What NOTL Hydro actually does (and why your bill says "Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro" at the top)
Ontario's electricity market is structured very differently from Alberta's, and NOTL Hydro is a small-utility example of why. Niagara-on-the-Lake Hydro wears two hats at once: it is the distributor that owns the poles, lines, transformers and meters across the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, AND it is your default supplier under Ontario's Standard Supply Service (SSS) rules. The bill that arrives at your home covers both jobs.
The per-kWh rate NOTL Hydro charges most residential and small-business customers is set by the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) twice a year in its Regulated Price Plan (RPP), with three structures: Time-of-Use, Tiered or Ultra-Low Overnight. Long-term fixed-rate retailer contracts exist but they are a niche product in Ontario, and signing one does not change NOTL Hydro's delivery, regulatory or Global Adjustment lines. The wires belong to NOTL Hydro regardless of who supplies the commodity.
- Owns the wires, transformers and smart meters
- Restores power after outages (after-hours via call-centre forward)
- Sends the monthly bill at the OEB's RPP rate
- Fixed by address: every NOTL property is served by NOTL Hydro
- Replaces the commodity portion of the bill only
- Door-to-door sales banned (ECPA 2010)
- Delivery + Global Adjustment + regulatory unchanged
- NOTL Hydro still owns the wires and meter
With around 20 employees, NOTL Hydro forwards after-hours calls to a regional Niagara-area call centre. The call-centre dispatcher reaches NOTL Hydro's on-call crew lead, who then dispatches line crews. In practice the response is just as fast as a 24/7 in-house desk — but if you call after 4:30 p.m. and the person on the line is not a NOTL Hydro employee, that's why.
Where NOTL Hydro delivers power
In plain words: if you live or run a business inside the Town of Niagara-on-the-Lake — including Old Town, Virgil, Queenston, St. Davids or Glendale — NOTL Hydro is your distributor. The boundary follows the Town's municipal limits exactly.
- •Old Town Niagara-on-the-Lake (heritage core, waterfront)
- •Virgil (home of the head office)
- •Queenston, St. Davids, Glendale
- •Wineries, orchards and farm businesses along Lakeshore, Niagara Stone and York Roads
- •Niagara Falls, Lincoln, Pelham, West Lincoln → NPEI
- •Welland → Welland Hydro
- •Fort Erie, Port Colborne → Canadian Niagara Power
- •St. Catharines → Alectra Utilities (Horizon)
Not sure which one applies to your address? Check your most recent electricity bill: the distributor's name and OEB licence number are printed at the top of the first page.
How NOTL Hydro's charges appear on your bill
An Ontario electricity bill is broken into a handful of distinct line items, all of which appear on the same NOTL Hydro invoice. Unlike Alberta, where the commodity is billed separately by your retailer, in Ontario almost every household sees a single integrated bill where NOTL Hydro acts as both the wires company and the OEB-default supplier.
The per-kWh rate set by the OEB twice a year in the Regulated Price Plan. You pick one of three structures: Time-of-Use (peak/mid/off-peak), Tiered (low- and high-block) or Ultra-Low Overnight (for EV owners).
Funds the difference between the market price and the long-term contracts the IESO signed for nuclear, hydro, wind, solar and conservation. RPP customers see this rolled into the commodity rate; bigger customers see it as its own line.
The cost of moving electricity from the IESO-controlled grid through NOTL Hydro's wires to your meter. Includes a fixed monthly service charge plus a per-kWh distribution rate set by the OEB.
Small line covering OEB programs, the Wholesale Market Service Rate and a few other system-wide charges. Set by the OEB and applied uniformly across Ontario LDCs.
A provincial credit that reduces the pre-tax subtotal by a percentage set by the government (currently around 13 %). Applied automatically to eligible residential, farm and small-business accounts.
The 13 % federal-provincial sales tax applied to the post-rebate subtotal. Cannot be avoided; appears at the bottom of the bill.
NOTL Hydro's delivery rate is set by the OEB under its cost-of-service rate-setting framework. Rates are filed publicly on the OEB's eFiling portal and can be examined line by line by any customer or consumer advocate. As a small utility, NOTL Hydro's distribution rates tend to be higher than the giant LDCs simply because the fixed costs of running the system are spread over fewer customers.
