How one man beat Hydro One into submission: Woodcock
It’s clear Hydro One didn’t prepare for the smart meter switchover
By CONNIE WOODCOCK, Toronto Sun
Last Updated: May 29, 2010 11:31am
There’s good news for worried electricity customers with outrageous bills: You can challenge them — and win.
In the last six months, thousands of Ontarians have received Hydro One bills that were two, three and four times higher than normal, while the utility was installing those controversial smart meters.
I’ve heard dozens of horror stories — a woman living in one room of her condo because she couldn’t afford to heat the rest; another who turned off her heat in early March; a couple who got a $5,000 bill for 12 months at their cottage, only in use in summer and so on and so on.
But my next-door neighbours received the granddaddy of all bills in March: $2,742.39 for three months on their weekend house near Warkworth.
In those three months, Tony and Maria, who live in Barrie, used it for a week in December, one weekend in January and another in February.
Coincidentally, their smart meter was installed in December.
“I was in shock,” said Maria. “I couldn’t speak.”
Most horrified customers call Hydro One’s customer service number for help. They’re told they have old appliances drawing too much energy; there’s too much waste; they’ve had a major renovation.
One says he was told he must be running a grow-op.
Our neighbours were told their new roof and deck might be the culprits, which they thought strange since few power tools were used.
If you continue to complain, Hydro One will offer help in spreading out the payments or will threaten to cut off your service.
But Tony likes a challenge. An assistant professor in business administration at Lakehead University’s Orillia campus, he asked for his billing records. He was sure he’d been using about 24 kWh a day for years. He created a spreadsheet and graph showing he couldn’t have used the 181 kWh per day he’d been billed for from December 2009 to February 2010.
“I could show our usage was declining from year to year,” he says.
He had one extra advantage: He’d worked for Hydro One’s predecessor, Ontario Hydro, for 17 years and understood Hydro-speak.
Next, he looked through Ontario’s “sunshine” list of government employees earning $100,000-plus a year until he found a suitable Hydro One executive to whom to send a registered letter showing the pattern he’d found and outlining his problem.
His other tool was the smart meter readings Hydro One offered to prove high usage. His meter was installed during the billing period of his old meter so he was able to view the actual usage during two months of estimated bills. The comparison clearly showed the estimates were wrong. (For most customers, account history is available online at Hydro One’s website but you can’t see your daily usage until you get time-of-use billing.)
It took six weeks, but eventually Hydro One caved, admitting it appeared he’d been overcharged and offering to charge him for 24 kWh a day. He hasn’t received the revised bill yet but believes they’ll stick to their word.
One thing he knew from past Hydro experience was mistakes are easy to make with the old mechanical meters since one dial runs clockwise while the other runs counterclockwise. That’s what he thinks happened to him the last time there was a real meter reading.
Most of us don’t need challenges when it involves an out-of-sight utility bill and don’t want to confront sometimes-surly customer relations staff. We just want an honest bill.
It’s clear Hydro One didn’t prepare for the smart meter switchover and didn’t expect the massive overbilling or the complaint landslide just before massive rate increases.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg of problems at Hydro One and its sibling companies, Ontario Power Generation and the Independent Electricity System Operator.
If something isn’t done soon, it will just help, along with the HST, to defeat the McGuinty government in next year’s provincial election.
[It is planned to be the #1 issue in the next election -- Richard]
Monday, May 31, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
LETTER ONTARIO ENERGY BOARD
May 15, 2010
OntarioEnergy Board
P.O. Box2319
2300 Yonge St., 27th Floor
Toronto, ON M4P 1E4
Dear Board;
I am complaining about my treatment by Hydro One as it increasingly became clear what they are doing is policy and affects every Ontario customer who moves, and this policy is knowingly fraudulent and practiced against those least able to battle against their monopoly.
And their greed knows no bounds. Not only must customers pay for fictitious energy that drops off their lines, separate and ungoverned Delivery plus Regulatory charges much higher than the energy itself and endless Debt Retirement charges that carry an equal amount of GST, but they sneakily charge the tenant for weeks of service when they know the residence was unoccupied.
