The delivery charge accounted for about 75 per cent of Curtis VaQuaethem’s invoice
By Diego Flammini
News Reporter
Farms.com
An Ontario producer shared a photo of his hydro bill on social media to highlight the high monthly bills farmers face.
Curtis VanQuaethem, who farms about 10,000 acres of corn and soybeans near Tillsonburg, Ont., was billed $4,483.15 for last month’s hydro usage.
But $3,368.92 of his bill (75 per cent) was allotted to delivery charges.
What’s frustrating is that farmers’ hands are tied because they need to move grain, he said.
“Farmers don’t have the option to stop their operations (at the end of the month), so I get burned for going full speed until a few days into a new billing cycle,” he told Farms.com today.
Growers are trying to operate more efficiently but still have to pay astronomical hydro prices.
The elevator on VanQuaethem’s farm is new and runs by high-efficiency motors. But those upgrades don’t seem to matter come billing time.
“There’s not much I can do except wait for the billing cycle to change or just stop harvesting at a certain date,” he said. “I try to turn stuff off, but some fans have to run all day and my pit has to be open all the time. I can’t stop trucks from coming in.”
VanQuaethem would like to see new calculations or new rates for farmers and other business who can’t afford shutdown periods.
“A dairy farm can’t shut down and a grain farm can’t shut down. So there has to be something for people who use hydro at high rates for a short time,” he said. “Some people have an outrageous delivery charge, so maybe setting a maximum delivery on your kilowatt hours could work.”
“I might run all of my fans and everything for two or three days out of the month and then I’m done harvest. But I’m being charged like I’m using all of my equipment for the whole month. There has to be some balance there.”