BC Hydro Offers TOD Pricing

[CFinVancouver]

I just signed up fro BC Hydro's Time of Day rate. Seems like we can make it work in our favour. We don't work from home, have 2 tesla's and can defer appliance use to after 11pm. The variable will be our central AC, this will have to fluctuate during the 4 to 9pm on-peak rate. We are fortunate to still use gas fed radiant heat for the heating side of things. The rate calculator BC Hydro has only allows one electric car in it's calculation.
At least we can switch back and forth in the next billing cycle. Be interesting to see how others benefit from this opportunity.

 

[wayner]

Assuming that you have a thermostat with a schedule you should be able to set your cooling schedule to cool more before 4, then raise the temperature setting by a couple of degrees from 4-9, and lower it after 9. That's what I have done here in Ontario where we have had TOU billing for years, and now have a more extreme version called ULO that has very large pricing differentials.

 

[zknobody]

I'm in ON and that's exactly what I do, switch pricing plans in warmer months
AC needs to run at peak usage times making the TOU prices more expensive for my home

 

[KevinT3141]

Assuming that you have a thermostat with a schedule you should be able to set your cooling schedule to cool more before 4, then raise the temperature setting by a couple of degrees from 4-9, and lower it after 9. That's what I have done here in Ontario where we have had TOU billing for years, and now have a more extreme version called ULO that has very large pricing differentials.

Yeah, we kicked our rental gas water heater (Reliance, the home builder stuck us with them) to the curb last fall after the second one failed in under 5 years, just like the first. Sure you get the replacement 'free' on the rental plan, but they charged an arm and a leg per month for the ultra high efficiency fan-forced gas unit our builder chose as part of selling a 'high efficiency' house, and the tank rusts through from the outside in regardless of whether or not you own a water softener due to the carbonic acid in the exhaust gas that condenses directly on to some parts of the tank due to the high efficiency.

We now outright own a Rheem heat-pump electric water heater, on wifi, with scheduling via an app. Putting a water heater on wifi with an app is dodgy technological masturbation if you ask me, but the practical upshot is this: We have it scheduled to heat to 140°F at 3:00 am when both the electricity is cheapest and the cars are generally done charging, drop to 120°F at 7:00 am when the rates go up (so it doesn't have to recover very much or work hard to do it after our morning routine), go to 130°F after 7:00 pm when the electricity is cheap again to better handle evening demands, then lather, rinse, repeat. On weekends it's just set to 130°F all the time. It's been working great for us, has a 10-year warranty (costing way less than 10 years of the Reliance rental), and shouldn't quickly rust from the outside in, so we expect to see at least 10 years of service from it.

So far I've avoided the ULO rate plan. We charge two cars off one charger (my Ioniq Plug-in that we had first takes at most two hours to charge, so we can flip to the Tesla at 9:00) and also have a hot tub, so its not clear to me that the shorter time window for the ULO rate would work for us. The regular time-of-use plan with the cheapest rate from 7 pm to 7 am regardless of season is working well for us.