I get a few calls a year about people having very high power bills. I got one the other day that the small home has continually had bills over $200 a month. the meter does not move when the main is off, no electric range and new fridge freezer and dryer. They said they changed the water heater and no change. Most times when I get there the meters are not turning that bad, and I do some testing for the amount of amps being drawn. I usually fiqure that whater is drawing the big load is not being used at that time.
My question is what have you ran into as far as finding what would cause high power bills? Thanks for any help.

Happy & Safe New Year

Best method is to obtain a 'current' utility bill & bills from approx 1 & 2 years year ago, and compare KWHr usage, demand (if applicable) and the rates charged.

Based on the calls I have received......
There is a 'small' increase in power consumption.
The utility rates have increased.

Our utility co's were deregulated recently, and the rate structure was altered, and basically....everyone saw a "rate increase" even though it was not officially called that.

John

Heh...I had a laugh with my customer on a recent job. He has a small license frame printing facility and recently upgraded his UV dryer/printer which ran with a single phase 208V 70amp load, with a much larger machine which required a 3 phase 75kva xfmr to power.

He got a sheepish call from the hydro company a month later after seeing a dramatic jump in hydro bills... "um, did you guys, change anything electrically in your building?".....

His hydro bill jumped from $500 a month, to over $1200!

First, you get a high bill, check the meter reading your self and the last one printed on the bill. sometimes an error was made by the meter reading in entering it in his handheld device.

It is usually a good start to compare some older powerbills, year or more to get an idea what the previous usage was, quite often the customer doesn't know and they only make a lot of noise when there is a high power bill. A low powerbill gets paid an forgotten about.

See if tariffs have changed, and daily line charges!!

Check if any new appliances were installed or left on for longer than necessary. A lot of equipment is NEVER turned off.

Some meters get only read every second or third month, error made by meter reader in reading the clock dials, or simply no access or dog and a guestimate was made.

Last get an on site meter test done by the utility, they will charge you if meter is ok. or replace / readjust meter to read correctly.

I get a few calls like this a year too. I will do a check myself by turning off everything in the house or business, take a meter reading, then plug in my 4800 watt construction heater for 1 hour and crank the thermostat on it on high. After an hour, I take another reading....should give me 4.8Kw usage (give or take). A quick and easy check. If it reads much over 5Kw I will call the PoCo and ask them to change it.

The bad thing about the PoCo testing the meter is, as RODALCO says, if they find it to be calibrated OK, they will charge you for the testing. In my opinion, an independent agency should be testing the meter.

I also know of two meters in my area that the PoCo installed, which don't move at all! One has been in service for at least 5 years, another for about 3. Each of them get a bill with the "customer charge" (minimum) each month. I'm surprised the PoCo hasn't caught on yet. One of them is a brand new meter with a "00000" reading!

[This message has been edited by Sixer (edited 12-31-2005).]

Although most times there is a legitimate reason, I do know of a case where a meter went crazy.

A friend called and said their power bill had tripled.

I checked it out and the meter was running pretty fast, so I asked if there had been any changes in the house or A/C (it was summer) and they said no.

There was no abnormally high amperage or duration of elevated amperage on A/C starts on any reading I took over a period of a couple weeks.

The POCO is called and says meter is fine.

Neighbors bills are normal.

Next two months the bills are still high.

Finally, they demand a new meter be installed and after it is the bill returns to normal.

There was never any reimbursement but they did not push for it either.

Roger

[This message has been edited by Roger (edited 12-31-2005).]

Quote:
"The bad thing about the PoCo testing the meter is, as RODALCO says, if they find it to be calibrated OK, they will charge you for the testing. "

This may or may not be true depending where you are. At our Coop in Texas, the member (customer) is entitled to one free meter test every 5 years. It doesn't hurt to check first.

On the other hand, it usually isn't the meter. So even if the test is free, if the POCO comes out and tests it (and they find it slow) they will speed it up.
I'm not saying it's never the meter, it's just rarely the meter.

Better to check for a device that you expect to work automatically that has gone bad. A thermostat (hot water heater, air conditioner) that won't shut off.

Some examples I have seen over the last 30 years (God, I'm getting old).

Water heaters. Saw one with a broken pipe shooting hot water into the creek behind the house. You'd have thought the continuously rising cloud of steam behind the house would have been a clue....but it wasn't. Saw another one where the H2O heater was sitting on the ground outside the trailer ("white trash" is alive and well in Texas). The thermostat had fallen about 4 inches away from the tank, so it didn't work at all. The tank would heat until the pop-off valve blew all the steam out, cold water would come in, and it would re-heat until it did it again.

Water logged water wells.
Air conditioners that work simultaneously with the heat strips.
Heat strips that run because ALL THE WINDOWS IN THE BEDROOM ARE BROKEN.
Having six refridgerators/freezers running in a locked closed garage in 100+ degree weather.
Air conditioners that run continuously because they are low on freon. (Ditto for the fridge).

