Welcome. July 2016
I keep seeing people who are upset with their high Hydro/Electric bills in Ontario. Here are some tips on how to save some money.
Basic Energy Balance Equation:
Energy In = Energy Out
What this means is if your bill is High then the energy is going somewhere? It is your job to find out where and reduce or eliminate it.
Work the system to your advantage
In Ontario we now have a 3 tiered money grab system. During the summer/winter from 7 pm to 7 am is the lowest cost of electricity. This is called Time of Use. In the summer months from 11 am to 5 pm is called the peak as is 7 am to 11 am and 5 pm to 7 pm in the winter.
these rates are Peak = 18 cents per kW mid Peak 13.2 and off Peak 8.7 cents per kW
Go on line and view your consumption on a hourly rate to see when you are using power and what is using the power. You have to guess what is using your power like a/c, heating, appliances. This is a good tool to start with. Hydro one gives you a graph on an hourly basis of your usage.
Go on line and view your consumption on a hourly rate to see when you are using power and what is using the power. You have to guess what is using your power like a/c, heating, appliances. This is a good tool to start with. Hydro one gives you a graph on an hourly basis of your usage.
The Plan
It is simple. Move all of your peak energy usage to mid peak or at best off Peak.
Our big energy users are heating water, heating/cooling our homes and large appliances like freezers and refrigerators. When buying new appliances get the lowest energy usage that you can. 10-15 year old appliances can use a lot more energy than current ones use.
Turn off computers and things that you are not using.
Time shift your big energy users.
Replace inefficient appliances.
Use dishwasher sparingly or not at all. Never during 7 am to 7 pm. If you stop using it, remember to add water once per month to stop the sewer gases from coming in - the water u tube can dry out and the gases can then come in. Same as drain in your basement floor.
This Plan may take you several years to complete. You don't want to blow your money away and to want to get the most out of the purchases that you already have made. Wait to buy your big appliances on sale. Consider buying your new furnace in the USA and bring it into Canada and have it installed by a qualified tech. For example, I can get a great two stage furnace and A/C from the USA for under $3000 USA. There are no restrictions on doing this. You will have to pay HST but you have to do this anyway. The items are all CSA approved. The local installers want to make $3-4 k on this purchase. We simply can't afford to play this game. We are retired and live on a small fixed income.
Time shift your big energy users.
Replace inefficient appliances.
Use dishwasher sparingly or not at all. Never during 7 am to 7 pm. If you stop using it, remember to add water once per month to stop the sewer gases from coming in - the water u tube can dry out and the gases can then come in. Same as drain in your basement floor.
This Plan may take you several years to complete. You don't want to blow your money away and to want to get the most out of the purchases that you already have made. Wait to buy your big appliances on sale. Consider buying your new furnace in the USA and bring it into Canada and have it installed by a qualified tech. For example, I can get a great two stage furnace and A/C from the USA for under $3000 USA. There are no restrictions on doing this. You will have to pay HST but you have to do this anyway. The items are all CSA approved. The local installers want to make $3-4 k on this purchase. We simply can't afford to play this game. We are retired and live on a small fixed income.
Air Conditioning
I strongly do not recommend you replace your system until you have to. There is no cost benefit in Ontario to do so. When you do change it, I recommend an A/C with a SEER of 16 with a ECM motor (must have).
Summer of 2016 Air conditioning cost; June to September; approx $160-170 for the summer in total. Changing from a SEER 10 to SEER 16 50%, so you save about $85 per year. If your new system costs you $6,000 or $300 per year. (replacing ac and gas furnace). If you want to run your fan 24/7 and have an old PSC motor there will be some savings using the new ECM motor especially when it is operating on low speed.
Keep furnace filter CLEAN.
Keep all windows closed even at night because of the high humidity outside is what you want to KEEP outside and not inside.
