“Hydro” in most parts of Canada is a euphemism for “electricity.”
In fact, most electricity in Ontario is generated by nuclear power. However, the carbon tax imposed by the provincial government applies to all electricity since it’s all fungible (and the province is going broke).
Electric baseboard heaters. Electric heat, in Canada, is complete insanity. Heating your house with natural gas costs maybe one sixth as much.
Unless you live in an area with no natural gas service and when you house was built electricity was a viable option.
Sent from my adequate mobile device using Tapatalk.
Did people who committed heinous crimes ever get sent to the hydrochair?
Nope. That’s what the beastly Americans do. 'Cept they call it “waterboarding” 
Sounds like getting waterboarded.
EDIT: Ninja’d again!
I think it might be a stretch to assume that. But even if they are using Tapatalk, what I really want to know if the mobile device is of high quality or not and I can’t seem to find that out either.
Don’t worry, it was just a poor riff on the “1920 style death rays” extravaganza from way back. I think you missed it.
I am in the UK and for ten years or more my energy bills were way more than my mortgage. Interest rates were down to less than 2% and my mortgage was not large, so I was paying around £30 a month. My energy bill was around £50 a month. My mortgage is now paid up and I am paying around £100 a month for energy.
Needless to say, I discovered a few quirks with Tapatalk today while at the pub.
Apologies.
I’m at home now on a real computer.
I wonder if anyone, like a social services organization, will follow up with the woman. Is her house insufficiently insulated? Does she in fact have electric heat (which seems a bad idea)?
And you happen to live in Ontario, I gather?
Oh, man. Never again!
:o
L30 a month??? How big was your loan–L10K? US banks won’t even write loans that small. Also I thought the UK property market was insanely overvalued?
I have found the same. “Hydro” is synonymous with “electricity” in Ontario and Quebec (as stated, regardless of how it is generated), but as I found when I moved west, the term “hydro” is met with blank stares in Alberta. Out here, it is simply “power,” or (no surprise) “electricity.”
I’m in BC and the electric bill is, as long as I have lived, the “hydro” bill. Both when I was a child in the Kootenays and an adult on the west coast.
And it sucks, this month, over $500 for the last two months, and the next one will be higher. (Electric heat, long unusual cold spell, poorly insulated dwelling.)
Ahh, a 1920s style Tapatalk device…
Manitoba as well. If you look at the numbers for power generation by province, there are four provinces where hydroelectricity is at or near 90% of the electricity generated: NL, QC, MB, and BC. As noted above, it’s a little surprising that the “hydro” name has survived in Ontario, since the majority of the electricity generated there is from nuclear plants.
I think these numbers are very realistic, if she uses electricity to heat her home. For those of you not in Ontario any longer, the government has gone to time-of-day pricing and the highest rate, which is evenings, when she’d be using the most electricity has been increased **by 80% **in the last 10 years.:
In addition to the base rate kW/hr increases, Ontario has also added some fairly significant surcharges and hidden taxes - The Global Adjustment fee, debt retirement fees etc. The government is constantly tinkering with these, so they are a bit of a moving target, but the point is they can add substantially to a typical “hydro” bill.
As has been noted, in Ontario and Quebec (and it sounds like BC) the term hydro was traditionally used for all electricity since it was all originally generated via hydro-electric dams (like Niagara Falls). People use the term since their electricity bill came from municipal electric company that had “hydro” in it’s name like Toronto Hydro. Some companies have changed their name from things like “Ontario Hydro” to “Ontario Power Generation” recognizing that most electricity is now non-hydro based.
I suspect it will take a few years for people to change their use to the term Hydro to “power”, but it will happen.
I get all the various comments about price of power, government fiddling, etc.
What I don’t get is all the comments about “poorly insulated houses” in arctic/sub-arctic climates. WHAT ARE YOU PEOPLE THINKING???
ISTM you could retrofit proper insulation into a crappy old house and it’d pay for itself in a month or two. What is everyone waiting for???
Or does everyone in Canada rent their housing from a landlord that doesn’t care how much *you *spend on heat as long as *he *doesn’t have to spend on insulation?
If so, it seems the smart thing is for the government, spurred on by millions of angry underinsulated house-renting power buyers to mandate insulation retrofits on an aggressive schedule.
From waay down here where I sit Canada always seems so calm and rational and sensible and far-sighted. Why the giant blind spot here?
Not that it matters much in the winter, but Peterborough, ON, is hardly “arctic/sub-arctic”.