I phoned May 10/10 to ask for correction to my new billing, they indicated Feb. 1st as my move-in date when they had service for me at my previous address both in Bobcaygeon, up to Feb. 12. (In fact, I had moved Feb. 14 but they don’t work weekends or on the Family Holiday of Feb.15 so they informed me the final reading would be Feb.12. I made those arrangements a month in advance. When I inspected the new residence at about Feb.5 I found a Hydro letter crammed into the doorknob that said the power would be shut off in the next few days if they did not hear from me and I’d have to pay a hefty start-up charge to turn it back on. I phoned to check again that Hydro was aware of my previous arrangements and was assured they did.) So I expected the bill to be corrected.
But no! After going through the logic of what was wrong with the bill with the male operator/agent on May 10 with no result, he tells me a Supervisor will call in a few days after their Investigation.
On May 12 about 5 p.m. a female ‘supervisor’ phoned and once again I explained their records show where I moved from and when, and she ignores this explanation to say, “What you have to do is . . .” You know when you hear this that all fault has been heaped onto your shoulders, valid or not, usually not.
What I had to do was “petition” my landlord to take responsibility for the charges on by bill. I asked, “How does this become my problem? Surely Hydro should be asking the landlord for this, not tacking it onto my bill without explanation.” I was told my landlord had “refused responsibility”, so I must work it out with them,
We went back and forth with this several times with me urging them to consult their records to see I couldn’t possibly have used energy here when my lease began Feb. 14 and I was not here. This is not mine. And she slammed down the phone mid-sentence.
In a subsequent conversation with my landlord I discovered no attempt was made by Hydro regarding this subject with them.
I saw then this is nothing more than a fraudulent attempt to erroneously charge for idle time to those least able to pay or complain.
I urge you to deny their rate raise and insist instead they balance their enormous budget in a legal and businesslike manner.
Sincerely
C. Neil
cc The Promoter, Hydro One
OntarioEnergy Board
P.O. Box2319
2300 Yonge St., 27th Floor
Toronto, ON M4P 1E4
Dear Board;
I am complaining about my treatment by Hydro One as it increasingly became clear what they are doing is policy and affects every Ontario customer who moves, and this policy is knowingly fraudulent and practiced against those least able to battle against their monopoly.
And their greed knows no bounds. Not only must customers pay for fictitious energy that drops off their lines, separate and ungoverned Delivery plus Regulatory charges much higher than the energy itself and endless Debt Retirement charges that carry an equal amount of GST, but they sneakily charge the tenant for weeks of service when they know the residence was unoccupied.
I phoned May 10/10 to ask for correction to my new billing, they indicated Feb. 1st as my move-in date when they had service for me at my previous address both in Bobcaygeon, up to Feb. 12. (In fact, I had moved Feb. 14 but they don’t work weekends or on the Family Holiday of Feb.15 so they informed me the final reading would be Feb.12. I made those arrangements a month in advance. When I inspected the new residence at about Feb.5 I found a Hydro letter crammed into the doorknob that said the power would be shut off in the next few days if they did not hear from me and I’d have to pay a hefty start-up charge to turn it back on. I phoned to check again that Hydro was aware of my previous arrangements and was assured they did.) So I expected the bill to be corrected.
But no! After going through the logic of what was wrong with the bill with the male operator/agent on May 10 with no result, he tells me a Supervisor will call in a few days after their Investigation.
On May 12 about 5 p.m. a female ‘supervisor’ phoned and once again I explained their records show where I moved from and when, and she ignores this explanation to say, “What you have to do is . . .” You know when you hear this that all fault has been heaped onto your shoulders, valid or not, usually not.
What I had to do was “petition” my landlord to take responsibility for the charges on by bill. I asked, “How does this become my problem? Surely Hydro should be asking the landlord for this, not tacking it onto my bill without explanation.” I was told my landlord had “refused responsibility”, so I must work it out with them,
We went back and forth with this several times with me urging them to consult their records to see I couldn’t possibly have used energy here when my lease began Feb. 14 and I was not here. This is not mine. And she slammed down the phone mid-sentence.
In a subsequent conversation with my landlord I discovered no attempt was made by Hydro regarding this subject with them.
I saw then this is nothing more than a fraudulent attempt to erroneously charge for idle time to those least able to pay or complain.
I urge you to deny their rate raise and insist instead they balance their enormous budget in a legal and businesslike manner.
