BC Hydro – Northern Rates Unfair
Residents on Northern BC have been subsidizing BC Hydro based on a very unfair rate structure.
To explain BC Hydro has set up a two tier rate program, called Residential Conservation Rate based on the power consumed by all BC Hydro Customers. Now when you consider 60% of BC Hydro users live in the lower mainland, meaning the Greater Vancouver area, where even the odd palm tree survives. Using those people to determine an average for every household in BC, leaves residents north of Hope, paying much more as their average Hydro bill.
So by the time you get to Prince George the average home would or could be paying double the cost that those living in the south pay.
From BC Hydro
“Why do we have a Step 2?
The stepped rate structure provides a price incentive to encourage conservation–which is the cleanest, cheapest and simplest way to meet growing electricity demand.
Households in BC Hydro’s service area average just over 900 kWh per month.”
So you want BC to go green and clean but you make the people of the North pay for it. There is no way that the people living in northern BC could heat much more than a tiny one bedroom home based on lower mainland averages.
“Our residential usage charge is a two-tiered Conservation Rate. You pay 8.29 cents per kWh for the first 1,350 kWh you use over an average two-month billing period. Above that amount, you pay 12.43 cents per kWh”
Most homes in Northern BC hit the step 2 rate of 12.43 cents per kWh by the end of the first month out of the two months. It’s not the colder weather alone that is to blame for our higher heating costs, its primarily the rate structure set up by BC Hydro that is the problem.
The province needs to be set up based on the average outdoor temperatures for that region, not one flat rate based on people living in the Metro Vancouver area.
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