Change is coming to your electrical bill if you live in Ontario as local utilities move to new metering systems. The promise is that you can receive an electrical discount during the time of day that rates are low - in some communities during the night when large stores and factories shut down and in others at night when electrical heating devices and consumer electronics come online. It doesn't really matter which community you are in because there is always the possibility that most users will fail to see the incentive. But you will right?

Banking is a common practice among those of us that use solar electricity, store a surplus during the day and use it at night. Most new solar users undershoot the surplus required and nobody likes a 5am blackout in the shower. This isn't an issue for people strictly sticking to the grid, power is guaranteed but not the price. So why not take a page from the solar team and get the energy while the going is cheap with a grid-tie inverter and energy bank.

A typical energy bank can be composed of batteries or a electrolysis/fuel cell combo. During the cheapest hours it will bank as much energy as possible and if you know when the pricey hours are you can switch over to lower rates. It can be quite expensive at first but if you do it right and the high and low rates are very far apart this will be seen as an investment - with a return. If you pay down the energy bank and possibly your actual (money) bank you can complete the setup with solar or wind generation.

Seems a little too easy right? Thats why there are some barriers in different regions. Some places have laws against electrical banking and storage, this mostly relates to their practices at the generating level and their attempt to predict and chart energy use. Also this is potentially a weapon against predatory billing systems, which some utilities use as a crutch to prop up a defective system. Allow me to explain how banking helps - it lowers your bill, it lowers system demand during peak times to a reasonable level without implementing "blackout conservation", and it opens the opportunity for the best kind of privatization - the DIY kind. If you live in one of these areas or not, ask your local politicians to protect your right to generate, store, and buy electricity freely.

Of course with grid-tie banking you will still have to pay additional government, business, and "misc" surcharges unrelated to your consumption until you can pull the plug. The analogy I've been using more often is that a bucket can be filled drop by drop fairly quickly, imagine what a drop off of your electricity bill could do in the long run.

Here is the process: $10 a month, is $120 a year, and on a street with 20 houses that's $2400 a year, in a city of 50000 that is $6million a year or $60 million a decade. Now think of your whole $167 average bill being gone. That is more than a billion dollars that people in your city saved after liberating itself from electricity costs from outside.

If your utility chose to use solar, and banked it, and returned to a flat rate billing system you wouldn't need this for your house and they could save money. But it is unlikely that they will without additional capital funding. There will be people that fight using public funds on a local energy project.

This solution fits my idealism, and capitalism, and liberates public funds. But, if you don't want to save money, make jobs, or liberate your local economy from energy companies - you decide.

Additional Note: For the people concerned that disconnecting from a local utility will lead to higher taxes - fight for the other extreme with "free" electricity entirely paid for by local and other governments. On the flip side for every house that buys into affordable local energy it has a real effect on reducing costs for setup or energy from local utilities for those less fortunate.