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Fight the electric company?

3K views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  mikego_34 
#1 · (Edited)
Making this quick for now.

I went to pay my electric bill tonight, and took a quick glance at this month's usage (what will be next month's bill). One day has spiked above and beyond what we have even used this whole week. Not only that, it was one hour, between 6 and 7 am, saying that I used 180 KW. I usually hover between 0.3 at night, to up to 6 KW in any given hour, IF the air is blasting. Yes, I live in Phoenix, yes it's hot. Even when it's hot, I rarely reach 6 KW. I am a scrooge, grinch, whatever.

So, if I can't reach 6 KW in the middle of summer, how in the depths of hell, do they expect me to have used 180 KW in one hour at 6 am on October 15!?! I have been opening windows for the past week, so the air has run even less...

Another weird thing, is that throughout every other hour of that day, the website shows 0.1-0.2 KW of use. The fish tank alone does that, so it's like they weren't even recording anything else.

It's fishy. It's wrong. I called. The polite lady informed me that there was nothing she could do until the bill generated, then I'd have to dispute it. I was hoping that catching it early would have given me a little bit of time to get it troubleshot. She said she'd have someone look at the meter, but it read fine for yesterday. So, it's not like they're going to find any errors.

I don't know the history of this place, but some of the wiring is pretty ghetto. Instead of a double junction box, anywhere, they just have a bunch of single outlets close to each other. There is a GFCI outlet in the bathroom that actually has a ground fault downstream, and refuses to work, even with a brand new outlet. I believe it is what the swamp cooler used to be hooked up to.

Any thoughts? Opinions? Advice? :itsok:

not sleeping anyway, math edit.

P=IV
182 (KW) = 182,000 (W)

182000 (W)= I*120 (V)
I = 1516.67 (Amps)

Fifteen hundred amps. Let's think about that for a second. My entire house has a 200 amp breaker.

Someone smarter, feel free to correct me, but with my main breaker, I can't load more than 200 amps at any given moment.
From wikipedia: " one watt is the rate at which work is done when one ampere (A) of current flows through an electrical potential difference of one volt (V)."

So, my rate of work done was 182 KW, through a 120 V potential, for the time span of one hour. is that 1500 amps constant through the whole hour then? My house wouldn't even be able to do that...
 
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#2 ·
Something does indeed sound off. Is there a chance someone is stealing electricity (you mentioned bad wiring)?

Get the bill and call the utility company, ask to speak to an engineer. He/she should come out to your residence and talk it over and might even put a meter to various appliances to test for amperage draw. Show them your math. I worked for an electric company for 13 years and know that they will try to help you figure it out (once you get past the front person screening the calls, lol).
 
#3 ·
Making this quick for now.

I went to pay my electric bill tonight, and took a quick glance at this month's usage (what will be next month's bill). One day has spiked above and beyond what we have even used this whole week. Not only that, it was one hour, between 6 and 7 am, saying that I used 180 KW. I usually hover between 0.3 at night, to up to 6 KW in any given hour, IF the air is blasting. Yes, I live in Phoenix, yes it's hot. Even when it's hot, I rarely reach 6 KW. I am a scrooge, grinch, whatever.

So, if I can't reach 6 KW in the middle of summer, how in the depths of hell, do they expect me to have used 180 KW in one hour at 6 am on October 15!?! I have been opening windows for the past week, so the air has run even less...

Another weird thing, is that throughout every other hour of that day, the website shows 0.1-0.2 KW of use. The fish tank alone does that, so it's like they weren't even recording anything else.

It's fishy. It's wrong. I called. The polite lady informed me that there was nothing she could do until the bill generated, then I'd have to dispute it. I was hoping that catching it early would have given me a little bit of time to get it troubleshot. She said she'd have someone look at the meter, but it read fine for yesterday. So, it's not like they're going to find any errors.

I don't know the history of this place, but some of the wiring is pretty ghetto. Instead of a double junction box, anywhere, they just have a bunch of single outlets close to each other. There is a GFCI outlet in the bathroom that actually has a ground fault downstream, and refuses to work, even with a brand new outlet. I believe it is what the swamp cooler used to be hooked up to.

Any thoughts? Opinions? Advice? :itsok:

not sleeping anyway, math edit.

P=IV
182 (KW) = 182,000 (W)

182000 (W)= I*120 (V)
I = 1516.67 (Amps)

Fifteen hundred amps. Let's think about that for a second. My entire house has a 200 amp breaker.

Someone smarter, feel free to correct me, but with my main breaker, I can't load more than 200 amps at any given moment.
From wikipedia: " one watt is the rate at which work is done when one ampere (A) of current flows through an electrical potential difference of one volt (V)."