Sincerely
C. Neil
cc The Promoter, Hydro One
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Green elites meet the people
By Lawrence Solomon May 28, 2010 – 10:25 pm
Residents try to protect their little part of the planet from clean-energy windmills
On Wednesday evening, as part of a panel of energy insiders, I spoke in Toronto’s financial district before an audience of some 150, most of them professionals interested in the clean-energy industry. On Thursday evening, I spoke to some 300 of their victims, in a school auditorium in a residential neighbourhood 15 miles away.
The elite gathering, held in the Grand Banking Hall of One King West Hotel & Residence, was organized by Corporate Knights, a magazine dedicated to “clean capitalism,” and funded by Enbridge, an $18-billion energy company keen to capture a share of the government-sponsored clean technology business (clean energy is chiefly wind, solar, biomass, and other government-subsidized energy technologies). Geared to making Canada a green-energy superpower, the event was billed as “an evening of constructive dialogue on the economy, energy and the environment,” and that it was. I especially felt constructive in bringing news to the assembly that the prospects for a low-carbon green economy were crumbling. Earlier that day, the EU had announced it was putting further carbon dioxide cuts on hold. Its announcement followed like decisions one day earlier by Germany and France, whose announcements followed blockbuster news from Spain the previous week.
“Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster,” read the headline in La Gaceta, a Spanish business newspaper that reported a leaked internal Cabinet document in a full-page article (Obama has often cited Spain as a model Green Economy). The Cabinet document indicated that more than two jobs were lost for every green job created, that the country’s spending binge on renewables had made Spain a high-electricity-cost country, and that Spanish businesses now faced electricity costs 17% higher than the European average. Thanks to the green economy, Spain has Europe’s highest unemployment rate, at 20%, and is now staring at bankruptcy.
More constructive news from me: Australia last month abandoned its cap and trade plan, and the U.S. cap and trade plan is going nowhere. In all these countries, the shoddiness of the scientific claims linking man to dangerous climate change has finally been publicized, thanks to the release of the Climategate emails which showed that scientists had cooked the books on climate change. With public belief in man-made global warming tanking around the world, politicians have begun to run for cover. Countries everywhere are bailing out of their CO2-reduction plans.
Except in Canada, where many in the press and public, and especially in the elites, have not yet heard the news. The other panellists on the stage with me Wednesday evening — a vice-president at CIBC who lends money to government-backed clean energy projects; the head of Cleantech at MaRS, a government-funded centre that promotes government funding of technology; and executives at Earnscliffe and Navigant, top consulting companies — all spoke to the ways and means of transforming society. Some touted the moral imperative to combat man-made global warming, some the need to do what’s right for society, some the steps required to ethically build a less consumptive, more ascetic society of the future.
I met some of the residents slated to inhabit the Brave New World of these panellists the following evening, in an iconic area on the outskirts of Toronto known as the Scarborough Bluffs. The water off this stretch of cliff along Lake Ontario is among the many sites slated for industrial wind turbines. To protect this little part of their planet, which ironically had been carved out when global warming ended the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago, residents came out in their hundreds. Some objected to the visual intrusion of 400-foot high windmills in the natural environment, some feared the noise and possible health effects associated with wind turbines, some worried about the wind turbines’ effect on their property values. None understood why the Ontario government was imposing these monstrosities on them, or why it had taken such extraordinary steps to complete the imposition: To see to the construction of wind and other so-called clean technologies, the Ontario government passed legislation to both provide billions in subsidies for technologies without economic merit and to deny communities their traditional rights to control local developments.
The plight of the residents, in fact, has a ready explanation. In part — a lesser part — it stems from the high-sounding rhetoric of the elite panellists, magnified in an echo chamber populated by legions of fellow elites, the overwhelming majority of whom have accepted the global-warming hypothesis unquestioningly, despite an abject paucity of compelling evidence. The other part of the explanation — the greater part — stems from the residents having unquestioningly accepted the same hypothesis. Fortunately, a remedy for the residents, and for the populace at large, is readily available: Follow the rest of the world and challenge the science.
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/28/green-elites-meet-the-people/#ixzz0pKctdkrM
Residents try to protect their little part of the planet from clean-energy windmills
On Wednesday evening, as part of a panel of energy insiders, I spoke in Toronto’s financial district before an audience of some 150, most of them professionals interested in the clean-energy industry. On Thursday evening, I spoke to some 300 of their victims, in a school auditorium in a residential neighbourhood 15 miles away.
