Ontario Electricity Rates 2026: TOU, Tiered, and ULO

How Ontario Electricity Pricing Actually Works

The Ontario Energy Board sets residential electricity rates under the Regulated Price Plan (RPP). Unlike gas, where commodity prices are set quarterly, electricity rates change twice a year on May 1 and November 1. Every household defaults to time-of-use unless you actively choose a different plan.[2]

The same commodity rates apply across all regulated Ontario utilities. Whether you are a Hydro One, Toronto Hydro, Alectra, Hydro Ottawa, or smaller municipal utility customer, the per-kWh price you pay for electricity itself is identical. What differs is the delivery charge, which each local utility sets based on its own cost base.[1]

You have three pricing options to choose from:

• Time-of-Use (TOU) is the default. Three price periods based on time of day and day of week.
• Tiered pricing charges one flat rate for the first block of monthly consumption, then a higher flat rate for anything above.
• Ultra-Low Overnight (ULO) offers the lowest overnight rate in Ontario paired with a steep weekday peak penalty. Designed for EVs and scheduled loads.

Switching between plans is free. You can change once per year without penalty, and it takes one or two billing cycles to take effect. You switch through your local utility, not through the OEB.[4]

Time-of-Use Rates (Winter 2025-2026)

TOU rates are the default for about 90 percent of Ontario residential customers. Here are the current prices and when each period applies.[1]

The summer schedule (May 1 to October 31) swaps the mid-peak and on-peak windows to reflect air conditioning demand. Under the summer schedule, on-peak runs from 11 am to 5 pm, and mid-peak runs 7 am to 11 am and 5 pm to 7 pm. Off-peak remains the same.[3]

Whether TOU saves you money versus tiered depends on what fraction of your usage falls in off-peak hours. If you work a typical daytime schedule and your home is empty during on-peak hours, TOU can come out ahead. If you are home all day or heat with electricity during on-peak hours, tiered pricing is usually cheaper.

Tiered Rates (Winter 2025-2026)

Tiered pricing is the simpler of the three plans. One rate applies for the first block of usage each month, and a higher rate applies beyond that.[1][2]

The winter threshold (November through April) is higher than the summer threshold (May through October) because Ontario households use more electricity for heating in winter and the OEB adjusts the block size to keep the pricing structure roughly fair.

Tiered is the best default for people who are home during the day, people who do not actively track their electricity use, and households with steady consumption patterns. The rate is higher than TOU off-peak but lower than TOU mid-peak and on-peak, so if your usage is spread through the day you typically come out ahead.

Ultra-Low Overnight Rates

ULO is the newest Ontario rate plan and is designed for households with large, shiftable loads. The spread between the cheapest and most expensive ULO period is more than 10 to 1, which is the largest of any Ontario plan.[4]

The math on ULO is straightforward but unforgiving. The overnight rate is roughly 40 percent of the regular TOU off-peak rate. The weekday peak rate is almost double the regular TOU on-peak rate. If you can shift 40 percent or more of your weekday usage into the overnight window, ULO typically wins. If you cannot, you are paying a very large premium during peak hours for the privilege of cheap overnight power you might not use.

Good candidates for ULO:

• Homes with an EV that charges overnight every weekday
• Homes with a heat pump where most heating occurs at night (well insulated homes tend to coast through the day)
• Homes with pool pumps, electric water heaters, or other scheduled heavy loads that can run 11 pm to 7 am
• Night shift workers who do most cooking, laundry, and appliance use overnight

Poor candidates for ULO:

• Daytime households with people home during peak weekday hours
• Homes where heating and cooking are the biggest loads and run whenever people are awake
• Anyone who cannot actively manage usage around the ULO schedule

Side-by-Side Comparison

Here are the same three plans next to each other, showing what a kWh costs in each window.

Note how tiered pricing has no time-of-day variation at all. A kWh at 2 am costs exactly the same as a kWh at 6 pm. That simplicity is the main appeal.

Which Plan Fits Your Household?

Typical Dual-Income Household

You are out of the house during weekday on-peak hours. Heating, cooking, and laundry happen after 7 pm or on weekends. TOU is usually the best fit, and the default plan is doing right by you. Check your current usage pattern against a tiered comparison just in case, but for most dual-income households TOU wins.