So, my rate of work done was 182 KW, through a 120 V potential, for the time span of one hour. is that 1500 amps constant through the whole hour then? My house wouldn't even be able to do that...
You say you used 180 kW, but kW is a rate. That is the equivalent of saying I traveled 80 mph total on my trip across the country. 80 mph is not a distance, it's a rate at which you travel. kW is the rate at which you consumed energy. kWh are the total energy use, found by multiplying the average rate of us (kW) times the time that average was used (hours).

Assuming the bill states you used 180 kWh, over an hour that WOULD be an average rate of 180 kW, if it really is saying you used 180 kWh in that hour, but if it's over the course of a longer period of time it would be far less than 180 kW. Not trying to nitpick, but it's important to understand the difference because whomever you call isn't going to, and it's going to be up to you to tell them why they are wrong.

The rest of your calculation seems correct, assuming your bill shows that 180 kWh used over the course of a single hour. Then you COULD use 180 kW as the factor when calculating input amps. You are correct that the input amps is then 1500 (charge per second), which far exceeds the breaker.

The thing is, this seems like it might be a guesstimate (electric companies do this so they don't have to come check your meter every month). And they may do that guesstimate by just putting their guess for your months or days usage as a single point in time (causing it all to show up under one hour). If your bill is abnormally high, then you might question it, but if it comes out to the normal amount when you get charged next month, I wouldn't think anything of it.

For comparison sake when you do your bill, you should be all in at around 12-14 cents per kWh you use in a month, depending on where you live. If you are anywhere close to that, you might be ok.
 
#4 ·
Making this quick for now.
So I just noticed you said you live in Phoenix, which is where I happen to live. Chances are then you're looking at the same online system as me for SRP. They seem to track the energy use pretty well, so I doubt what I said earlier about this being a guesstimate. That seems like either an error, or something is sucking power somehow that feeds to your meter.

I'd get an explanation from them whenever they're able to provide one. I use AC and power excessively, and my peaks are like 7 kWh for each hour even when I'm sitting at home with all the lights on watching TV with the AC blasting and my gf using the electric stove (while the laundry is running, you get the point).
 
#5 ·
I am billed through aps, with a wireless transmitter on the meter, so I can view my KW rate usage in hour increments on a chart of KW/ time. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

In the hour between 6am and 7, it shows the spike to 180. Any other hour in the day is 0.1-0.2. (Other days around it get up to 1.5. So not only is the spike weird, the rest of the day is anomalous as well.) During the summer, I peaked at 6 kw through any given hour.

If my calculation is correct as you say, ideally with a constant draw, I would have pulled 1516 amps constantly throughout the hour. If I ever turned off my giant nuclear reactor, then the lack of draw would mean that during the time it was actually on, it would have been an even higher current, correct?
 
#6 ·
Master Electrician here - you are correct in questioning this and your math is correct with the caveats mentioned by Rocky in keeping your units right. No one is stealing your power as there is no way to tap on your load side of the meter without it being obvious and that current draw would require some massive wires, no one does this effort for an hour of draw, and IF they tried there would likely be some burning or melting of conductors or terminals. This is a metering/recording/software bug. I agree with the suggestion of waiting for the final bill and if it makes sense and is in line drop it from your worry list.
 
#7 ·
Update:

I called again and spoke to someone, emphasizing the impossibility of the situation. They got their manager to check it out, and they authorized "estimating" taking a similar temperature day of the same weekday, and copy pasting it, basically. They then replaced my meter. The bill shows up as "estimate" online for the whole month now, so I can't see the energy usage, but from the beginning of the new cycle, it is recorded. Woot.
 
#8 · (Edited)
I concur with Rocky. Adding to what Rocky has said there is no way this is possible for a single residential dwelling. Your A/C system which is one of your largest power draws, pulls about 5000 Watts (thinking about 180,000 Watts is astronomical for your scenario). Also, draw is extremely variable another words when an A/C system turns on its power draw can ramp up pretty high and then stabilize. I find it very difficult to for a electric utility to say that for a whole hour there was a draw of 180,000 Watts, power draw is just not that constant. Once again even if you had every appliance, electronic, water heater, and A/C at full draw you wouldn't even be near 180,000 Watts. I would encourage you to look up what each an every one of these devices/system uses in terms of power draw it will further solidify in you head that something is wrong. One last thing, the utility calculates your bill based on a Watt Hour or kiloWatt Hour. I think the national average is around 13 cents/KiloWatt Hour. Thus, assuming it were possible to have a draw of 180,000 Watts or 180 KiloWatts for a whole hour (its not possible in your scenario, not even considering instantaneous draw) that is 180 KilloWatt Hours, (simply multiply your draw for the time period in which it occurred.) that equates to 23 bucks at 13 cents per KiloWatt Hour. I don't know about you but my total bill for the month in an apartment is around 100 bucks for the whole month, your coming out to 1/5 of that in an hour. Something is way off. Utilities constantly have issues with data management on the billing side of things, its blatantly wrong.
 
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