The elite gathering, held in the Grand Banking Hall of One King West Hotel & Residence, was organized by Corporate Knights, a magazine dedicated to “clean capitalism,” and funded by Enbridge, an $18-billion energy company keen to capture a share of the government-sponsored clean technology business (clean energy is chiefly wind, solar, biomass, and other government-subsidized energy technologies). Geared to making Canada a green-energy superpower, the event was billed as “an evening of constructive dialogue on the economy, energy and the environment,” and that it was. I especially felt constructive in bringing news to the assembly that the prospects for a low-carbon green economy were crumbling. Earlier that day, the EU had announced it was putting further carbon dioxide cuts on hold. Its announcement followed like decisions one day earlier by Germany and France, whose announcements followed blockbuster news from Spain the previous week.
“Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster,” read the headline in La Gaceta, a Spanish business newspaper that reported a leaked internal Cabinet document in a full-page article (Obama has often cited Spain as a model Green Economy). The Cabinet document indicated that more than two jobs were lost for every green job created, that the country’s spending binge on renewables had made Spain a high-electricity-cost country, and that Spanish businesses now faced electricity costs 17% higher than the European average. Thanks to the green economy, Spain has Europe’s highest unemployment rate, at 20%, and is now staring at bankruptcy.
More constructive news from me: Australia last month abandoned its cap and trade plan, and the U.S. cap and trade plan is going nowhere. In all these countries, the shoddiness of the scientific claims linking man to dangerous climate change has finally been publicized, thanks to the release of the Climategate emails which showed that scientists had cooked the books on climate change. With public belief in man-made global warming tanking around the world, politicians have begun to run for cover. Countries everywhere are bailing out of their CO2-reduction plans.
Except in Canada, where many in the press and public, and especially in the elites, have not yet heard the news. The other panellists on the stage with me Wednesday evening — a vice-president at CIBC who lends money to government-backed clean energy projects; the head of Cleantech at MaRS, a government-funded centre that promotes government funding of technology; and executives at Earnscliffe and Navigant, top consulting companies — all spoke to the ways and means of transforming society. Some touted the moral imperative to combat man-made global warming, some the need to do what’s right for society, some the steps required to ethically build a less consumptive, more ascetic society of the future.
I met some of the residents slated to inhabit the Brave New World of these panellists the following evening, in an iconic area on the outskirts of Toronto known as the Scarborough Bluffs. The water off this stretch of cliff along Lake Ontario is among the many sites slated for industrial wind turbines. To protect this little part of their planet, which ironically had been carved out when global warming ended the last ice age more than 10,000 years ago, residents came out in their hundreds. Some objected to the visual intrusion of 400-foot high windmills in the natural environment, some feared the noise and possible health effects associated with wind turbines, some worried about the wind turbines’ effect on their property values. None understood why the Ontario government was imposing these monstrosities on them, or why it had taken such extraordinary steps to complete the imposition: To see to the construction of wind and other so-called clean technologies, the Ontario government passed legislation to both provide billions in subsidies for technologies without economic merit and to deny communities their traditional rights to control local developments.
The plight of the residents, in fact, has a ready explanation. In part — a lesser part — it stems from the high-sounding rhetoric of the elite panellists, magnified in an echo chamber populated by legions of fellow elites, the overwhelming majority of whom have accepted the global-warming hypothesis unquestioningly, despite an abject paucity of compelling evidence. The other part of the explanation — the greater part — stems from the residents having unquestioningly accepted the same hypothesis. Fortunately, a remedy for the residents, and for the populace at large, is readily available: Follow the rest of the world and challenge the science.
Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2010/05/28/green-elites-meet-the-people/#ixzz0pKctdkrM
Businesses begin moving out of Ontario due to high electricity cost
Here’s the economic effect of the government’s energy plan: move to Quebec.
Look at Xtrata. 670 jobs lost in Timmins as they move operations to Quebec where they can get power at half the cost of Ontario. Stoney Creek Ice Cream production as well is moving to Quebec. Thank you Dalton!
High costs forced Stoney Creek Dairy out Hamilton Spectator
Gaucher said several factors combined to make the Stoney Creek ice-cream plant uncompetitive — taxes and electricity bills were almost twice what he pays in Montreal and the cost of city water was $8,000 a year in Montreal compared with $100,000 a year here.