Stay-at-Home Household

Someone is home most weekday hours. You are doing laundry during the day, running the dishwasher after dinner, and keeping the thermostat active during on-peak periods. Tiered pricing is almost always cheaper in this situation because you are paying TOU on-peak rates for usage that has no ability to shift.

EV Household

If you charge one or more EVs overnight, look hard at ULO. A typical Ontario EV driver charges about 3,000 to 5,000 kWh per year. At 3.9 cents per kWh instead of 9.8 cents, that is $177 to $295 in overnight charging savings alone. The trade-off is the on-peak rate, so only make the switch if you can commit to keeping weekday peak usage low.

Heat Pump Household

Heat pumps use meaningful electricity during winter. If your heat pump is properly sized and your home is well insulated, most of the heating happens overnight and in off-peak hours anyway. TOU or ULO both work; ULO wins if you can cycle heating hard overnight to preheat the house and coast through on-peak hours. Less insulated homes are better served by TOU because heating demand is spread across all hours.

Electric Water Heater Household

If you have an electric tank water heater on a timer, scheduling the heating element to run overnight cuts your water heating costs dramatically on TOU or ULO. Under ULO, overnight water heating at 3.9 cents per kWh is roughly one-third the cost of daytime heating on tiered pricing.

Beyond the Commodity Rate

The commodity rate is only one part of your bill. For a typical Ontario residential customer, the breakdown looks roughly like this:[5]

• Electricity (commodity) charge: The TOU, tiered, or ULO rate times your kWh usage. This is the part you can influence.
• Delivery charge: Set by your local utility, approved by the OEB. Includes a fixed monthly service charge plus a per-kWh distribution component. Varies significantly between utilities.
• Regulatory charges: Cover transmission, conservation programs, and other system costs. A small percentage of your bill.
• Ontario Electricity Rebate: A flat percentage discount applied automatically to most residential bills before HST. Shows as a credit line.
• HST: Applied to the net total.

Hydro One customers in rural Ontario tend to pay higher delivery charges than urban Toronto Hydro customers because the cost of maintaining rural distribution per customer is higher.[6] This is regulated and unavoidable, but it does mean the same kWh of electricity can cost meaningfully more in one part of the province than another once delivery is included.

How to Switch Plans

Switching your rate plan is free and done through your local utility, not the OEB.[2] For most utilities you can switch online through your account portal or by calling customer service. The change usually takes one or two billing cycles to appear. You can switch back within the year at no cost, so experimenting is safe.[4]

Before switching, download 12 months of usage data from your utility portal. Most utilities now provide hourly consumption data for smart-metered customers. Run that data against each plan's rates to see which one would have been cheapest for your actual pattern. This takes 15 minutes with a spreadsheet and removes all the guesswork.

Practical Recommendations

If You Have Never Looked at Your Plan

Download the last 12 months of hourly usage from your utility portal and calculate what you would have paid under each plan. For most people, the answer is that tiered is slightly cheaper than TOU, by a small margin. Switching is worth doing.

If You Are Buying an EV or Heat Pump

Look at ULO seriously. The overnight rate is the cheapest electricity in Ontario by a wide margin, and modern EVs and properly sized heat pumps are the kinds of loads that ULO was designed for. Model your expected usage before switching, because the on-peak penalty is large enough to hurt if you get it wrong.

If You Are Adding a Pool, Electric Water Heater, or Large Scheduled Load

Put it on a timer and schedule it for the overnight window. Combined with TOU or ULO, this can cut the operating cost of the new load by 40 to 60 percent versus running it during peak hours.

Related Guides

Your electricity bill is one piece of a larger energy and HVAC picture. These guides cover the connected decisions.

• Enbridge Gas Rates Ontario 2026 (current gas rates, the other half of your energy bill)
• Heat Pump vs Furnace Ontario (the decision ULO is designed to support)
• EV Charger Installation Cost Ontario (the single biggest reason to consider ULO)
• Ontario Low-Income Energy Assistance 2026 (OESP monthly credits and free retrofits)
• Solar Panels Ontario: Worth It? (how rate plan choice affects solar payback)
• Carbon Tax Removal and Ontario Heating (why gas just got cheaper and what it means)

Frequently Asked Questions