Power should be in Your Control – not your Utility’s

Did you know?

• Canadian consumers paid in excess of $1.600 Billion to energy retailers and generation companies for high priced energy in 2006-07 – that’s an additional 16% out of your pocket.
  
• This money was collected over 777 hours during that period
  
• Your electricity retailer collected this excess instead of warning every consumer of the spikes in price
  
• You can influence how much electricity costs by simply turning off lights, televisions, stove burners or other unnecessary electrical appliances for just a few minutes during these peak hours to avoid higher charges.
  
• You can help control the electrical demand in times of limited electrical supply.

After all, wouldn’t you prefer to spend this money on something else?

 

Pay Now and then Pay Later!

Companies who sell electricity “bid” their energy to retailers at a price that varies hour-by-hour. Your retailer looks for ways to buy low cost energy without relying on these hour-by-hour deals unless they are favourable to them to make a profit – just as any business would do. If they miscalculate, the power is supplied by the System Operator to keep the lights and your retailer is charged the current hourly price for any shortfalls. This is for the most part like any other business except for one difference. If the average price transacted was higher than the price offered to you by your retailer, they may be in a position to recover lost revenue over the following months. You might think you can't help to reduce costs if you're not exposed. Not true! The market is designed to allow your retailer to collect shortfalls the following months.

 

I’m too small of a consumer — can I really make a difference?

Utilities and retailers are looking to replace your conventional meter with “smart meters”. This will allow your retailer to offer you new “tariffs” more tailored to shifting costs to the periods when you actually use it and not collected in post month adjustments. This means heavy consumers could pay premiums and energy savers will save money. Secondly — if you shift your higher consumption from those Peak Periods where prices are high to periods where prices are lower, you will pay less.

 

Now had you and all your neighbours simply participated by turning off one light, the reduction might have averted triggering these higher prices. That means there is nothing for the utility to collect the following month. Naturally not everyone can cut consumption every day at the same time. This means there is more uncertainty and risk to generators. If the real time consumption does not climb as high as they may have predicted, they won't get to run their generator, and those generators running are paid a lower price.

 

In fact – this behavioural uncertainty that YOU influence will cause the generators to re-evaluate offering their electricity at a more conservative price. It’s like your neighbourhood gas station. If the price is much higher than the station across the street, nobody will buy their expensive gas. But they still had to pay the staff and eventually could go broke.

 

How much do I need to cut?

If everyone cuts just a little bit when the price is jacked up, nobody sells and the price drops back to where people start buying again. In fact, all it takes is turning off a light, a computer, your TV, even a stove element.

 

If you turn off one light for one hour - you save 60 Watts. If 500,000 consumers and business' turn off that same light - you save 30 Megawatts (MW) over that same hour. That is eliminating one small power plant and the associated pollution of that plant.

 

Number of Consumer Hours Needed to Act at Any Moment to
Avoid High Electricity Charges

 

 

Source: Enertyr Solutions Inc.

 

Did you know? … A Breath of Fresh Air

Consider turning off the lights on the floor at your office when you leave for home. If most of the large office buildings turned off the lights for just one hour during the energy rush hour on as few as three floors in a 20 floor building, the emissions associated with the reduced energy from a power plant is nearly the same as removing 200 – 300 cars from the drive home.

 

The next time you’re sitting in a traffic jam during your commute home, take a look at the cars around you. As you see the exhaust rise, ask yourself it you turned the lights off before you left?