B.C. Hydro charges residential customers a two-tier rate to promote conservation. If you stay below a certain threshold of use, you pay a lower rate per unit of electricity.
Two-tier billing has had minimal impact on electricity use at our house. In chats with friends and colleagues (those who didn’t run away screaming when I tried to talk to them about electricity rates), no one reported changed behaviour because of the two tiers. Many of them didn’t even know billing is two-tier.
Also, until late last year, there was no convenient way to track daily electric use. Whether you were above or below the threshold wasn’t revealed until the bill arrived. The two-tier nudge might have a bigger influence on behaviour now that we are able to track use by signing in at B.C. Hydro’s website. (See details below.)
Since two-tier billing was introduced in late 2008, non-heat electricity use has dropped at our house, without us really trying. A more efficient electric water heater was installed when the old one sprang a leak. (Our neighbourhood doesn’t have natural gas service.) We switch to longer-lasting LED bulbs when incandescent ones burn out. A new flat panel TV uses less power than the tube TV that it replaced.
We have stayed below the threshold only once, but have come close a few other times. Our July-August bill in 2013 was $96.98, after various fees and taxes were added. We used 1,142 kWh, a good bit below the threshold. We weren’t trying, and we weren’t out of town.
Here’s the two-tier math, as described on B.C. Hydro’s website.
Roughly the first 1,350 kWh during a two-month billing period costs 6.9 cents per kWh.
Anything above that costs 10.34 cents per kWh.
The 1,350 kWh tier line shifts, depending on the number of days on a two-month bill; it could be 60 days, 61, 62 or 63, for example.
The actual calculation is 22.1918 kWh multiplied by number of days. So, for 60 days, the lower rate would apply for the first 1,332 kWh.
Rates will increase in April, going up 9 per cent.
More increases are scheduled for 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018. The compound increase by 2018 will be about 28.1 per cent, according to the math savvy. That might be the incentive for me to pay attention to two-tier pricing.
On the next post, more whimsy, less math.
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Posted January 12, 2014
Electric use at our house: December is a jolt compared to July
During 2013, B.C. Hydro started to offer residential customers the ability to track daily household electricity use. Get access to those numbers at B.C. Hydro’s website by signing up for a “MyHydro Profile” using information from your electric bill.
Some of the things we’ve noticed at our house:
— There’s a noticeable jump in the graphs whenever we run the dryer and oven. Which makes sense, since they are big users of electricity, but I didn’t realize how big.
— July versus December. Our electric use roughly tripled because we heat our house with an electrically-powered heat pump. It’s an efficient and economical way to heat, but more on that another time.
— Even when the house is largely dormant — no lights, no TV, no cooking, no washing, no bathing — there’s still a substantial electricity draw, thanks to the fridge, the freezer, the water heater, the backup hard drives, the Wi-Fi router, the cable TV box, and likely other devices I haven’t tracked down.
A few things about the graphs here, showing electric use at our house, and copied from my B.C. Hydro account.
— Our use is the light blue, “similar homes nearby” is dark blue
— July and December are shown in different scale.
— It’s mostly below 20 kW/h a day in July; it’s mostly around 50-60 kW/h in December.
— I’m not clear on what “similar homes nearby” means; I haven’t found an explanation on B.C. Hydro’s website about how that data is calculated
— The two big spikes on Dec. 7 and Dec. 8: they were particularly cold days, when, according to our thermostat, the low was down to at least –8°C. The “similar homes nearby” didn’t spike as much as us, so I’m guessing that many of them heat with oil or natural gas.
-- The graphs below show average daily outdoor temperature and electricity use.
-- Sorry the graphs are so small; I have to find the blog manual to figure out how to make them bigger.
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