Residential Rates and Charges

Helping you understand how they’re set.

As a residential customer, the charges on your bill fall under four line items: Electricity, Delivery, Regulatory Charges and HST. In certain instances, customers may be charged for additional services.

Electricity

Electricity costs are set by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) for most residential customers. This portion of your bill covers the costs of generating the electricity we deliver to your home.

Learn More

Delivery

We deliver your electricity, but we do not generate or produce electricity. Delivery charges covers our costs to deliver electricity to your home safely and reliably. These costs include keeping the system safe and reliable, restoring power, transmitting and distributing electricity and providing fast and flexible customer service. The OEB sets our delivery rates.

Delivery charges include:

  • Monthly service charge – A fixed charge for costs related to meter reading, billing, account maintenance, and customer service.
  • Distribution volume charge – A charge that varies depending on how much electricity you use. This covers the costs of building and maintaining the distribution system (low voltage), including overhead and underground power lines, poles and transformer stations. This charge is only applicable to residential customers with a low density rate class (both year-round and seasonal).
  • Transmission charges – Charges that vary depending on how much electricity you use. This covers the cost to operate and maintain the high voltage transmission system.
  • An adjustment for line losses – It’s normal for a small amount of power to be lost as it travels over power lines to your home. We use an OEB-approved adjustment factor to account for line losses.
Learn about Delivery Rates

Government subsidies applied to Delivery charges

1) Distribution Rate Protection – for year-round residential customers with a medium or low density rate class

The Government of Ontario set up the Distribution Rate Protection (DRP) program in 2017 for residential customers who live in areas of the province with higher distribution costs. This program is funded through provincial revenues and ensures rural distribution rates are comparable to urban rates.

Year-round residential customers with a medium or low density rate class (your rate class is shown below the “Total amount you owe” on page 2 of your bill) automatically receive this subsidy that sets a threshold amount on what they pay for base distribution charges. Base distribution charges are made up of the monthly service charge and the distribution volume charge that are included in Delivery charges.

The Ontario Energy Board increased the threshold amount from $39.49 to $41.39 per month to account for inflation, effective July 1, 2024.


2) Rural or Remote Rate Protection – for residential customers with a low density rate class

This program provides financial assistance to eligible customers located in rural or remote areas where the costs of providing electricity service to these customers greatly exceeds the costs of providing electricity to customers located elsewhere in the province of Ontario. Year-round residential customers with a low density rate class automatically receive a monthly credit of $60.50 that is deducted from the monthly service charge.

Regulatory Charges

Regulatory Charges are set by the OEB. These charges include the cost of services required to operate the electricity system and run the wholesale market. The majority of these charges are variable and increase or decrease depending on the amount of your adjusted usage.

HST

Charges on your electricity bill are subject to the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST). The HST portion of your bill falls under the authority of the federal government. However, the tax assessment on your bill includes a 19.3 per cent rebate. On November 1, 2019, the Government of Ontario introduced the Ontario Electricity Rebate, which is a rebate on electricity costs for residential, farm and many small business customers.

Some First Nations and Métis communities qualify for a tax exemption.

Find out if you qualify

Common Charges

At times we may also apply charges for additional services required by our customers. These common charges vary in cost depending on the need. Some of the more frequent charges include:

Customer Administration
​Account set up charge: ​$38.00
Easement charge for unregistered rights (web request): $25.00
Easement charge for unregistered rights (letter request): $92.51
Returned cheque charge (plus tax): $7.00
Non-Payment of Account
Late Payment - per month: 1.50%
Late Payment - per annum: 19.56%
Other
Sentinel Lights Rental Rate - per month: $10.00
Sentinel Lights Pole Rental Rate – per month: $7.00

Sentinel Lights

Some of our customers are charged for the operation and maintenance of our Sentinel Light Rental Program. The supply, operation and service of our customers’ sentinel lights is only available to those already enrolled in the program.​

Learn More

Explaining your Hydro One Bill

We’re responsible for the delivery component of your bill. To understand the charges that we collect on behalf of other parties — such as the OEB and the Independent Electricity Systems Operator (IESO) — please see below.

infographic: Explaining your Hydro One Bill, where Delivery charges make up only 31.2 cents out of every dollar on your bill

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