A practical implication: if a licensed retailer offers a low fixed per-kWh rate, you'll still pay the same NOTL Hydro delivery and regulatory charges, the same Global Adjustment, the same HST. Switching retailers changes the commodity portion of your bill; switching never changes NOTL Hydro's portion.
Peak (4-7pm), mid-peak, off-peak. Best for households that can shift heavy use to evenings and weekends.
A low block for the first ~600 kWh per month (residential), a higher block above. Best for steady, modest users.
Very cheap from 11pm to 7am, much more expensive 4-9pm. Best for EV owners or anyone who can charge overnight.
Contact details: one local number, day or night
NOTL Hydro uses a single phone line for both outage reporting and customer service. During business hours the call lands at the Virgil head office; outside business hours it forwards to a regional call centre that can dispatch the on-call NOTL Hydro crew.
Outages, downed wires, electrical emergencies. For a downed live wire, call 911 first.
Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (excluding holidays and the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day)
P.O. Box 460
8 Henegan Road
Virgil, ON L0S 1T0
myaccount.notlhydro.com
Fax: 905-468-3861
For non-urgent questions you can also use NOTL Hydro's online tools: the outage page, the current status page, or the My Account portal at https://www.notlhydro.com.
Report a power outage
If your power is out, the fastest path is to call 905-468-4235. Live status is posted on the current status page and on NOTL Hydro's social media feeds. For widespread outages, the upstream Hydro One transmission supply is often the cause — NOTL Hydro provides updates as the supplier confirms restoration progress.
Call 905-468-4235. Have your address and account number ready. Out of hours, the call lands at the regional dispatcher.
The system pinpoints which feeder or substation is affected. The on-call NOTL Hydro line crew is paged out.
Estimated restoration time appears on the status page. Long rural feeders can take an hour or more after a wind or ice event.
Power is verified at the smart meter. Reset clocks, check freezer contents, and file a damage claim quickly if anything was lost.
Reliability and the OEB scorecard
NOTL Hydro reports its reliability performance to the Ontario Energy Board every year in a public scorecard. The headline metrics are SAIDI (average hours a customer was off per year) and SAIFI (average number of interruptions per customer per year). Small utilities with long rural feeders and a heavy mix of overhead lines tend to see higher SAIDI numbers than dense urban distributors after major weather events. The scorecard MD&A is published annually on the OEB scorecard registry and on notlhydro.com.
Planned outages for maintenance are normally posted at least 48 hours in advance, by mail or notice to affected addresses and on the outage status page. If you depend on medical equipment, register with NOTL Hydro so you receive priority notification.
New connection or service upgrade
For a new build, a service upgrade (e.g. moving from 100 A to 200 A for an EV charger or heat pump), a winery / vineyard load, a temporary construction service, or any work that requires changes to the physical wires or meter, you deal with NOTL Hydro. Start at https://www.notlhydro.com or call 905-468-4235.
The civic address and the legal description of the lot inside NOTL Hydro's territory.
A sketch showing where you want the meter, service entrance, and run-back to the pole or underground vault.
The amperage (100 A, 200 A, 400 A…) and voltage you need, signed off by your Master Electrician.
An Electrical Safety Authority permit and ESA sign-off once the in-house wiring is done. NOTL Hydro cannot energise until ESA clears it.
For routine residential connections once all conditions are met. Vineyard, winery or new-subdivision builds requiring civil work or transformer upgrades can run several weeks or months.
Fixed component + per-metre charge above the contribution threshold defined in NOTL Hydro's Conditions of Service.
Once the wires are in, your account opens automatically under Standard Supply Service at the OEB's Regulated Price Plan rate. You can switch your RPP structure (Time-of-Use, Tiered or Ultra-Low Overnight) at any time by contacting NOTL Hydro. If you sign with a licensed retailer later, the retailer registers their contract with NOTL Hydro and the commodity rate is replaced on your next bill cycle.
Moving home, transferring or closing a service
In NOTL Hydro's territory, the move-in / move-out conversation starts with NOTL Hydro directly, not with a separate retailer. Because NOTL Hydro is the default supplier, it closes the old billing account, sets up the new one, and triggers the final meter read. If you have a licensed retailer contract you also notify the retailer separately. Most move requests need at least 1 to 2 business days of notice; 5 is safer for end-of-month moves.