Check that your furnace duct is cold after 15 min of running. If it is not as cold as you think or believe it should be check heat coming from your condenser outside. If it is not as warm as you believe that it should be, then have the refrigerant levels checked. Due to the higher pressures, you can lose a little due to leakage at the valves. Have these valves replaced during fill up ..$15 each ask before hand about the price. Once fixed, measure the temperature difference outside and at your condenser and keep a record of it for future reference. If they tell you that they can't fill it up, get someone who can. They want to sell you a new system...bs.
Keep your outside condenser clean from leaves and plants and have it in the shade.
Summer of 2016 Air conditioning cost; June to September; approx $160-170 for the summer in total. Changing from a SEER 10 to SEER 16 50%, so you save about $85 per year. If your new system costs you $6,000 or $300 per year. (replacing ac and gas furnace). If you want to run your fan 24/7 and have an old PSC motor there will be some savings using the new ECM motor especially when it is operating on low speed.
Keep furnace filter CLEAN.
Keep all windows closed even at night because of the high humidity outside is what you want to KEEP outside and not inside.
Check that your furnace duct is cold after 15 min of running. If it is not as cold as you think or believe it should be check heat coming from your condenser outside. If it is not as warm as you believe that it should be, then have the refrigerant levels checked. Due to the higher pressures, you can lose a little due to leakage at the valves. Have these valves replaced during fill up ..$15 each ask before hand about the price. Once fixed, measure the temperature difference outside and at your condenser and keep a record of it for future reference. If they tell you that they can't fill it up, get someone who can. They want to sell you a new system...bs.
Keep your outside condenser clean from leaves and plants and have it in the shade.
If you live at home 24/7 like we do you can optimise your energy usage. In the heat wave you know that you will need some cooling most likely during the peak. Limit this use to 1 hour per day. Better to shift use to after 5 pm. Your ac needs about 20 min running before it starts to remove moisture.
(By the way, we also threw out all of our old toilets that used 15 l per flush and replaced them with a 3/6 liter flush and never have to use the 6 liter flush.)
(By the way, we also threw out all of our old toilets that used 15 l per flush and replaced them with a 3/6 liter flush and never have to use the 6 liter flush.)
Your house is like a capacitor as it stores thermal energy - cold/hot. We keep our house at 74 F until 11 am. After 11 am we shift the set point to 79 F which causes the A/C to only come once it reaches 80 F. This is a way to store cool in your house using lower cost power and avoiding the higher cost power. A programmable thermostat is best here. It normally is the relative humidity that makes you feel hot. Keep it as low as possible. We like to start the day at 40%.
Important: Block all sunlight from entering house via windows or skylights during the summer. Sunlight heats up your house.
We aim to lower the relative humidity to the low 40's which makes us feel cooler. Many days we can go from 11 am to 7 pm without a/c even when it is 90 F outside. If your basement is finished it is normally cooler than the upper levels.
If you have to, only run a/c for 1/2 to 1 hour during peak to lower the relative humidity.
A kitchen fan/vent to the outside is great to remove humidity from cooking if you have one. Run it only during cooking as you are venting cool air.
Make sure you have lots of insulation in your attic and all windows are closed. Replace old windows seals and defective glass windows whose seals are gone (they normally only last 20 years).
We are lucky as our south roof is covered in solar panels which prevent the sun from heating the roof and heating the attic. That makes our roof completely in the shade and extends its life to the maximum. It is the sun and uv and destroy your roof shingles. Make sure you have good ventilation in your attic and clean you soffit vents once every 3 years or so. Dust and bugs tend to plug these tiny holes.
Other Big Electrical Users
We have 3 big users: 1 freezer and two refrigerators. Try to eliminate one of these if you can. All are relatively new. In the winter the heat from these goes to heating the house so there is only a little efficiency decrease here. (ie gas heat verse electrical heating).
Look at your power bill. We used on average 4 kW per day during the peak hours? That must be for the big appliances and cooking. Try to use convection ovens and small appliances that use less power during the peak.
Time Shift your Appliances power usage. How do you do that? Timers. A Woods 50009 timer from home hardware cost $25+tax. It is heavy duty for appliances and you can program 20 times per day plus you can program Monday to Friday and Saturday to Sunday.
