How Much Electricity Does a House Use in Ontario? kWh by Home and Appliance

A typical Ontario house that heats with natural gas uses roughly 650–800 kWh of electricity a month, or about 7,000–9,000 kWh a year. The Ontario Energy Board (OEB) uses 700 kWh a month as its typical residential consumer, while homes heated with a heat pump or electric baseboards commonly use 12,000–20,000 kWh a year or more.

So how much electricity does a house use in Ontario in your case? It depends mostly on how you heat, how you cool, and how many large appliances you run. Here is a breakdown, with the math.

How much electricity does a house use in Ontario by home type?

Home type	Typical monthly use	Typical annual use	Notes (estimates)
Condo or apartment, no electric heat	300–500 kWh	3,600–6,000 kWh	Building often supplies heat and hot water
Detached or semi, gas heat and gas water heater	650–800 kWh	7,000–9,000 kWh	The most common Ontario profile
Same home with electric water heater	900–1,100 kWh	11,000–13,000 kWh	Adds roughly 3,000–4,000 kWh a year (estimate)
Heat pump home (gas removed)	1,000–1,700 kWh	12,000–20,000 kWh	Winter months can exceed 2,000 kWh
Electric baseboard home	1,300–2,000+ kWh	15,000–24,000+ kWh	Highest use, especially north of the GTA

A kilowatt-hour (kWh) is the amount of energy a 1,000-watt appliance uses in one hour. Your bill charges by the kWh. If the distinction between kW and kWh is fuzzy, our kWh vs kW explainer sorts it out in a few minutes.

Where does the electricity go? An appliance breakdown

Here is an estimated annual breakdown for a gas-heated, centrally air-conditioned detached house in southern Ontario. Your home will differ, but the pattern is typical.

Use	Assumption	Estimated kWh/year
Central air conditioning	Average southern Ontario summer	1,400
"Other" loads (dehumidifier, sump pump, small appliances, garage)	Varies widely	1,000
Clothes dryer	About 3 kWh per load, 5 loads a week	800
Electronics (TVs, computers, gaming, Wi-Fi)	Typical family	700
Furnace blower fan	Heating season plus AC season	600
Cooking (range, oven, microwave)	Electric range	600
Lighting	Mostly LED	600
Standby loads	5–10% of total	600
Second fridge or chest freezer	Older unit in basement	500
Main fridge	Newer ENERGY STAR	400
Dishwasher	About 1.2 kWh per load, 5 a week	300
Clothes washer (motor only)	Hot water counted on gas bill	150
Total		about 7,650

That is about 640 kWh a month, close to the low end of the typical range. Add a hot tub, a pool pump, an EV or an electric water heater and the total can rise by thousands of kWh.

The dryer figure follows the 2.5–4 kWh per load range for a conventional electric dryer; a heat pump dryer uses about half. A pre-2000 basement fridge can use 1,000 kWh a year or more, double the figure above.

What does that electricity cost?

Using the rough all-in price of 15–19¢/kWh for a typical Toronto-area home on Time-of-Use (before the Ontario Electricity Rebate), the 7,650 kWh home above spends about:

• 7,650 kWh × 15¢ = $1,148 a year
• 7,650 kWh × 19¢ = $1,454 a year

After HST and the current 15.7% rebate, that is roughly $1,115–$1,415 a year, or $93–$118 a month. For a fuller bill estimate with your own utility, try our hydro bill estimator, or see the average hydro bill in Ontario.

Why usage changes through the year

• Summer: air conditioning, dehumidifiers and pool pumps push use up. On the Tiered plan the summer threshold is 600 kWh a month, so heavy AC use can push much of your consumption into Tier 2.
• Winter: lighting hours increase, the furnace fan runs more, and block heaters, holiday lights and space heaters appear. Electrically heated homes see their biggest bills.
• Shoulder seasons (spring and fall): usually the lowest months for gas-heated homes.

In Canada overall, Natural Resources Canada estimates that about 62% of home energy goes to space heating, 19% to water heating, 13% to appliances, 4% to lighting and 2% to cooling. Those shares include gas and oil, which is why a gas-heated home's electricity bill looks so different from its total energy use.

How to find your own number

1. Log in to your LDC account. Most Ontario utilities show monthly and hourly kWh. Many also support Green Button data downloads; see our Green Button guide.
2. Look at the lowest month. Your spring or fall baseline shows what runs all the time, including fridges, standby loads and dehumidifiers.
3. Measure suspect appliances. A plug-in meter or smart plug will show exactly what an old freezer or a gaming PC uses. See home energy monitors and smart plugs.
4. Estimate individual costs with our appliance energy cost calculator.

Tip: If your overnight use (say 2 a.m. to 5 a.m.) is above about 0.3–0.5 kWh per hour in a gas-heated home, something is running constantly. Common culprits are old fridges and freezers, dehumidifiers, aquarium or pool equipment, and computers left on.

All usage figures in this post are estimates for illustration. Actual use varies with home size, occupants, equipment age and climate.