Check your own electric meter on occasion!!!

[drotto]

Got my electric bill today and it was much higher than expected. In the winter and in non air conditioner months my electric runs about 800 to 900 kwh of usage. I got my March bill and they reported 2751 kwh of usage. You think this would trigger some sort of flag at the electric company that the reading does not make historical sense, but no. They had a meter reading of 85890, I went out and read the meter and got 84177, twelve days after their reading. I took a picture of it as proof. They said they will send the account back to billing. Best guess I can make is the reader somehow read the thousands place as a 5 instead of a 3 or input the number wrong. I figure the reading 12 days ago was likely 83890.

Good to see competent people charging me money.

 

[EdFred]

When I get a "are you kidding me?!?!?" bill, I usually go back to the last one and find the previous one was estimated instead of actual, and they underestimated the usage the previous month. Still a good idea to double check. Eventually if they get the reading right, you will end up getting a credit for what you previously overpaid.

 

[N801BH]

Our Co Op electric outfit switched to smart meters a few years back.. At first I was hesitant but it reads itself and sends info back to home office several times a day and at 2AM it sends back the daily total... All through the power lines, no wireless or phone connection at all....... Pretty damn kool if ya ask me...

 

[JOhnH]

It's a good idea to check it anyway, even if you have a "smart meter" like I do.

In January, my electric bill, that I expected to be around $120 came in for $340ish. IT turned out that an electric surge burnt up the Heat Pump control module (among other things) and my heater was running on electric radiant strips. Ouch. If I had been checking my meter I would have seen the high usage. Of course, nobody does that regularly and I suppose I will get tired of it in a few months too.

By the way, this is how I found out that if you have an old FPE electric panel you need to have it swapped out ASAP. If the outside quick disconnect hadn't melted I would probably have burned my house down.

 

[drotto]

This is a dial style meter about 8 years old. Do not think it is a smart meter. The previous month was an actual reading and two months ago was an estimate. So no it was not the result of a bad estimate. They got a reading approximately three times the previous months actual reading and it did not raise any flags. And yes, I do realize that eventually the error would have been caught. Guess learning to read the altimeter diagrams for the practical test was useful, and could be applied to electric meters.

 

[JOhnH]

Human meter readers are expensive and mistake prone, but at least they have jobs and pay taxes. But if they make a mistake one month, it will usually be caught the next month.

Smart Meters save money, don't make mistakes and provide other valuable information.
But they cost jobs.
And conspiracy types think they are one of Big Brother's surveillance ears. Although I'm not sure what they can listen in on, unless I have few hundred marijuana grow lights going.

 

[DJTorrente]

They got a reading approximately three times the previous months actual reading and it did not raise any flags.

Oh it might have raised flags, just not any that they told you about. Had that usage pattern kept up for two or three months, you might have expected a visit from the local constables looking for the grow lights.

 

[drotto]

Oh it might have raised flags, just not any that they told you about. Had that usage pattern kept up for two or three months, you might have expected a visit from the local constables looking for the grow lights.

My fish tank has some big ass lights on it, but that has been up for over two years, so is in the history at this point. Plus, I have gone out of my way to use efficient stuff on the tank.

 

[timwinters]

Our Co Op electric outfit switched to smart meters a few years back.. At first I was hesitant but it reads itself and sends info back to home office several times a day and at 2AM it sends back the daily total... All through the power lines, no wireless or phone connection at all....... Pretty damn kool if ya ask me...

Yeah, I live in BFE MO and that's what we have here also, and have had for about 10 years. I guess I'm kinda surprised that those aren't everywhere these days....

 

[denverpilot]

In the city, on a union, for-profit electric company (ostensibly "regulated" by government) we had a dumb meter.

In the boonies on a co-op, non-profit, we have a smart meter.

And a refund check every year when maintenance costs less than planned.

Along with cheaper electricity per KW/h.

 

[Clark1961]

In the city, on a union, for-profit electric company (ostensibly "regulated" by government) we had a dumb meter.

In the boonies on a co-op, non-profit, we have a smart meter.

And a refund check every year when maintenance costs less than planned.

Along with cheaper electricity per KW/h.

You didn't have a dumb meter with Excel in the Denver area. They weren't "smart" but they weren't dumb. Excel towed a trailer around to read the meter remotely. They still use this "niche" technology rather than purchase smart meters. It's very, very strange...

 

[N801BH]

You didn't have a dumb meter with Excel in the Denver area. They weren't "smart" but they weren't dumb. Excel towed a trailer around to read the meter remotely. They still use this "niche" technology rather than purchase smart meters. It's very, very strange...

Probably because this company "Excel " is profit driven, maybe even union, and does not have a motive to provide power at the lowest cost..,...

 

[docmirror]

In my rural house in CO we got notice that they were going to put in smart meters for water and elec at the same time about 2 years ago. The water bill remained the same, but the elect base was going to go up $17/mo/household. I went to the co-op and did some digging. They were going to pay for the meters out of the increased baseline fee. Sadly, in 2009, they got a bond passed for -- yup, smart elec meters. So, we've already been paying ahead. I got some other folks around my house to write to the state board and the AG office, and they looked into it and sent a cease and desist letter to the co-op.

You're welcome.

