POCO and Landlord High Jinks

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shermansfather

shermansfather

Member
Location
Northeast Ohio
Customer calls me Sunday afternoon: His alarm co. is calling (BU batery dead after 2 days), tenants access cards aren?t working, parking lot lights are out. 18,000 sq. ft, commercial multi. 3 years old.
Story goes like this: POCO never hung the meter on transformer (in 3 years), did however meter the house panel. Landlord pays for maybe 5,000 kWh/month. Pays nothing for tenants juice. I'm sure someone will pay for the usage eventually.
Friday POCO shuts down xformer and gets around to hanging meter.
Where I come in: POCO removes house meter (it?s their property and they?re not going to read it anymore) they just don?t mention it to anyone (it?s a Fri.) Landlord doesn?t hear about until Sunday. To restore house panel I put on the gloves, pulled the guts out of the 200A meter enclosure, spliced with Isco IPC?s and made a temp. cover. Lanlord is telling me he wants to give tenants notice before I shut down the 1200 A main to make permanent. My questions:

How could POCO be dumb enough to let this go on for years ?
How could POCO leave house panel dead without even a mention ?
I?m giving landlord 48 hours to notify tenants so I can shut off main and get splices out of old meter can. Am I being cavalier ?

I made this nifty drawing because landlord doesn?t understand why house even lost power.

canyon.jpg
 
S

~Shado~

Senior Member
Location
Aurora, Colorado
You know that POCO is.......POCO. They have there own reasons for what they do, whether it makes sense to us or not.


BTW...what did you use to make that nifty drawing?
 
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hurk27

Senior Member
Location
Portage, Indiana NEC: 2008
Noting that the D-Mon, meters were in place from the start, was the landlord charging the tenants for electric, even though the POCO wasn't? if so then the landlord will have to pay, of course even if he didn't he will still have to pay. the problem will be trying to figure usage, and maybe hope he can use the D-Mon info for that.

Sweet drawing, but to let you know a 208/120 Y is a 7 jaw meter, so the house meter should have 4 jaws at the bottom and 3 at the top;) (joking)
 
shermansfather

shermansfather

Member
Location
Northeast Ohio
hurk27 said:
Noting that the D-Mon, meters were in place from the start, was the landlord charging the tenants for electric, even though the POCO wasn't? if so then the landlord will have to pay, of course even if he didn't he will still have to pay. the problem will be trying to figure usage, and maybe hope he can use the D-Mon info for that.

Sweet drawing, but to let you know a 208/120 Y is a 7 jaw meter, so the house meter should have 4 jaws at the bottom and 3 at the top;) (joking)
Click to expand...

Oops, I'm getting sloppy
 
mivey

mivey

Senior Member
shermansfather said:
It's not my business, but I know the tenant meters get read from an outside (non POCO) company who gives the owner an audited report. I don't think he's doing this for laughs.
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Audited report? I hope the company is cheap.

IMO, it borders on theft of service so they would do well to not complain when they get a real bill.

If they split the POCO bill between the loads, everybody will pay if there is a way to back bill.

Without some measure of usage or even a % of the tenant load, I don't see how the POCO is going to back-bill anything unless they have the data from the D-Mon meters or some primary meter. It would seem they have no basis for even making an estimate.
 
shermansfather

shermansfather

Member
Location
Northeast Ohio
mivey said:
Audited report? I hope the company is cheap.

IMO, it borders on theft of service so they would do well to not complain when they get a real bill.

If they split the POCO bill between the loads, everybody will pay if there is a way to back bill.

Without some measure of usage or even a % of the tenant load, I don't see how the POCO is going to back-bill anything unless they have the data from the D-Mon meters or some primary meter. It would seem they have no basis for even making an estimate.
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Audited is wrong word, I'm meaning third party, independent. I'll never know what the tenants paid. I do know for a fact that this facility has only paid for a fraction of their use since its construction. The POCO knew about and just never got around to hanging a meter on the Xformer (or CT's on the entrance).
 
mivey

mivey

Senior Member
shermansfather said:
Audited is wrong word, I'm meaning third party, independent.
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I know you meant non-POCO. What kind of report would not include the purchased power? If the report clearly shows more tenant usage than what was purchased, it borders on theft of service IMO unless the owner can clearly show they have tried to notify the POCO that they were getting un-metered power.

If they charged the tenants for power that they received for free, then they could have an issue with theft from the tenants.

Could look pretty shady to me, but I don't have all the info.
 
S

satcom

Senior Member
shermansfather said:
Audited is wrong word, I'm meaning third party, independent. I'll never know what the tenants paid. I do know for a fact that this facility has only paid for a fraction of their use since its construction. The POCO knew about and just never got around to hanging a meter on the Xformer (or CT's on the entrance).
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The tenants may have a lawyer and be planning their vacation already

http://www.ohiolegalservices.org/pu...ants-rights-as-utility-consumers/qandact_view
 
S

satcom

Senior Member
Tenants may legally challenge unfair or unreasonable allocations of utility costs by landlords in master-metered buildings or, where the landlord does provide submetering, possibly challenge excessive or unreasonable submetering fees or surcharges
 
shermansfather

shermansfather

Member
Location
Northeast Ohio
satcom said:
The tenants may have a lawyer and be planning their vacation already

http://www.ohiolegalservices.org/pu...ants-rights-as-utility-consumers/qandact_view
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I'll probably never know. But just to be fair, some years back I hung a glass meter on a second level panel of multi-tenant office bldg. The meter was read every couple of years when tenants lease was up, not to charge the tenant directly but to use as a factor when negotiating the lease renewal. This particular tenant ran lights like 24/7 (IT outfit), landlord just wanted to know what it was costing him.
 
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wireguru

Senior Member
I am curious how this came to be. Is it POCO negligence in never metering it?

Or was the 1200a disco and house panel installed originally with the intention of tenant services tapped off that trough into a meter can like the house service was? Then after building got CofO and the poco went away the landlord installed the tenant services like they are?
 
shermansfather

shermansfather

Member
Location
Northeast Ohio
wireguru said:
I am curious how this came to be. Is it POCO negligence in never metering it?

Or was the 1200a disco and house panel installed originally with the intention of tenant services tapped off that trough into a meter can like the house service was? Then after building got CofO and the poco went away the landlord installed the tenant services like they are?
Click to expand...

I'm just guessing:
1. POCO had always intended for meter to be on Xformer, this whole development is that way. POCO crew (who is subbed out) screwed up.
2. Maybe to get temp service during interior construction someone threw a meter in the house panel (its like 24" off the floor, if I hung a can like this POCO would tell me to pound salt)
3. Meter reader never cared, he just read the meter he saw (POCO subs this out)
4. Someone at POCO always knew they had to hang a meter, just never got around to it.
 
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C

CopperTone

Senior Member
Location
MetroWest, MA
the last thing i would have done was make it my problem on a sunday or the next day on monday. The power co's in mass move like molasses so coordinating with them takes time. I would tell the LL to call screaming at the poco to get the power on and then propose to him a permenant solution and then schedule the repair for your next available day coordinating with the poco.

I've gone out of my way dealing with poco and temp repairs for LL only to be told they didn't really want to pay to fix it right and leave the temp repair as is. Total waste of time unless you are already getting paid.
 
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