I programmed the timer to be off from 11 am to 5 pm for one refrigerator and to be off 11 am to 7 pm for the other one from Monday to Friday. I modified the first timer to come on at 5pm to 5:30 pm and then turn off until 7 pm. The freezer is in the hot garage so it is not on a timer in the summer. In the fall/spring and winter it will be off from 7 am to 7 pm to time shift any use. Saturday and Sunday are all off peak and no timer is being used.
I plan to put a cheap timer on the fan for our hot water tank (gas heated) so that it does not operate during the peak. I just hate to hear it come on during the peak time.
I plan to put a cheap timer on the fan for our hot water tank (gas heated) so that it does not operate during the peak. I just hate to hear it come on during the peak time.
It goes without saying, wash clothes during off peak and watch TV during off peak. Enjoy your patio if it is not too hot. Try using a fan outside to keep cool and blow the bugs away.
Use a fan to help you keep cool inside during the peak if it is too hot.
Use a fan to help you keep cool inside during the peak if it is too hot.
Switch all lights used most frequently to LEDs and the rest can be CPF. LED lights are so efficient as to make lighting a non issue these days.
If you run other electrical users continuously like we do for our fish pond (365), buy the latest high efficiency pumps that use 1/10 or so of what the old pumps used. ex; our old pump used 350 W and our new pump uses 40 W. We love the waterfall and pond so it must stay on 24/7. It is possible to run it on solar but that does have a big capital cost. (battery - $150 - solar panel $300 - cables $50 - controller $50 - Inverter $30 plus we have no room for another panel. Half of this time is off peak anyway)
Do NOT Run your pool pump between 11 am and 5 pm. The new ECM pool pumps are great for new installs but cost a lot in Canada. Don't know about their cost in USA. We don't have a pool or hot tub which is a big energy user.
Currently our peak usage costs us $27 per month. I expect to reduce this by 50 to 75 %. All energy use switched from the peak to off peak will save you 8.7/18= 48% So if we can save $9 per month on our peak, that is $108 per year or more.
If you heat your hot water with electricity then install a timer so as to only heat your water during off peak times. These are huge power users. Shower during off peak times. Big savings here. Use natural gas if available. Wash clothing during off peak. Replace old clothes washers as the new ones spin the clothes until they are almost dry. Big savings here. Dry clothes during off peak or outside on a line.
Makes sure you clean coiling coils on back of freezers and refrigerators of dust: q 6 months -every
UPDATE OCTOBER; reduced peak demand usage by 50% with 2 timers. One or two more timers to install. Savings about $150 per year in our pocket so far.
If you heat your hot water with electricity then install a timer so as to only heat your water during off peak times. These are huge power users. Shower during off peak times. Big savings here. Use natural gas if available. Wash clothing during off peak. Replace old clothes washers as the new ones spin the clothes until they are almost dry. Big savings here. Dry clothes during off peak or outside on a line.
Makes sure you clean coiling coils on back of freezers and refrigerators of dust: q 6 months -every
UPDATE OCTOBER; reduced peak demand usage by 50% with 2 timers. One or two more timers to install. Savings about $150 per year in our pocket so far.
Heating:
Do not heat with electricity. If you have to use electricity only use it during the off peak time by installing a timer.
We heat with Natural gas with a 25 year old furnace. When it needs to be replaced I will buy a two stage Goodman furnace with an 5 speed ECM motor and a two stage 3 ton a/c Seer 16 for under $3000 USA. from the USA and hire a trained tech to help me install it. I have written an Engineering Spec on how to install the A/C. Install problems occur with people try to cut corners to save themselves time and cost you money.
With an ECM motor power savings of time shifting are really small. You can do it and most likely should do it but you may not see much money in your pocket.
