THUNDER BAY – Some rural residents say they're concerned after learning their hydro services are about to change.
Some Townline Road residents have received a letter from Thunder Bay Hydro Wednesday stating their services will be switched to Hydro One within the next three months.
The letter states any bill increases due to higher delivery charges from Hydro One will be offset as long as the account holder remains the same.
In an interview with CKPR Radio resident Shawn Laakso said he is concerned the fixed credit will be based on the average monthly usage in the past 12 months.
“The average usage now isn’t going to be the same ten years from now and is that what they are going to base that on…I don’t know,” Laakso said
“For the current account holder, so now if I sell the house I have to disclose to the next person that they will be on Hydro One rates…that’s not a selling feature.”
He added that he pays city tax and he’s on the city side, so he should be receiving city services for Hydro.
“If they are going to start pushing me on rural then I should pay rural taxes too.”
Other Townline Road residents informed Laakso that Thunder Bay had tried to push everybody on the city side of Townline to Hydro One services but the residents fought it and won.
Laakso said they intend to do the same and he hopes they are able to prevent the switch.
Thunder Bay Hydro communications Eileen Dias said Thunder Bay Hydro is only complying with the Ontario Energy Board’s decision to eliminate Long Term Load Transfer arrangements.
“There are places where different electricity distributors meet, so there are some places where individual customers are supplied power by the opposite side of the road power distributor,” Dias said.
For example, in Thunder Bay there may be an individual who built a house across the road from where Hydro One had its infrastructure, therefore, at the time Hydro One simply ran a line across the street to supply power.
In this case, they were in Thunder Bay Hydro did the actual billing on Thunder Bay Hydro rates because the property was on the organizations territory.
“There was some administrative details that needed to take place on a regular basis to understand where the power came from, how much power there was and how we would bill the customers,” Dias said.
In 2008, the Ontario Energy Board decided they wanted to eliminate all Long-Term Load Transfers across the province where two distribution companies where having this arrangement.
Dias said there was some back and forth and the effort was eventually suspended.
In 2015, the Ontario Energy Board decided once again to eliminate Long-Term Road Transfers between any two electricity distributors on the boundary roads,
“We received an order from the Ontario Energy Board to negotiate to comply with the idea that everywhere someone was physically supplied power that’s whose customer they were going to be,” Dias said.
“We moved forward with settling where our long-term load customers have been and now customer have been notified where they are actually going to be transferred.”
About 55 customers in Thunder Bay will be going to Hydro One and about 20 will be transferred into the Thunder Bay Hydro system.
The Ontario Energy Board has given Thunder Bay Hydro a timeline to completely finalize everything by June 21, 2017.
