Do you know? Ontario adds a second daily peak on Nov. 1

Do you know that on November 1 Ontario homes move to the winter electricity schedule, and the winter schedule has two rush hours instead of one? From November 1 to April 30, the most expensive hours on a Time-of-Use plan are weekdays from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. and again from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Between May 1 and October 31 those exact same hours are the cheaper mid-peak block. Nothing about your house changed, and nothing about the electricity changed - the clock moved, and with it the price. The supply rate for those hours goes from 15.7 cents per kilowatt-hour to 20.3, about 29 per cent more.

Two peak windows instead of one

Two other things shift on the same day. If you are on Tiered pricing, the monthly amount of cheap electricity grows: the residential Tier 1 threshold is 600 kWh a month in summer and 1,000 kWh in winter, so 400 more kilowatt-hours are billed at 12.0 cents instead of 14.2. And the Ultra-Low Overnight plan does not move at all - its periods are identical all year. That plan is built for households that can live at night: 3.9 cents per kilowatt-hour every day from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m., 9.8 on weekends and holidays before 11 p.m., 15.7 mid-peak, and 39.1 cents during the weekday evening block from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m.

What it costs to plug in at six

The practical problem is timing. Getting home at six and plugging in lands you inside the winter peak. Under Time-of-Use that hour costs 20.3 cents; waiting two hours for 7 p.m. drops it to 9.8 off-peak, roughly 2.1 times cheaper for doing nothing but waiting. Under Ultra-Low Overnight the spread is far wider and much less forgiving: 39.1 cents before 9 p.m. on a weekday against 3.9 cents overnight - the same kilowatt-hour at ten times the price. Take one nightly top-up of 40 kWh, which is our assumption rather than a measurement: about $15.64 of electricity inside the weekday evening block, and about $1.56 after 11 p.m. Fourteen dollars, one decision.

Why a patient charger beats a fast one

Our read: this is why a charger that can wait is worth more than a charger that is fast. The Ultra-Low Overnight plan is not a discount, it is a bet - you accept an on-peak rate nearly double Time-of-Use's 20.3 cents in exchange for eight cheap overnight hours, and it only pays if most of your electricity actually lands in those hours. A schedule is what settles that bet, not the amperage printed on the box. NorthernLit 1 is built around exactly that: 12 kW hardwired or 9.6 kW on a NEMA 14-50 plug, J1772 and NACS connectors, scheduled charging with live status and over-the-air updates, and OCPP 1.6J so it can also be pointed at another network rather than locked to one. Even at 9.6 kW there is far more room in those eight hours than a nightly commute needs, which is what makes the wait cost you nothing.

Three boundaries before you redo your own arithmetic. First, these are supply prices for customers on the Regulated Price Plan; delivery charges, regulatory charges and HST sit on top of them, and the Ontario Electricity Rebate - 23.5 per cent since November 1, 2025, up from 13.1 - is applied as a pre-tax credit lower down the bill, so the cents above are not the number you pay. Second, the prices quoted here are the ones in force until October 31, 2026; distributor pages were still posting the November 1, 2025 prices when we checked on October 14. The Ontario Energy Board sets Regulated Price Plan prices once a year, on November 1, and an OEB spokesperson told Metroland in late September that the new ones would be published in October and declined to speculate on direction - so confirm the cents before you plan around them. Third, Ultra-Low Overnight is not automatically cheaper: a household that still cooks, does laundry and plugs in at six can hand back most of the overnight gain inside that 4-9 p.m. block.