An added advantage of having a ECM motor is that you can connect a dc/ac converter to a battery and run your furnace during power outages. You will have to charge the battery some how. We have a lot of solar panels which don't work when the grid is down but when one panel is connected to a battery charger - controller we can use the sun to charge the batteries. It is also a good backup for our refrigerator and freezer so we have two of them. We have a good quality 1000 W (2450 W peak) dc to AC power inverter. Your batteries will not last long at this level so use sparingly. A minimum of two marine deep cycle batteries are recommended. Good also for emergency power to sump pumps, etc. I keep seeing the grid go down were we live near Windsor and we could be screwed if it was down for more than 24 hours, so I have battery backup. A gasoline generator is best but costs a lot more. Even in a partially sunny day, we can get 50-70% from our panels. When running in this mode, you can connect the battery to a refrigerator or freezer for a short period of time. A flaw here is that we need sunlight but normally storms pass by in 12 or so hours. I have seen across the border outages that last for several days.
An added advantage of having a ECM motor is that you can connect a dc/ac converter to a battery and run your furnace during power outages. You will have to charge the battery some how. We have a lot of solar panels which don't work when the grid is down but when one panel is connected to a battery charger - controller we can use the sun to charge the batteries. It is also a good backup for our refrigerator and freezer so we have two of them. We have a good quality 1000 W (2450 W peak) dc to AC power inverter. Your batteries will not last long at this level so use sparingly. A minimum of two marine deep cycle batteries are recommended. Good also for emergency power to sump pumps, etc. I keep seeing the grid go down were we live near Windsor and we could be screwed if it was down for more than 24 hours, so I have battery backup. A gasoline generator is best but costs a lot more. Even in a partially sunny day, we can get 50-70% from our panels. When running in this mode, you can connect the battery to a refrigerator or freezer for a short period of time. A flaw here is that we need sunlight but normally storms pass by in 12 or so hours. I have seen across the border outages that last for several days.
Sealing your Home
Air infiltration is a big energy user. If you have low humidity during winter months check out your structure. High humidity means that you are sealed, perhaps too much. All sliding windows have seals on the tracks and edges. Normally these can be easily replaced in about 20 min per window. Take a sample of the seal - normally fluffy cotton on a plastic guide runner to your window manufacturer to buy replacement seals. We did all of our windows noticed a big drop in noise levels. Don't forget your front doors with those magnetic strips. They can be easily adjusted or completely replace in 10 min if broken. use a 1 in putty knife to adjust the seal to grab your steel door.
Make sure all outside cracks around doors and windows are caulked. This prevents water and air from getting in. In the worst case you just might have to caulk under your baseboard at the floor to wall joint. That is a lot of work.
Install humidifier for winter as you will feel warmer with higher humidity and use less energy.
Think of adding an extra piece of acrylic to outside windows gluing in place. Leave a small gap in the bottom to allow it to breath. This will give you triple glazing. Acrylic is 30 times stronger than glass and a much better insulator also. Warm air rises so the air pocket should not be cold.
Consider summer shades on sunny windows or plant trees to naturally shade your house and to keep it cool in summer. We have lots of trees on the west side of the house that shade it a lot.
Consider summer shades on sunny windows or plant trees to naturally shade your house and to keep it cool in summer. We have lots of trees on the west side of the house that shade it a lot.
This is the first draft and I will add more tips in the near future.
How to find your big electrical users?
You can look at the electrical information on a plate some where on the device.
Power= voltage x amps
An easy method to see if a device is using any power when you think that it is off is to check to see if it is warm. Don't need it, then unplug it.
You may have to go circuit by circuit to find the enemy. Fortunately you should know your big users. Toasters, electric kettles, hair dryers, clothes dryers, dish washers, water heaters, a/c, furnace motors,
baseboard electric heaters, electric stoves, using the oven, OLD BEER REFRIGERATORS can be terrible.
LED lights are NOT a real concern. Turn them off if not in use but really these are not your problem.
Get rid of all old incandescent bulbs inside and outside of your house. LED's work well in the cold but CPF's do not.
You may want to cook during the peak on your barbecue. No heat in the house and no electric use either.
You can buy devices that show you how much energy a device is using but the heat method tells you if you should unplug it when not in use.
