If you are trying to work out who your hydro company is in Ontario, the honest answer is that there are three different kinds of company that could be sending you an electricity bill, and they are regulated differently. Sorting out which one you are dealing with is the first step in almost anything else, including getting access to your own usage data.
Ontario's distribution sector is more fragmented than most provinces. The Ontario Energy Board's own page for the current rate cycle is direct about the count: "The following table identifies all 58 rate regulated electricity distributors in Ontario." You can see the list, with each distributor's rate filings, on the OEB's electricity distribution rate applications page.
Three kinds of company, one bill
| Type | What they do | Regulated by | Can they give you usage data? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Local distribution company | Owns the wires and the revenue meter, delivers power, usually bills you | OEB, with rates set in a public proceeding | Yes. They hold the meter data |
| Energy retailer | Sells the energy commodity under a contract, at a price they set | OEB licenses them and regulates the contracting rules | Not the meter data. They see what the distributor passes them |
| Unit sub-meter provider | Meters and bills individual units in a multi-unit building | OEB licenses them under the Unit Sub-Metering Code | Yes, for your suite. The building's utility meter belongs to the distributor |
The distinction matters because people ask the wrong company for their data. A retailer cannot give you interval data it never held. A sub-metering provider can give you your suite's consumption but not the building's. The distributor holds the revenue meter and is the source for whole-premises data.
The OEB maintains the authoritative list of licensed companies, which is the place to check whether an organisation contacting you is licensed at all.
How to identify your distributor
- Look at your bill. The delivery portion, and usually the account number format, belongs to the distributor. The commodity line may belong to a retailer instead.
- Check whether the company name appears on the OEB's rate applications table. All 58 rate-regulated distributors are there.
- If your bill comes from a sub-metering provider, your distributor is the one serving the building, not the one on your invoice. The building owner or manager knows which.
- If you are in a rural or northern area, the distributor is frequently the provincial utility rather than a municipal one, and the service area boundaries do not follow municipal boundaries.
Ontario's distributors range from utilities serving more than a million customers to municipal utilities serving a few thousand. Consolidation has reduced the count substantially over the past two decades, so lists published a few years ago will name companies that have since merged.
Natural gas is a shorter list
Ontario's gas distribution is concentrated in a small number of utilities rather than spread across dozens, which makes identifying your gas distributor much easier than identifying your electricity one. The OEB regulates gas distribution rates in the same way, and its natural gas rates page sets out the current approved rates.
As with electricity, there is a separate set of licensed gas marketers who sell the commodity under contract while the distributor continues to deliver it and bill for delivery. The same rule applies: the distributor holds the meter.
We list the electricity and gas companies together, with what each one supports for data access, in the Ontario utility companies list.
Why the distributor matters for your data
Ontario requires electricity and gas utilities to make customers' own usage data available in a standard machine-readable format, which is what makes portfolio-scale data collection possible in this province in a way it is not in most. We cover the regulation in Ontario's Green Button regulation.
The practical consequence is that the distributor, not the retailer, is who you authorise. For a portfolio spread across several service areas, that means several authorisations against several distributor portals, each with its own login flow and its own quirks. It is tedious rather than difficult, and it is the reason multi-site organisations tend to want one route to all of it.
- A single-site organisation deals with one distributor and can reasonably do this by hand.
- A portfolio in one service area deals with one portal and many accounts, which is a bulk authorisation problem.
- A portfolio across the province deals with many portals, each with different data availability and different handling of closed accounts, which is where the work actually is.
What to check before you rely on a distributor's data
Distributors implement the same standard with real differences in what they make available, and the differences matter more than the standard does.
- How far back the history goes. Some portals hold years, some hold months, and a closed account may disappear entirely.
- Interval resolution. Hourly is common; fifteen-minute is available in places and is what you need for demand analysis.
- Whether the data includes the billing determinants or only consumption. Consumption alone will not reproduce your bill.
- What happens to an account that changes hands. A tenant change can end your access to history you were relying on.
- Whether estimated reads are flagged. An unflagged estimate later corrected is a discrepancy you will spend a day finding.
Those five questions are worth asking before designing any reporting that depends on the answers. We go through them by utility in how to get utility data from Ontario utilities.
Frequently asked questions
How many hydro companies are there in Ontario?
The Ontario Energy Board's current rate cycle page states that there are 58 rate-regulated electricity distributors in Ontario. That count excludes licensed energy retailers, who sell the commodity but do not own the wires, and licensed unit sub-meter providers, who bill individual units in multi-unit buildings.
Is my hydro company the same as my electricity retailer?
Not necessarily. The distributor owns the wires and the meter and charges you for delivery. A retailer sells you the energy commodity under a contract. You may be billed by one, both, or by a sub-metering provider if you are in a multi-unit building.
Who do I ask for my usage data?
The distributor, because they hold the revenue meter. A retailer never held your interval data. If a sub-metering provider bills you, they hold your suite's data while the distributor holds the building's.
How do I find out which distributor serves my address?
Your bill's delivery charges identify the distributor. Service area boundaries do not follow municipal boundaries, so the utility serving your address may not be the one named after your town, particularly in rural and northern areas.
Does the list of distributors change?
Yes. Ontario's distribution sector has consolidated considerably, so older lists name utilities that have since merged. The OEB's rate applications table for the current cycle is the reliable current list.