Yeah that's why to really save you need to be able to go fully off grid. One thing I have been pondering on though that WOULD work, is a natural gas generator. Cancel hydro, keep gas. At least you're only paying one delivery fee, not two. Have the genset fire up whenever the voltage hits a certain threshold, for example. Need to them monitor how much current is being drawn to charge the batteries, and when it hits a certain value (trickle charge) it could turn off.
The gassifier idea sounds interesting though, the more I think about it. I'll be paying $3,240/year in hydro, and gas is about $1,680, so $4,920 total per year for both utilities. So say I want something that will pay for itself in 10 years, I can afford to buy 50k worth of equipment (solar, gassifier etc) but that's kind an unrealistic amount of money to pay in one shot, so idealy I'd want something in the 20k range, that would pay for itself in 5ish years. Either way I seriously need to start saving up. At some point the rates will be higher than what I can afford to pay. I need to come up with something before that point happens.