Our 2025–2029 investment plan

Learn more about our five-year investment plan and rate application.

Toronto Hydro crew working on overhead equipment.

On November 12, 2024, following a comprehensive public review process, the Ontario Energy Board (OEB) released its decision (PDF, 2.2 MB) on our 2025–2029 electricity distribution rate application and investment plan.

As the local electricity distributor for the city of Toronto, Toronto Hydro delivers electricity to nearly 1.7 million households and businesses across the city on a daily basis. But the way we do it is evolving.

To ensure we can continue powering Canada’s largest city safely and reliably for years to come, we’ve developed our next five-year investment plan, for 2025 to 2029. In addition to being responsive to legal and regulatory requirements, input from business experts and customer feedback, we've developed our plan to address the following challenges ahead of us:

  • Serving the economic needs of a growing city
  • Renewing and upgrading deteriorating infrastructure
  • Adapting to changes in the way customers use electricity
  • Building resilience in the face of extreme weather and cybersecurity attacks

Powering our future: Our strategic priorities

Our 2025–2029 investment plan is focused in part on three major priorities:

  1. Keeping our grid in good condition

    We’ve invested consistently in the upkeep of our aging infrastructure and improving the performance of our system over the last decade. Moving forward, Toronto Hydro is focused on renewing aging, deteriorating and obsolete equipment, to help minimize the risk of outages, ensure safe operations, and mitigate environmental hazards posed by old equipment.

  2. Modernizing our grid and operations

    As more customers plug into electrified technologies — including those capable of sending electricity back to the grid — we need to invest in building a more intelligent and resilient grid. This includes integrating new smart grid technologies that can help us restore power to customers faster and at a lower cost than today, as well as investments to strengthen the grid against extreme weather and cyber attacks.

  3. Preparing the grid for growth

    As the city continues to grow and more customers turn to electricity to power their homes, vehicles and businesses, Toronto Hydro has a critical role to play in expanding and enhancing the local grid so that customers can continue to plug in safely and reliably.

Investment needs: Talking to Torontonians

From maintaining the grid, to improving power outage restoration, to preparing for increasing electricity demand, there are a number of important drivers behind our 2025–2029 investment plan.

In our video series, Talking to Torontonians, we asked Torontonians for their thoughts on these topics and explained how we plan to address these investment needs over the next five years.

What’s the condition of Toronto’s electrical grid?

Watch on YouTube

How does a power outage get restored in Toronto?

Watch on YouTube

Why is the need for electricity in Toronto rising?

Watch on YouTube

About the rate application process

Electricity distributors in Ontario, like Toronto Hydro, are entirely funded by the distribution rates paid by their customers. To have our rates approved, Toronto Hydro is required to submit a plan for our proposed prices (rates) and spending to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB), Ontario's independent energy regulator. The OEB will then review our plan and proposed rates for 2025–2029 in an open and transparent public process known as a rate application.

Customer input is an essential part of the rate application process. Toronto Hydro is accountable to the OEB for considering customer needs and preferences as we develop our plan, and for explaining and demonstrating how customer feedback informed the plan.

  1. Identify customer needs, preferences and priorities. [✓]

    In 2022, we asked many types of customers from across the city about their needs and priorities for electricity distribution service.

  2. Use customer feedback to prepare a draft plan. [✓]

    Our planners were given summaries of the key findings from our initial customer engagement to consider as they began developing their plans.

  3. Collect customer feedback on draft plan. [✓]

    We then went back to customers to get feedback on our draft plan and ask customers how the plan could better meet their needs and preferences. More than 33,000 customers completed the survey and 84% of customers supported our draft plan or one that does even more to improve services.

  4. Use customer feedback to finalize the plan. [✓]

    We re-examined and refined our draft plan based on the feedback we received from customers during step 3.

  5. Submit the plan to the Ontario Energy Board (OEB). [✓]

    Finally, we filed our plan with the OEB along with a report summarizing the results of our customer engagement. The OEB, consumer advocates and other interested groups will examine the plan in an open and transparent public process known as a rate application.

Investing in our communities

Learn about the grid investments we're making in neighbourhoods across the city.

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