Short version, in the vast majority of cases I have seen, there is a legitimate reason for the high bill.

On the other hand, all the suggestions above are also very, VERY, valid. Mistakes can be made.



[This message has been edited by WFO (edited 12-31-2005).]

I did a call like that in september, as I walk in the apartment the lady is going on and on about the other tenant stealing her power.
All the lights are on in her apartment, her A/C is running and she has electric dryer and electric hot water heater and was complaining her bill was 120 a month. Not to be rude i traced every circuit in the panel and shut her main off and checked everyything in the other apartment and all was good. She thought i was lying and was going to have someone else look at it.

I had a job like that once, as I was shutting off circuit breakers in the basement, I heard water running. I asked the lady if she was using any water. She said, no. It turned out that her well sprung a leak on the inside of the well casing. The water would pump up from the bottom of the well to the top, leak out, and sink back down to the bottom of the well. It was like that for 2 months. If I didn't hear the water running, it would have been like that for who knows how long?

Meters do go bad both ways.

One of my customers is a large apartment complex, maybe 1000 units.

Each apt is metered and billed seperatly by the complex owners. They own all the submeters.

I replace about 10 a year for them, and have seen some go fast, but most, the coils burnt out, causing them to stop.

Don't have a clue how they would go faster, never gave it much thought.

Dnk.....

A lot of people look at a meter and see the disc spin around fast or slow. The thing forgotten often is to look at the constant of the meter. In USA Kh and in NZ revs/kWh.

For example: A 750 rev/kWh meter runs twice as fast as a 375 rev/kWh meter and four times as fast as a 187.5 meter under the same load.

An on site meter test is likely to be charged for also when it's done by an external test house. We were in that position a few years ago after the POCO contracted everything out. Sometimes for political reasons the POCO waived the charge for the customer.

If a meter gets changed for whatever reason, some customers change useage sometimes too in hope for a refund if a POCO meter was for example within its accuracy but on the + 2% side.

Quote:
"A lot of people look at a meter and see the disc spin around fast or slow. The thing forgotten often is to look at the constant of the meter. In USA Kh and in NZ revs/kWh."

Good point. I remember testing a meter for an old lady that ran perfectly, but she was adamant about changing it anyway. So I took out her perfectly good 3.6 Kh meter and stuck in a perfectly good 7.2 Kh meter. She was thrilled that it ran half as fast, stuck her finger in my face and said, "Told you so"!

Quote:
"Don't have a clue how they would go faster, never gave it much thought."

I can't speak to the electronic meters, the the mechanical ones with the rotating disk have magnets inside.
The disk is basically an induction disk motor and spin in response to the current flowing through the meter. Small magnets are adjusted to slow down the motor as needed in order to calibrate it.

Roger:
I had the same thing happen with my neighbour ( bit looney but ya know).. PoCO changed his meter and his bill was unreasonably high the next reading... He took readings and did all that and came to the conclusion the new meter was not calibrated correct.. after about 6 mos of complaining the PoCo changed the meter again and everything returned to normal but did he get reimbursed?? Heck no!!

Now.... If we can only convince him that only opening his main water valve 1/4 of the way will NOT reduce his water bill......... Ah well thats another story!

I was never one of the scholars when it comes to the math, but I have heard before of the next door neigbor loosing his neutral, and now his gec/h20 connection and your gec/h2O connection causes added impedence to your neutral return path up the service drop. Your electric bill now goes up. Was this urban myth sparky baloney?

Sounds like a lot of c..p to me. The meter measures voltage and current, if there is a lower voltage there is less flux from the voltage coil, also the full amount of power can't be drawn by appliances.

For resistive loads like heaters and lamps.
e.g. a 1100 watt heater will draw 10 amps at 110 volts. heater R. = 11 ohms.
Now say low voltage at 80 volts the heater R. = still 11 ohms. U=I*R then 80/11 =7.27Amps drawn. Power drawn from mains P=I²R then 582 Watts can be dissipated as heat hence the meter will run a lot slower too. ( this is nearly ½ power for ± 30% mains voltage drop.)
for inductive loads
Low voltage is not ideal for motors in fridges, with lower voltage they have not full torque available to start into a load, e.g. drive the compressor and may stall and draw a high current till the thermal overload kicks in or the motor burns out.
A transformer will provide lower output voltages hence less VA's into it's secondary load.
Switchmode power supplies don't really care to much about lower supply voltages. the duty cycle of the on / off switching time of the powertransistor will change.

See this thread for some comments about residential meters and missing neutrals.
https://www.electrical-contractor.net/ubb/Forum1/HTML/006185.html

-Jon

Thanks winnie.

I did participate in that thread and am aware what was discussed.