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🇨🇦 Toronto

Toronto Hydro Smart Meters and Ontario's Time-of-Use Pricing

Ontario announced a smart meter for every home and small business in April 2004 and legislated it through the Energy Conservation Responsibility Act, 2006; Toronto Hydro, wholly owned by the City of Toronto, moved customers onto time-of-use rates from June 2009, and the province reached 4.8 million meters by 2014. Prices are set by the Ontario Energy Board, not the utility: time-of-use is the default plan, and customers may switch to tiered prices (since November 2020) or an ultra-low overnight plan (since 2023). Ontario's Auditor General reported in 2014 that the rollout had cost close to CAD 2 billion against an initial CAD 1 billion projection, and that the business case, written after installation began, overstated the benefit. Toronto Hydro began a five-year replacement of the first-generation meters in May 2024.

Live 📅 since 2004 ✔ Editor-reviewed

✔ Reviewed by the 1001 Smart Cities editorial desk · 🔎 Last verified

⚡ EnergySmart grid & energySensors & IoTOpen data

📊 Impact

Auditor General of Ontario (2014): projected 15-year net benefits of ~CAD 600M were overstated by at least CAD 512M, leaving ~CAD 88M. A peer-reviewed Energy Policy study of 20,000+ Ontario households found demand fell 2.6% on-peak and 2.4% mid-peak after the switch to time-of-use billing.

🎓 Lesson

Installing the meters was the easy half. Ontario delivered a full-population rollout, then found the price signal too weak to move much load — on-peak still costs only about twice off-peak in Toronto in 2026 — and the business case arrived after the trucks had already rolled.

Evidence🔬 Peer-reviewed
Scale🗺️ Regional
Cost≈CAD 1.9B province-wide (Ontario, to 2014); initially projected at ≈CAD 1B
FundingOntario electricity ratepayers, recovered through OEB-regulated distribution rates

Sources

↗ Auditor General of Ontario — news release, 2014 Annual Report s.3.11Release title, verified in the document metadata: 'Rollout of $1.9-billion Smart Metering Initiative Had Serious Shortcomings — Benefits Not Yet Realized'. This is the authority for the CAD 1.9B headline figure.
↗ Auditor General of Ontario — 2014 Annual Report, Section 3.11 Smart Metering InitiativeCarries the audit findings: 'its projected net benefits of approximately $600 million over 15 years were significantly overstated by at least $512 million', which 'should have been reflected as only $88 million over 15 years', and that costs 'had reached almost $2 billion (compared to the initial projected cost of $1 billion)' as of May 2014. Text reached via the PDF's search index; the file does not render for automated extraction.
↗ Legislative Assembly of Ontario, Standing Committee on Public Accounts — Smart Metering InitiativeIndependent confirmation of scale and sequence: '4.8 million smart meters had been installed in homes and at small businesses' as of May 2014, and 'no cost-benefit analyses or business case studies were done before the government announced Smart Metering in April 2004'.
↗ Toronto Hydro — news release, 14 May 2009: 'They're Here: Toronto Hydro Shifts to TOU Rates'Operator source for the Toronto switchover: 'To date, more than 611,000 Toronto Hydro customers have smart meters'; first 10,000 customers moved to time-of-use rates in June 2009, the rest over the following 12 months. The 611,000 is a 2009 count, not a current one.
↗ Toronto Hydro — Choose your electricity price plan (Customer Choice)Establishes time-of-use as the default: 'regardless of which plan you choose, your first bill will be charged on the Time-of-Use price plan.' Lists TOU, Tiered and Ultra-Low Overnight; the Ontario Energy Board sets all rates and thresholds.
↗ Ontario Energy Board — Choosing your electricity price planRegulator's own statement: 'The choice between TOU, ULO and Tiered prices is available to residential and small business customers that have smart meters and are billed under the OEB's RPP', and 'Most residential and small business customers in Ontario pay TOU prices.'
↗ Ontario Energy Board — Summer Hours and New Price Plan Coming May 1 (2023)Dates the ultra-low overnight option: utilities could offer ULO from 1 May 2023 and 'By November 1, 2023, all utilities must offer ULO to their customers.'
↗ Toronto Hydro — Residential electricity rates (2026)Current tariff, summer 2026: off-peak 9.8, mid-peak 15.7, on-peak 20.3 cents/kWh — an on-peak to off-peak ratio of about 2.1 to 1. Confirms 'The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) sets and approves all electricity rates.'
↗ University of Waterloo — study of Ontario time-of-use pricing (Golab, Rosenberg & Miller, Energy Policy)Peer-reviewed measurement: 'residential demand for electricity dropped just 2.6 per cent during on-peak periods and 2.4 per cent during mid-peak periods.' Based on 20,000+ households at one southwestern Ontario distributor, nine months before and after time-of-use began in November 2011 — Ontario-wide behaviour, not Toronto-specific.
↗ Toronto Hydro — Meter replacement programCurrency check: 'As of May 2024, we've begun a five-year project to replace residential and small business customer meters', swapping first-generation for next-generation meters as the originals approach end of life.
↗ Toronto Hydro — Green ButtonSupports the data-access claim: customers download their own consumption data (Download My Data) and can authorise third parties to receive it (Connect My Data), revocable from the self-serve portal.
↗ Toronto Hydro Corporation — Annual Information Form for the year ended 31 December 2025Corporate source for ownership: Toronto Hydro Corporation is wholly owned by the City of Toronto, serving roughly 800,000 customers.
📎 Cite this project

1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Toronto Hydro Smart Meters and Ontario's Time-of-Use Pricing” — Toronto, Canada. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/toronto-smart-meters-tou/ (last verified 2026-07-26). Data: CC BY 4.0.

The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.

🔗 Related projects

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🧭 Explore the atlas

🏙️ Toronto Explore every verified project and the city's smart-city story. ⚡ Energy Browse the main topic behind this project. 📖 Open data Information anyone is free to access, use and share, published by governments in machine-readable formats under an open licence. 📖 Smart grid A power network laced with sensors and software that balances supply and demand in real time, making room for renewables and local generation. 📖 Adaptive traffic signals Traffic lights that retime themselves in real time from live sensor data to match actual traffic, instead of running a fixed pre-set schedule. 🏙️ Urban digital twins compared: Singapore, Tokyo, Seoul and Rotterdam Read the wider analysis and comparison. 🚦 Asphalt or algorithms Read the wider analysis and comparison.

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