On the way there along Highway 89 we passed by lots and lots of Wind Turbines. As per this document there are 153 wind turbines operating over a 14 km site. Its an interesting site to see that's for sure, but for the people living close to the turbines, it has made their lives a misery, see this document, and this one.
However my question is how comes it costs us twice as much to get our electricity "delivered" to this house, when I have this wind farm just down the road from us, a 20 minute drive tops to the first turbine??? I got my hydro bill in last week and it breaks down like this:
We used 730 kWh, which they x by 1.092 = 797 kWh
600 kWH @ 5.7000 cents = $34.20
197 kWh @ 6.6000 cents = $13.00
DELIVERY $55.19
Regulatory Charges $5.43
DEBT RETIREMENT CHARGE (????) $5.11
GST $5.65
Bill Total: $118.58
As you can see it costs more for delivery than the actual electricity we used. Isn't that crazy??? Also why should I pay their DEBT RETIREMENT CHARGES, when it was the old Ontario Hydro's debt, its not mine, if I were in debt, I would be on the hook for that no one else, another crazy thing if you ask me!!
Finally we got the new light fitting put up in the living room, isn't it nice?
It has taken us forever to get this hung up as we have ran into one problem after another with the whole situation. The idiots we bought the house from, made the hole much too big in the ceiling for the box, so "hid" it with the ceiling rose. We just don't have the time to start and fix the ceiling, so had to put the ceiling rose back up, so that caused all sorts of problems with the light fixtures we bought. The first one we bought, just didn't work out at all.
This is the second one, and when dh got it up, he put the light bulbs in (3 of them) went to put on the shade and it wouldn't fit? So we had to go to Home Depot, get them to take the shade off the one hanging up only to discover they had used different bulbs, not the same ones as the instructions said to use and they had not used all the parts given in the box. We did the same and the light looks lovely.
I have picked up some similar ones for the family room, but as the hydro is all to whack in this house, dh has to figure out if we can install them first. Hopefully it won't be a problem as these other lights are really nice and I got them for a steal!!
I also need to call Bell Canada AGAIN, as the Internet is going to have me in an early grave, I am having a heck of a job uploading photos, and the best time to do it is first thing in a morning, which is silly, so I need to find out what on earth is going on!!
7 comments:
I want a windmill for our place and am investigating the prospect of it. I don't blame you, why should you have any reason to retire a dept that is not yours? Yes, the light is gorgeous and worth the trouble. Rose and all.
Sandi
I agree the Hydro charges suck!
My last bill was delivery - $56.68, regulatory charges - $8.24, debt retirement - $ 7.99, & the gst on all those $3.65
I'm not looking forward to this winter. We have electric baseboard heating and 2 young kids, plus we'll have a newbron towards the end of the year so I have to keep the house warm.
Lovely light fixture! And I like the rose cover, even if it is there to hide a large hole.
get dh to put up your own wind turbine and create your own elec - long term its worth it - and it makes your house more valuable as it is ceaper to run
nick
thought harder about it
put up wind turbine , run into bank of batteries , run 110v inverter off batteries , connect inverter house side of meter with circuitry to power house from inverter when power need is small and to pull extra power when needed from meter and this should cut down on bill and batts can recharge through the night when power needs are low - might not provide all your power but should dramatically reduce your bill and as you pay for delivery of each unit it should cut that cost also - i am sure dh could work out all the wireing and circuitry needed
nick
Those wind turbines give me the creeps. Reminds me of a bad 50's horror movie.
But hear ya' on the hydro bill.
That is such a pretty light fixture Gill, and another very interesting post.
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