Discussions

I just received an email from Manitoba Hydro. They are applying for two 7.9 increases in rates in less than a year. Copy and pasted from the email:  
 
Public Notice from the Public Utilities Board  
 
You're invited to share your views about the proposed rate increases from Manitoba Hydro  
Manitoba Hydro has applied to the Public Utilities Board (Board) for a 7.9 per cent increase to hydro rates on August 1, 2017 and another 7.9 per cent increase on April 1, 2018.  
 
 
For a residential customer not on electric heat (using an average of 1,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month), the combined impact of these rate increases is an additional $14.31 per month after April 1, 2018.  
 
For a residential customer that has electric heat (using an average of 2,000 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per month), the combined impact of these rate increases is an additional $27.33 per month after April 1, 2018.  
 
Further details are available at www.pubmanitoba.ca.  
 
-- time for a big hell no.

Knew it was coming. A company / province can only run a deficit for so long. And really, $30 a month sounds alot better than other provinces.

whether we say something or not. The rates will be going up. That's a fact. PUB may not give Hydro 7.9%, but will be definitely higher than 5%

Anyone with an electric furnace or baseboard heat is going to be crying in the next few years with all the increases being projected. This is just the tip of the iceberg and Hydro's goal is a 46% increase over the next 5 years.  
 
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-hydro-rates-increase-1.4101568  
 
Say goodbye to one of the few advantages we had over other provinces.

You can thank the NDP the this present. They bled MB Hydro dry to the point that they can't function now!!

"Bipole III will not cost taxpayers a single cent. It will be paid for by export sales" - Greg Selinger  
 
Guess he was wrong on that one

MrMechanic said "Knew it was coming. A company / province can only run a deficit for so long. And really, $30 a month sounds alot better than other provinces. "

Although your comment is true ...the sad part is that this mentality is exactly why some things happen. People just throw up their hands and say oh well what can we do, or it could be worse. In a lot of ways we are a somewhat defeated society. Just my opinion of course

Upper Management took a big like 20% pay cut for doing a poor job of managing our resources...maybe all employees could take a cut!

Screw ups that let the ndp bleed hydro will not be seeing any repercussions but 900 employees are being let go. So we will pay more for worse service. What needs to happen is the ndp needs to be billed into poverty for there mismanagement of the province.  
 
Edited by tafeel, 2017-05-16 08:20:36

ultraguy said ""Bipole III will not cost taxpayers a single cent. It will be paid for by export sales" - Greg Selinger     Guess he was wrong on that one "

not just that one , that one and many more

Yes, it would be nice if the speNDP could be held financially responsible for this screw up especially.  
 
People just need to remember at the next election why the hydro rates went up. The cons had to increase the rates because of the mismanagement from the speNDP which has put Hydro in such a poor fiscal state.

Tried to put my spreadsheet data here....not working.  
 
Click link to an example of what rates will be like year after year. Our rates will still be low, hopefully they will stabilize at around year 5 or 6 and stay around there for 10-15 years.  
 
http://imgur.com/a/Vjyue  
 
Edited by Brent Bertram, 2017-05-16 23:00:59

ultraguy said ""Bipole III will not cost taxpayers a single cent. It will be paid for by export sales" - Greg Selinger     Guess he was wrong on that one "

Just remember who did this to us...and why.  
 
$30 per month? More like $60 for me. I love environmentalism [sarcasm]!  
 
Edited by Triplethreat, 2017-05-17 01:30:11

This Hydro increase is a result off non business decisions on Bipole 3. Any engineer with a sane mind would have gone down the East side of the lakes. Politics of Environmental groups and First Nations made the Ndp waste billions of dollars on the failed Bipole 3 plan, now every Manitoba will pay the price. Our farms Hydro bill last year was over 14000 dollars, add 15 percent to that and its not 15 dollars a month like hydro is saying.

Manitoba is well behind a lot of the world in terms of solar energy because we have had cheap electricity.  
 
While we can't do much to stop the cost of electricity going up, we can reduce the impact on our bank account in the long run but installing solar PV (photovoltaic) panels. MB Hydro currently has a rebate program of $1000 per 1000 kW installed. This will cover roughly 25% to 33% of the installed price. The rebate expires in April, 2018, I think, but could be cancelled at any time.  
 
If you're going to be in your current residence long term, and you have a good south facing roof or ample yard space, you may want to consider it.

I sent you a PM.

It's interesting about the money needed to cover these bipole projects to finish them by increasing our rates. Hydro forgot to mention all the money that is needed to upgrade all the aging infrastructure. That will be the next big talk!

Good map of the routes: https://www.hydro.mb.ca/projects/bipoleIII/pdfs/bipole_final_preferred_route.pdf  
 
The two routes proposed: https://i.cbc.ca/1.1944558.1465423773!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/original_620/bipole.jpg  
 
I think they picked the wrong route after looking that this map.....  
 
