07 (CND). FPL pays substantial taxes to local, state and federal governments and dividends to owners whereas Ontario utilities pay almost no taxes except HST nor dividends (although there are payments to the government agency Ontario Electricity Financial Corporation although the funds cycle back to consumers). In addition, notice that FPL doesn’t have the benefit of fantastic natural resources like Niagara Falls and other hydro-electric resources that generate over 20% of Ontario’s power at extremely low cost. In recent years, FPL has sustained massive hurricane damage several time over, another factor Ontario has not suffered.
It is tough to escape the conclusion that those Floridians are a good deal smarter than we are.
Do you happen to have any info on what the breakdown/components of the Florida bill are? i.e. the percentage of generation, high voltage, low voltage, tax, regulatory, etc charges? It’d be interesting to see what areas are driving the differenc (though HST, regulatory and debt retirment are probably core culprits).
Alex,
It would take some really hard slugging through fields of regulatory and financial detail to answer your question, and FPL is only one utility, but the results would be interesting. The bottom line comparison — how much do you pay for the same service as a customer in some US community — is easier to understand and not subject to any kind of assumptions or disputes from the government defenders like Colin Andersen at the OPA.
Florida power prices are at the higher end of the range for US prices.
Tom
Sadly this Power “rip-off” is having immediate effects on some elderly low income pensioners who are having to sell their homes out from under them as they can’t afford the monthly electricity and water bills anymore.
This is absolutely “criminal” for a Government body to legislate people out of their homes for the sake of making profits for a small band of investors.
Ontario is not the “Place to Be” anymore..it is an “Energy Wasteland” created by an unholy alliance of “Greed Merchants” and “misguided eco-religious zealots” disguised like Political Leaders!