Kitchener residents and business owners have many energy retailers to choose from. Currently, some of the most prominent companies offering electricity and natural gas services in Kitchener include:
Kitchener Electricity Retailers and Natural Gas Providers
Kitchener residents and business owners have many energy retailers to choose from. Currently, some of the most prominent companies offering electricity and natural gas services in Kitchener include:
These energy retailers offer plans with a variety of terms and price structures, including fixed rate, variable, and plans with fixed monthly fees. To easily compare the choices available to Kitchener residents, please use our energy rate comparison form above, which will provide you with an easy-to-follow table of all available options.
Kitchener Electricity and Natural Gas History
The city of Kitchener has a population of about 220,000 people, making it the 22nd largest city in Canada. Kitchener was originally founded as a German Mennonite settlement in the early 1800s, and was named Waterloo, before having its name changed to Berlin in 1833 due to the continuing immigration of Germans to the area.
In 1856, an extension of the Grand Trunk Railway which connected Toronto to Sarnia was completed, with one of its connecting stations being Berlin. This sudden access to transport and shipping stimulated the industrialization of the city over the next several decades. While German culture defined the city through the early 20th Century, anti-German sentiment during the First World War—exacerbated by the unpopular pacifist beliefs of the city’s many Mennonites—resulted in the purging of much of the area’s German culture and the renaming of the city as Kitchener in 1916.
Due to the area’s agrarian culture, as well as the extremely traditional and anti-technology perspective of the city’s Mennonites, Berlin was not particularly quick to adopt new technologies. The first gas lighting was installed in a shop in 1879, and later that year the Berlin Gas Company built a coal-fired plant to produce lamp gas. In the early 1900s, the city of Berlin purchased the Berlin Gas Company, creating a public utility for the town’s residents. Over time, the town’s natural gas utility has been reorganized several times, and now provides for the area’s natural gas needs under the name Kitchener Utilities.
While Kitchener first received natural gas service around 1880, it would have to wait several more decades for the arrival of electricity. There were a few small local companies, such as the Berlin Electric Light Company, which provided power for electric lights to a few select customers as early as 1891. However, the majority of the city had to rely on gas lighting for many more years.
It wasn’t until 1910 that Adam Beck, the founder of Ontario Hydro (now Hydro One) flipped a ceremonial switch that signaled a nearby transformer station operator to activate transmission lines carrying electricity from generation stations at Niagara Falls. The large scale transmission lines and grid allowed much of Kitchener to finally move into the modern age. A hundred years later, Kitchener-Wilmot is now the local electrical utility for roughly 90,000 customers in Kitchener and the nearby town of Wilmot.
These energy retailers offer plans with a variety of terms and price structures, including fixed rate, variable, and plans with fixed monthly fees. To easily compare the choices available to Kitchener residents, please use our Ontario energy rate comparison form, which will provide you with an easy-to-follow table of all available options.
