light bill disparity.

[stew]

Have a customer that had a bill of $450 one month and $41 the next billing cycle that the power company cannot explain. Wants me to look for problems. Any great minds want to chime in on this? Neutral problems? Says in the 2 months he has lived in this old craftsman house that there have been no dimming of brightening incidents and no bulb failures etc. Not certain what I should be looking for.

 

[Jon456]

Says in the 2 months he has lived in this old craftsman house that there have been no dimming of brightening incidents and no bulb failures etc. Not certain what I should be looking for.

I assume that this is residential service, and the bill is for all electricity consumption, not just lighting. That said, the first thing I'd check are the meter records. You said he's lived in the house for only two months and so it seems he's only received two bills, the first being for an extraordinarily high amount. I would ask the PoCo for the last meter reading from the previous owner/occupier of the house. It may be possible that, while the house was unoccupied, that some power was being consumed and kept the meter running.

 

[dhalleron]

What does the kilowatt usage say on the bills?

Sure the first month bill didn?t include deposit or some special service activation fee.

 

[steve66]

What does the kilowatt usage say on the bills?

Sure the first month bill didn?t include deposit or some special service activation fee.

Along the same lines, are both bills for an entire month??

And did they actually read the meter each time.

Our power bill used to be estimated every other month. State rules allowed the POCO to estimate so many bills each year (maybe half). In bad weather, they would estimate low for 2 or 3 months, then when they actually read the meter, we'd get a much larger bill. (They never estimated high.)

Steve

 

[cowboyjwc]

Steve has a pretty good explination. That's what was happening to me, before I requestd a smart meter.

Now the first bill may have also been for the previous owner. They don't really care who's name's on the bill they go mostly by the address. Have him make sure that the previous owner/tenent paid their closing bill.

 

[Little Bill]

Sounds like his first bill may have been more than 1 month or some error by the POCO, and the second bill was correcting that. But the POCO should have an explanation for that unless they just didn't want to admit to their error. I would however find out if the previous tenant's bill had been paid.

 

[stew]

If there is no problem found with the billing is there anything else you would look for?

 

[bpk]

You could turn off all loads in the house and see if the meter is still showing electrical usage, if so turn breakers off 1 at a time until it stops to isolate a circuit, it worked for me a while back on a similar trouble call.

 

[Finite10]

If it's a smart meter, it may be Demand or Power Factor surcharge/penalty.

I feel for the folks who put in a PV system and the POCO added a smart meter... only to jack up the proud PV owners bill more than prior to the PV system.

A funny analogy of Power Factor-
PF is like the head of the beer.

 

[ggunn]

I don't know if it can still happen, but back in the day when meter readers came by and actually read the numbers off the meter, such things were fairly common. A reader would mistake an 8 for a 3 or something, which would result in a crazy bill. Odds are that it wouldn't happen twice in a row to the same customer, so a correct reading the next month would fix the problem. One bill would be really high and the other would be really low, but the sum of the two would be correct.

 

[stew]

Turned out to be a rather simple explanation for this. seems that when the homeowner turned off the electric furnace at the end of the month of the 1st billing cycle his bill dropped dramatically. rather small electric furnace at 17 or so kw. House was one that hade been moved and reset on a new foundation. . completley rewired. the heating ducts are all in the basement but none have any insulation at least outwardly they all are just sheet metal tubes. Some square and some 8 inch rounds. I doubt that any of these have any insulation so a lot of the heat is being lost in the basement. Lets see hmmm 17 kw for say 8 hrs a day X 30 days is 4080 kwhX .10 per kwh viola ! 408$ added to the bill. Glad its not my heating system and hes not gonna be real happy in January methinks!!

 

[K8MHZ]

Where is this place that would have required heat last month?

I live in Michigan and it averaged about 80 degrees each day last month. I haven't had the need for heat since May.

 

[stew]

Its in seattle and i think the billing was juneuary and july!