We have a plasma tv which uses a lot more energy than a LED but we like the picture quality. It is too costly to replace with a 4k TV. The TV TIVO box is on 7/24 and does use some power. If you don't need it on then put it on a timer also. By the way we dropped cable TV last year and went with OTA - over the air TV. Picture quality IMPROVED by 25% over cable. We live near Windsor and picked up 50 stations with a low cost omni directional TV ant. A local guy wanted 5 times as much for a new TV ant. That saved us about $1200 per year in our cable bill and we don't miss it. You may want to get a KODI android box for free movies. We still have cable and an internet phone but do not have cell phones.
You may want to turn off the pilot light in your gas fireplace in the summer. We keep ours on as it is old and difficult to relight in the fall. As this is our emergency heater in case the power goes out in the winter, we have small fans to help it work better and use one of our dc/ac inverters and batteries to power them. This will have to be replace some time in the future but it is my advice to make things last as long as possible to reduce your long term living costs.
Alternate Heating Systems in Canada
If you have electric heat consider:
Coal/wood alternatives
Propane
GeoThermal
Solar?
Heat Pumps
Natural gas if available is most likely the best option.
Combination of above with electric as an emergency backup of really cold days
I once owned a house with electric heat back in the 80's and put in a wood burning stove. Way too much work and no control over the temperature. A wood/coal burning furnace would be a much better option. I would first look at propane. Hate the large tank but also hate large electric bills. Do love our Natural Gas.
How to find your big electrical users?
You can look at the electrical information on a plate some where on the device.
Power= voltage x amps
An easy method to see if a device is using any power when you think that it is off is to check to see if it is warm. Don't need it, then unplug it.
You may have to go circuit by circuit to find the enemy. Fortunately you should know your big users. Toasters, electric kettles, hair dryers, clothes dryers, dish washers, water heaters, a/c, furnace motors,
baseboard electric heaters, electric stoves, using the oven, OLD BEER REFRIGERATORS can be terrible.
LED lights are NOT a real concern. Turn them off if not in use but really these are not your problem.
Get rid of all old incandescent bulbs inside and outside of your house. LED's work well in the cold but CPF's do not.
You may want to cook during the peak on your barbecue. No heat in the house and no electric use either.
You may have to go circuit by circuit to find the enemy. Fortunately you should know your big users. Toasters, electric kettles, hair dryers, clothes dryers, dish washers, water heaters, a/c, furnace motors,
baseboard electric heaters, electric stoves, using the oven, OLD BEER REFRIGERATORS can be terrible.
LED lights are NOT a real concern. Turn them off if not in use but really these are not your problem.
Get rid of all old incandescent bulbs inside and outside of your house. LED's work well in the cold but CPF's do not.
You may want to cook during the peak on your barbecue. No heat in the house and no electric use either.
You can buy devices that show you how much energy a device is using but the heat method tells you if you should unplug it when not in use.
We have a plasma tv which uses a lot more energy than a LED but we like the picture quality. It is too costly to replace with a 4k TV. The TV TIVO box is on 7/24 and does use some power. If you don't need it on then put it on a timer also. By the way we dropped cable TV last year and went with OTA - over the air TV. Picture quality IMPROVED by 25% over cable. We live near Windsor and picked up 50 stations with a low cost omni directional TV ant. A local guy wanted 5 times as much for a new TV ant. That saved us about $1200 per year in our cable bill and we don't miss it. You may want to get a KODI android box for free movies. We still have cable and an internet phone but do not have cell phones.
Alternate Heating Systems in Canada
If you have electric heat consider:
Coal/wood alternatives
Propane
GeoThermal
Solar?
Heat Pumps
Natural gas if available is most likely the best option.
Combination of above with electric as an emergency backup of really cold days
I once owned a house with electric heat back in the 80's and put in a wood burning stove. Way too much work and no control over the temperature. A wood/coal burning furnace would be a much better option. I would first look at propane. Hate the large tank but also hate large electric bills. Do love our Natural Gas.