Posted in Wind Concerns Ontario
Look at Xtrata. 670 jobs lost in Timmins as they move operations to Quebec where they can get power at half the cost of Ontario. Stoney Creek Ice Cream production as well is moving to Quebec. Thank you Dalton!
High costs forced Stoney Creek Dairy out Hamilton Spectator
Gaucher said several factors combined to make the Stoney Creek ice-cream plant uncompetitive — taxes and electricity bills were almost twice what he pays in Montreal and the cost of city water was $8,000 a year in Montreal compared with $100,000 a year here.
Posted in Wind Concerns Ontario
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
PROOF SMART METERS MISREAD
I have the proof now that something is wrong with my meter.
I got my daily readings today from H1, who sent me my data on speadsheet.
I got my daily readings today from H1, who sent me my data on speadsheet.
Now, lets be clear. I take my readings at noon, they likely do so at midnight. But have a look at my May 18 meter reading I took at noon. 44207. Their midnight reading of that day is 44143. Less. In fact the next day was less at 44191.
How can that be? I did not screw up the reading. That is what the meter had at noon on the 18th of May.
Now it seemed to "correct" itself somewhere along the line because the next 3 days, which unfortunately I was in Toronto for 2 of them, is the same consumption as a normal day, some 54 kWh.
There is definitely a problem with the meters, at least mine.
I emailed back to H1 with this problem, will post the reply.
THIS IS WHY YOUR RATES ARE HIGH
This is an ad on Kijiji:
Generate Solar Energy -- Then Sell it Back to the Province
"Thanks to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and the FIT and microFIT programs, every person in Ontario can now generate electricity to sell back at a significant profit. The OPA is offering anyone who can generate solar electricty, a rate of 80.2 cents for every kilowatt hour they sell back. To put that in perspective, the average consumer pays anywhere from 10 to 11 cents per kilowatt hour. Thats right -- the OPA will buy it back for 8 times what they charge us. And they guarantee to continue purchasing it at that rate for 20 years. What that means is a significant return on investment (as much as 16 percent per year) for anyone who takes advantage of this program. Many customers who install a 10 kilowatt system are now earning 14,000 to 17,000 dollars a year by selling their electricity back to the OPA. And again that is money that is guaranteed for the next 20 years.
If you have a roof or a yard that sees lots of sunlight, then you have yourself an investment opportunity that is guaranteed for the next 20 years. 100 percent financing is available with payments that are still less than the income from the OPA.
We are Solar Direct Canada and have been in business for 20 years. We are also registered with the BBB. Don't trust your home and your investment to some fly-by-night company."
You may want to post a protest, I did.
Generate Solar Energy -- Then Sell it Back to the Province
"Thanks to the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) and the FIT and microFIT programs, every person in Ontario can now generate electricity to sell back at a significant profit. The OPA is offering anyone who can generate solar electricty, a rate of 80.2 cents for every kilowatt hour they sell back. To put that in perspective, the average consumer pays anywhere from 10 to 11 cents per kilowatt hour. Thats right -- the OPA will buy it back for 8 times what they charge us. And they guarantee to continue purchasing it at that rate for 20 years. What that means is a significant return on investment (as much as 16 percent per year) for anyone who takes advantage of this program. Many customers who install a 10 kilowatt system are now earning 14,000 to 17,000 dollars a year by selling their electricity back to the OPA. And again that is money that is guaranteed for the next 20 years.
If you have a roof or a yard that sees lots of sunlight, then you have yourself an investment opportunity that is guaranteed for the next 20 years. 100 percent financing is available with payments that are still less than the income from the OPA.
We are Solar Direct Canada and have been in business for 20 years. We are also registered with the BBB. Don't trust your home and your investment to some fly-by-night company."
You may want to post a protest, I did.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
BIZZAR JUMP IN COMSUMPTION
Notice May 18. A huge jump in the meter reading for my place. We were in Toronto 20-21 and did not take a reading for two days, so those three 19, 20, 21 were averaged. Now we were only gone for 30 hours out of the 3 days, so how those three togther could be the same as the previous "normal" readings is beyond me. (people were here at the house)
My monitor is currently at my friends taking readings, so could not compare.
But I'm sure I saw this once before back in April. A huge jump and then the next day was NEGATIVE. I figured I misread the prevous day, switch numbers. Now I'm not so sure I was wrong then.
If this happens again I should have the monitor back here recording to compare it to.
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