Monthly Archives: July 2011

Queensway (417) Carling Ave Bridge Rapid Replacement

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The Queensway (Highway 417) through Ottawa will be closed for about 18 hours from July 30-31, 2011 to allow for the rapid replacement of the Carling Ave bridge. This has already been done twice before on the Queensway with great success.

When the Island Park bridge was replaced in 2007, I managed to capture images from a webcam that had been setup and produced a time lapse video of the Island Park bridge rapid replacement. I also managed to create a time lapse video of the Clyde Ave bridge rapid replacement in 2008.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to track down a dedicated webcam for the Carling Ave bridge rapid replacement that is happening this weekend. I guess this method of bridge replacement isn’t “new and exciting” anymore. :)  I was going to try and see if I could capture frames from the two nearby MTO webcams but this has proven tricky so far. I’ll update if I do manage to get something workable.

Anyhoo, if you’re interested in checking out the action between 6PM EDT on July 30, 2011 until noon-ish on July 31, 2011, you may have some luck with the MTO COMPASS traffic cameras.

Update: Well, I was away this weekend and didn’t manage to capture the feed from the MTO webcams but it looks like someone did:

Air Conditioning Hydro Usage

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The hot weather started here in Eastern Ontario over the last couple weeks and up until this past weekend, it was usually quite manageable. Unfortunately on Sunday, with the humidity really high at 7am, I caved around 9am and turned on the air conditioning until about 10pm.

Thanks to the Time of Use meter we have and Hydro One’s nifty online electricity usage tool, I’m able to see how much electricity we used to keep ourselves cool(er) for the day.

Graph showing hourly electricity usage for a 24 hour period when the air conditioning is on.
Yeah, that’s a whopping 46.05 kWh used in one day. We are normally around 10-12 kWh/day. Ugh.

Now, the graph above shows the cost per hour to run the AC (and I think the dryer must have been on to cause the spike around noon) but let’s remember that these rates are not the real rates we’re paying per kWh consumed. The real rate for the 2011 Summer Season for Off-Peak is more like 12.00892¢/kWh (based on Urban High Density and before tax).

So, 46.05kWh is going to cost $5.53 (plus tax) and not the $2.72 shown by the graph. Guess we’ll be selecting our cooling days a little more diligently.

The best part of this whole deal is that it was a Sunday and thus the whole day is at the Off-Peak rate. We would have just hidden in the basement all day if it was a week day. :)