Your Electricity Bill

Common charges on all bills

Whether you buy your electricity from a local utility at a regulated rate or from an independent electricity retailer, your electricity bill each month contains a number of charges including:

Term	Description
Electricity	This charge relates to the energy you consume. This can either be provided by a regulated provider (i.e., local utility) or an electricity retailer. The total amount of electricity consumed is multiplied by an adjustment factor. When electricity is transmitted over power lines, a small amount of that electricity is lost naturally, as heat. (The transmission equipment, such as wires and transformers, consumes this power before it gets to your home or business.) Your local utility must purchase power to cover these losses. It collects the cost of this power from consumers through the adjustment factor and passes the amount directly to its suppliers.
Delivery	This charge is made up of the following components, which are approved by the Ontario Energy Board for each utility: DISTRIBUTION COSTS: The costs your utility incurs delivering electricity to your home or business. Distribution costs include: Customer Service Charge: The utility’s administrative costs, such as meter reading, billing, customer service and maintenance of accounts. It is a fixed cost – it does not change with the amount of electricity used, that varies from utility to utility. Distribution Charge: The costs involved to deliver electricity from the local utility to your home or business. It includes the cost to design, build and maintain overhead and underground distribution lines, poles, stations and local transformers, and operate local systems. The distribution charge varies with the amount of electricity used. TRANSMISSION COSTS: The costs to deliver electricity from generating stations to your utility along the high-voltage transmission system (also called the transmission grid) owned by Hydro One Networks Inc. Transmission costs vary with the amount of electricity used. Transmission costs include: Network Service Charge: The cost to deliver electricity from generating stations to your utility through Hydro One’s transmission system. Line and Transformation Connection Service Charge: The costs your utility incurs to connect to Hydro One’s transmission lines, as well as the cost to transform electricity from the high voltages used in the bulk transmission system to the lower “distribution voltages” used by your local utility.
Regulatory charges	This charge is made up of the following components, which are approved by the Ontario Energy Board: WHOLESALE MARKET SERVICE CHARGE: This charge of 0.62 cents per kWh covers the cost of services provided by the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO). The IESO operates Ontario's competitive electricity market, where electricity is bought and sold. This charge also includes a 0.1 cent per kWh charge for Rural and Remote Rate Protection, which all customers pay to offset the higher cost to distribute electricity to consumers in rural and remote areas of Ontario. STANDARD SUPPLY SERVICE CHARGE: This charge of 25 cents per month covers administrative costs incurred by your utility to provide electricity to Standard Supply Service customers - consumers who purchase electricity from a utility instead of from a licensed electricity retailer. This is primarily consumers (e.g., residential) on the Regulated Price Plan.
Debt-Retirement charge	This charge of 0.7 cents per kWh has been set by the Ontario Ministry of Finance to pay down the residual stranded debt of the former Ontario Hydro.

Other items on your bill if you have signed with an electricity retailer

If you have signed a contract with an independent electricity retailer, in addition to the above there will some other items on your bill. These include:

A Provincial Benefit line: It can be a credit or a charge to you, and is your share of the difference between government regulated and contract prices for electricity paid to certain generators and the market prices they would have received had they not been subject to government regulation or contracts. If you buy electricity under the Regulated Price Plan, an estimate of this amount is already reflected in the stable price for electricity set by the OEB, shown on the “Electricity” line of your bill. If you buy from an electricity retailer, the Provincial Benefit is not included in the contract price offered by the retailer, so on your bill it’s shown as a separate item.

An OPG Rebate. The Ontario Government placed a cap on the amount paid to certain generation facilities owned by Ontario Power Generation (OPG). Consumers will receive a rebate for any revenues from those facilities exceeding an average price of 4.7 cents/kWh in 2007-2008. On May 1, 2008, the revenue cap increased to 4.8 cents/kWh for the subsequent 12 month period. An estimate of the OPG rebate is included in the Regulated Price Plan prices. Consumers that leave the Regulated Price Plan and sign a contract with an electricity retailer will receive the OPG Rebate on a quarterly basis. The total rebate amount will be calculated using only the electricity you used after you left the Regulated Price Plan.

More information

The OEB does not have access to consumers’ accounts. For detailed information about your specific electricity bill, you should contact your energy provider directly or visit their Web site.