 

[denverpilot]

You didn't have a dumb meter with Excel in the Denver area. They weren't "smart" but they weren't dumb. Excel towed a trailer around to read the meter remotely. They still use this "niche" technology rather than purchase smart meters. It's very, very strange...

Nah they never upgraded ours. It was there for the entire 12 years we were in the house, and looked like the original installed around 1968. Ancient stuff. When the snowstorm ripped the thing clean out of the box when the 40x30 awning smashed into it (March 2003 blizzard), the five guy "emergency" crew watched as one of their braver members clambered up on the awning in three feet of snow and peeled away the awning far enough to reach down to the brick porch, pick up the meter, shove it back in the open hole on the box, and put a new "seal" tag on it.

Normally the meter reader dude would leave a card on the back door whenever he read it with little marks on what he saw on the meter dials that you were supposed to check again yourself to see if it looked like he foooooked up. The neighbors usually got a card marked "couldn't read meter ________" and the checkbox marked for "dog in yard".

Unless they were home to let the guy in the backyard they got an estimated bill and she complained to us next door about it all the time.

If anyone happened to be around when we saw the guy walking around the neighborhood we'd go to her side gate and grab her totally friendly golden retriever by the collar and walk it out of the way so the meter guy would read her meter. I did that a number of times while I was mixing work at the office and work from home.

The City of Denver water meters were RF and they'd drive by with some truck and read those. We were not in Denver but we were on the Denver City water system somehow.

We also still had door to door mail service too which is pretty rare these days. We couldn't keep a mail carrier more than about six months. They hated walking the neighborhood.

And they all just walked through the yards, didn't even attempt to stay on paths or sidewalks. A couple of neighbors were peeved that some of them just walked through their flower beds, stepping on whatever was there.

Out here in the Styx, we've got a mail house with all of those nice little cubbies and a bunch of package boxes. If you leave a package more than a day, they'll pull it and take it to the PO 12 miles away for you to pick
up, because there aren't enough package boxes by a long shot.

 

[Norman]

Yeah, I live in BFE MO and that's what we have here also, and have had for about 10 years. I guess I'm kinda surprised that those aren't everywhere these days....

That's 'cause you're so far out in the boonies they're still wondering where your house is.

 

[Henning]

To give the power companies, at least the coop I was in in TX, some credit, they typically correct these things automatically. I got home one time and was flipping through the stacks of stuff and notice a similar triple normal bill, then the next month it was credited and corrected with zero intervention. As soon as the system got a corrected reading, it applied the correction to the account.

 

[Henning]

Our Co Op electric outfit switched to smart meters a few years back.. At first I was hesitant but it reads itself and sends info back to home office several times a day and at 2AM it sends back the daily total... All through the power lines, no wireless or phone connection at all....... Pretty damn kool if ya ask me...

Yeah, you want these, no more meter reader.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

To give the power companies, at least the coop I was in in TX, some credit, they typically correct these things automatically. I got home one time and was flipping through the stacks of stuff and notice a similar triple normal bill, then the next month it was credited and corrected with zero intervention. As soon as the system got a corrected reading, it applied the correction to the account.

The gas company changed my meter. No big deal. I get a bill, normal amount, I pay, next month same.... About a year or two later I get a bill that is dozens of pages long listing month after month of charges and payments that made no sense at all to me. After digging I finally figured out (based on meter readings from old bills, the current meter reading, and serial numbers) that my old meter had been installed somewhere else and I had been paying someone else's gas bill all that time and the gas company had just figured out what they did. The other person just just a bit more gas than I did, so the bottom line on the big big bill was a bit of a credit which was applied to the next month. So it all worked out.

 

[txflyer]

We had to read our own meters out on the farm so when they talked about smart meters I was one of the first to say "sign me up!"

I like 'em. An added benefit is you don't have strangers on your place.

Another trick you can do is if you have twelve months of billing history you can sign up for average billing. They average twelve months and send you the same bill every month. No surprises. You pay more in the off months for the heavy months. They play catch up or pay you back with one reading per year.

 

[denverpilot]

Another trick you can do is if you have twelve months of billing history you can sign up for average billing. They average twelve months and send you the same bill every month. No surprises. You pay more in the off months for the heavy months. They play catch up or pay you back with one reading per year.

Why would it be a surprise? Did we suddenly stop having seasons one year and it tricked someone?

(I just have this cool thing called a spreadsheet for that and a savings account. Haha.)

My most variable cost is the actual price of propane, out of all the energy bill "gotchas". We're down to about $1.25 right now and I've seen it bumping the underside of $4 before.

And it's still not as big a hit to the bottom line as variability in gasoline and diesel prices with our commutes being relatively long.

The electric bill has never made it outside of a range about $60 wide on the Delta from lowest to highest in years. It slowly creeps up over about a decade but that's just inflation.

And we all know the rule about inflation... If you didn't make the same percentage increase in income this year as the inflation rate, you took a sneaky pay cut.

 

[tree96]

Our water company changed my meter to an RF meter in January. It has never worked properly. My monthly bills since then have shown no water usage and the charge has only been the monthly service fee. I've called twice and they have sent a guy out to fix it to no avail. So for now I've been putting what my normal bill would be in an envelope until the day they figure it out.


The first time I called to tell them about it they gave me the usual you need to be home between 8-4 in case we need to get in. did that, the guy never even came to the door or said anything. Next time they said same thing, told them to pound sand give me back my old meter.