My mom was wrong about hydro (and yours probably was too)

I have vivid memories of my mom absolutely livid that I ran the dryer before 7pm and these were not infrequent encounters. Growing up I was constantly reminded about how I must not keep the fridge open for longer then necessary, always do laundry or run the dishwasher overnight, and avoid using the AC at all costs cause its too expensive. Now that Im an adult Im realizing that these things I assumed to be true might be completely false.

Humble beginnings

My mom was a single parent raising 6 kids and could stretch a dollar farther then anyone I know so I hold no ill will against her for maybe being a little strict with the AC but when I moved out at 18 years old I took all those money saving habits with me. For the next 8 years my roommates and I kept the thermostat at 19 degrees in the winter and 25 degrees in the summer (usually the AC was just turned off outside of special occasions), we would pack the dishwasher to the gills to not waste a single cubic inch of space, and we would not dare run a load of laundry other then evening or weekend. My girlfriend at the time (soon to be wife) thought the 3 of us were completely ridiculous but I was convinced we were saving money hand over fist.

Home ownership

Skip forward to post covid when aforementioned girlfriend and I buy a house and move in together, all those money saving habits start causing problems cause she just doesn't understand how much money we could be saving by not taking advantage of TOU (Time Of Use) rates... or so I believe.

In a last ditch effort to make enlighten her I buy a $20 energy monitor off Amazon and use it to check how much energy various appliances use, I check the fridge, dishwasher, and washing machine. Here are my findings:

Fridge from 2008: 35 kwh/month

Dishwasher from ~2010: 0.1kwh/load + $0.03 in water

Washing machine ~2010: 0.2kwh/load

This didn't make any sense to me, with tiered energy rates that meant the dishwasher and washing machine were only a couple pennies to run?! The water cost more then the electricity! The fridge cost <$4/month, even if I kept it open a few extra minutes everyday thats only an extra 50 cents a month. Needless to say I was in shock, my whole life was crumbling around me, and I was spiraling. I needed to know if this was also the case for the AC and clothes dryer!

Our utility provider provides hourly usage data so I unplug everything in the house and run the dryer to know exactly how much power they use when running for 1 hour:

Dryer from ~2010: 4.5kwh/load

Thats less then 50 cents per load, worst case there is alot of jeans and your paying 75 cents. As a university student I was doing 1-2 loads a month which means my savings compared to tiered rates were <$2 per YEAR, I havent even broken even on the $20 energy monitor I bought to prove how much I was saving!

The last hope was the air conditioner, I had to know that years of enduring inconvenient TOU rates were not in vein! Our home had a 30 year old AC that I refused to turn on unless we had company over, for science we decided to keep it on for 1 month which ended up being the hottest month of the year and our AC ran for 161 hours and consumed and estimated ~300 kwh of electricity! Finally Im vindicated! Right?

I had indeed been saving money but after running the numbers based on heating degree hours in Ottawa if I projected the AC usage over the year it would have only been ~400 hours which would have cost ~$75 in electricity annually. Split across my 3 roommates and toss in running the dishwasher twice as frequently, and doing laundry whenever we wanted it would have cost us a whopping $3/month to literally never go do sleep sweating, never stress about laundry, and run the dishwasher without hesitation... lets figure out the opportunity cost:

If we translate $3 today into 2014 money thats $2.35, if I invested that money into a tax free investing account monthly and compounded it at 10% annually (7% real) that would be $303 opportunity cost. While it's nothing to scoff at I am definitely underwhelmed and reconsidering my life choices.

Turning over a new leaf

As of 2022 we switch away from TOU rates to tiered rates. While I understand everyones situation is different I imagine there are alot of people like myself that just assume TOU always wins and tiered is for suckers, I can assure you that is not always the case. My partner and I do what we want whenever we want and our average bill actually went down, likely because no matter how much of our electricity demand we could shifted to off peak the base load that we use during peak was just slightly too much to offset the cost.

Im still trying to break even on this energy monitor.