Call 905-468-4235 (or use My Account online). Give them the move date and your new address.
1 to 2 business days minimum; allow 5 for month-end moves. Same-day service is rare.
On the move-out date, NOTL Hydro records the final reading remotely from the smart meter.
NOTL Hydro issues a closing bill for the period up to the move-out date. The new address bill starts under a fresh account.
Administrative transfer only. No physical work, no service interruption. Your RPP structure (TOU, Tiered, ULO) carries over by default; ask NOTL Hydro if you want to change it at the new address.
Opening a fresh account is required at the new LDC. Common destinations from NOTL include NPEI (Niagara Falls), Welland Hydro, and Canadian Niagara Power (Fort Erie).
Meters, meter reading and accuracy
NOTL Hydro owns the meter at your address. Since the province-wide smart-meter rollout was completed in 2010-2011, virtually every residential and small-business address inside NOTL Hydro's territory is equipped with a smart meter supporting Time-of-Use pricing. The meter is the basis for both the consumption side of your bill and the choice between TOU, Tiered or Ultra-Low Overnight RPP structures.
Every NOTL residential address. Consumption reports back automatically; no action from you, no estimated bills.
NOTL Hydro pulls the meter and tests it on a calibrated bench against Measurement Canada's tolerance.
Download your hour-by-hour consumption via My Account or pipe it directly into an authorised third-party energy app.
If the meter reads outside Measurement Canada's tolerance (typically ±2 %), the test is free and you get a billing adjustment back to the date the fault is presumed to have started. If the meter passes, the test fee is charged to you at the OEB-approved tariff rate.
What do you need to do with NOTL Hydro?
Pick an action. The tool shows the right phone, the right link, and what to expect. Nothing is sent anywhere.
Note: under AUC Rule 002, Alberta distributors are not required to pay automatic compensation for outages. Damage claims are evaluated case-by-case on negligence.
Compensation and damage claims: the honest version
Ontario has no automatic, statutory compensation scheme for individual customers affected by a power outage. Unlike the UK's Ofgem Guaranteed Standards, the OEB's role is to require NOTL Hydro to report its reliability performance (SAIDI, SAIFI) every year in its public scorecard. Penalties for under-performance flow from the regulator to the distributor; they do not arrive in your mailbox as a credit.
If your fridge or freezer contents spoiled, an appliance was damaged by a voltage surge, or you incurred a clear loss during an outage, you can file a damage claim with NOTL Hydro. The claim is evaluated on negligence.
- +Equipment failure (transformer, network switch)
- +Crew error during work on the network
- +Switching incident causing voltage spike
- +Unplanned, distributor-caused service interruption
- ×Severe weather (lightning, wind, ice storms)
- ×Wildlife contact (squirrels, raccoons on lines)
- ×Third-party contact (vehicle hits pole, dig-in)
- ×Loss-of-supply events upstream of NOTL Hydro
Most NOTL home insurance policies cover food spoilage and surge damage at a low excess. If your loss is meaningful, the insurance route is usually faster than a denied utility claim. Keep dated receipts and photos either way. They're the only basis on which any claim can be evaluated.
Regulator and complaint escalation
If you can't resolve something directly with NOTL Hydro, there's a clear escalation ladder in Ontario. The Ontario Energy Board sits at the top as both the economic regulator and the body that handles consumer complaints; the Electrical Safety Authority covers physical-safety issues.
Sets the Regulated Price Plan, approves NOTL Hydro's distribution tariff and reviews service-quality reporting (scorecards). Also runs the OEB Consumer Protection Office for individual disputes.
Administers Ontario Regulation 22/04, audits NOTL Hydro's distribution-asset safety practices and tracks the Serious Electrical Incident Index. Issues electrical permits for in-house wiring.
Most issues resolve here. Phone 905-468-4235 (Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) or use the My Account portal.
If the front line can't fix it, request a written decision in writing. This creates the paper trail needed for the next step.
The OEB investigates complaints involving Ontario LDCs, retailers and unit sub-meter providers. The service is free.
Last resort. For tariff or service-quality issues you can intervene as a registered intervenor in a rate proceeding. For damage claims that are denied, civil court is the final route.