Edited by Brent Bertram, 2017-05-17 21:49:38

$30.00 a month isn't bad *IF* you are an average household using 2,000kwh/month.  
I just did the math for our household. Big family and I run a small business from home that helps increase our energy consumption...  
This increase is going to cost us approximately $100.00 more/month.  
Pretty sure it's going to cost a lot of other people more than $30/mo as well. Frustrating...

Since it's an average, it will cost a lot of other people less than $30 / month too. I just looked at my bills and I'm only using ~600 kWh a month.

and take advantage of the rebate. Besides being environmentally friendly, it will pay for itself after several years. We checked out pretty much all of the installers in MB and compared prices etc. If you are thinking about it, send me a PM and we can save you a lot of digging for info.

Hi LJ, please send PM me the info that you found out. I can't figure out how to send a PM. I'm logged in, but it asks me to log in again whenever I click the "Send private message" button. I can never get to the point of composing a PM. Very buggy website.

We decided to go SOLAR too... if you were EVER thinking about it, now is the time to do it. For us, we pay about $4,000 a year in electricity costs and the Power Smart rebate for us was $37,000. This program ends in April 2018, perhaps sooner (if you read the fine print) which is why now is the time to go solar. Prices of equipment have come down dramatically in the last 5 or so years and it actually makes sense to do it, if you can... for us, we pay close to $0.09 per kWh of electricity used and if I look at a 30-year timeframe, I am able to lock in all of my electricity needs for the next 30 years straight for about $0.05 - seriously. We live in the country, so space for a ground mount isn't a problem. If you are limited to your roof space, in town for instance, you likely won't have enough roof real estate to put enough solar panels up there to completely meet your electrical needs... in the country though, with our system, I am expecting to completely eliminate my electricity bill for good. Seriously. PM me if you are interested. We live just outside of Brandon...

ultraguy said "Hi LJ, please send PM me the info that you found out. I can't figure out how to send a PM. I'm logged in, but it asks me to log in again whenever I click the "Send private message" button. I can never get to the point of composing a PM. Very buggy website. "

If you can't open it, let me know.

We are starting to consider solar and would be interested in the info you have researched. Thanks in advance!

By far, the best and unbiased place to begin your solar adventure is directly on to Manitoba Hydro's website... https://www.hydro.mb.ca/environment/solar.shtml  
 
If you search for solar on the ebrandon businesses (on this site) you will find a local business specializing in solar.

nedkaO said "By far, the best and unbiased place to begin your solar adventure is directly on to Manitoba Hydro's website... https://www.hydro.mb.ca/environment/solar.shtml     If you search for solar on the ebrandon businesses (on this site) you will find a local business specializing in solar. "

The question I find interesting is why is Manitoba Hydro giving incentives to people to get their hydro from Solar? With the billions of dollars in infrastructure they are putting in do they not want to ensure there customer base is as large as possible? Especially those that use large amounts?  
 
My understanding is that the plans with exporting to other provinces and to the states has not come to pass as many re going with other sources such as natural gas.

We got an email from hydro today with where one can voice their opinion about the rates for increases. There were in person meetings or links to the Public Utilities Board website. Maybe if enough people complain the rate hike may not be quite as substantial...maybe.  
 
http://www.pubmanitoba.ca/v1/

CR said "We got an email from hydro today with where one can voice their opinion about the rates for increases. There were in person meetings or links to the Public Utilities Board website. Maybe if enough people complain the rate hike may not be quite as substantial...maybe.     http://www.pubmanitoba.ca/v1/ "

Nothing to lose in my opinion from individuals emailing their opinions to the PUB: I have already done so. Maybe, just maybe if they get bombarded by 1st hand examples of the difficulties this proposed increase will create for many people, they might consider them.  
As an aside, it's ludicrous that MB Hydro sells to the US for a flat 3cents per kw hr yet asking that be increased by only 3.95% while we're charged 7.93 cents per kw hr.

Oh Canada said "    nedkaO said "By far, the best and unbiased place to begin your solar adventure is directly on to Manitoba Hydro's website... https://www.hydro.mb.ca/environment/solar.shtml     If you search for solar on the ebrandon businesses (on this site) you will find a local business specializing in solar. " The question I find interesting is why is Manitoba Hydro giving incentives to people to get their hydro from Solar? With the billions of dollars in infrastructure they are putting in do they not want to ensure there customer base is as large as possible? Especially those that use large amounts?     My understanding is that the plans with exporting to other provinces and to the states has not come to pass as many re going with other sources such as natural gas. "

I always thought it was because MB Hydro exports electricity (or plan to export).  
 
The MB Hydro grant info is at  
 
https://www.hydro.mb.ca/environment/solar.shtml  
 
I understand that the grant is only available for a limited time so maybe MB Hydro is thinking the same as you?