high bill

[Gaffen99]

I recently went to a customer who had a 1200.00 electric bill. I tested the amperage on the panel and found an average of 10 amps under normal circumstances without A/C running, about 45 with A/C. The house is not that large maybe 1800 sq ft. The power company told homeowner there was a power spike in that month or put blame on the A/C. The appliances were checked by local contracted utlity and were determined to be OK. Bpu is going to test the meter, and other than that, can anyone give me any insight as to why this would happen just once, or is the homeowner not telling me something? I checked to make sure that all appliances were not continiously running as well.

Thanks in Advance

 

[Bob NH]

$1200 at $0.12/kWHr = 10,000 kWHr

At 720 Hrs per month that is a 13.9 kW load. That is about 58 Amps at 240 Volts, continuously, for a month.

How does the power usage compare to their average usage?

A "power spike" doesn't make sense. Power spikes are short duration and don't contribute a lot to kWHr.

Do they have electric heat units? If there was some fault or someone set the heat thermostat up, and the A/C ran all month to try to keep it cool, that is about the only way that I can think that you would use that much electricity.

Was the homeowner at home? You would have to see something going on to have the system running that much.

Do they have a big water pump. There could be a problem with a broken pipe in the well causing it to run all the time. But it would take a big pump to use that much electricity.

Is there any chance that someone was stealing power from them?

Are they growing weed in the attic?

What is the biggest circuit breaker that they have? Is it possible to use that much power on one circuit?

I have seen conditions where the POCO estimated power for a couple of months and then took a reading. If they estimate too low, then get an actual reading, it makes for a big bill.

Is there a chance that the POCO just got the reading wrong?

 

[Minuteman]

I posted a while back about a house that was struck by lightning and the only electrical damage was one dimmer.

The GC called me later and said that the folks had a high bill. I sent a guy to check it out.

Nobody had lived in the home since the lightning, as several trusses had to be replaced and a new roof. My guy found nothing.

A few days later, GC called again and said the bill was $865.00 and then he faxed the last 3 bills and 3 bills from the same months last year.

Sure enough, $865.00 and June '06 was twice as much as '05, the same with July, but August was only for 2 weeks and was only $48.00 more than 2005. Well, that was easy enough to explain. Poco has had large rate increase since last year and last year was a "off" year were the temperature never officially went over 99*, while we had several weeks of 105*+ this year.

But why such a high bill? Well, the June '06 bill had late fees and an unpaid balance, So did July, so did August.

Moral of the story: A high bill is not always a high bill.

 

[charlie b]

I have seen conditions where the POCO estimated power for a couple of months and then took a reading. If they estimate too low, then get an actual reading, it makes for a big bill.

That would be my guess.

 

[newt]

Have the utility do a check read.Could be a bad from the meter reader.

 

[jmd445]

Strip heat

Strip heat

Check for in-obvious. In the NE there were housing developments built that had electric snow melt imbedded in the driveway. There was a controller mounted in the garage on an outside wall. The dial read 0-->10. The poor homeowner wasn't too sure what is was, played with the dial and ended up leaving it on #10.

He almost had a heart attack when he received his next months bill (this was July or Aug 15+ years ago). One month of strip heat plus an old A/C unit running.

After discussions with neighbors, he discovered the errrrrr of his ways and reset the controller.

Jim

 

[charlie tuna]

bob nh has it covered. and many people are presently feeling the summer effects of large power rate increases. we were called by a major air conditioning manufacturer about a high residential power bill. the home owner was very wealthy and was related to the owner of the manufacturer. this was a very large home on the water and of course the owner had his relatives manufactured air conditioners installed when building the house. the house was not but five years old and had five units. i believe they were rheem and had a high efficency rating. when we arrived the mechanical contractor was changing out the last unit to the BEST rheem had available. the rheem engineers figured out that the increased efficency was not going to make up for the increase in the bill nor make the homeowner happy. we looked the electrical system over --- ground system --- meter box --- six panels -- everything looked good. then we found a 70 amp sub feed breaker that was drawing 55 amps. this feeder fed a pool equipment room that serviced a large pool. the pool had a natural method of maintaining it's water quality by recycling water thru a large filter arrangement. it had a five horse motor that was designed to run for one hour per day --- it was running when we got there because we wrote down the service load readings first thing. so we checked and found the contacts in the time clock that controlled the pump's contactor welded closed. we figured the cost to operate this motor full time and it was close to what the bill had increased..... rheem had spent over 20k to keep the homeowner happy...........