Well, the power company sent me a letter and guess what? The meter was perfect. I sort of suspected that would be the result when they took it off the house and back to their shop to test it. Now that they have the meter and their test results, there's really nothing further I can do. However the news is not all frustrating. The new meter they left seems to be working fine. My demand usage has dropped to a level that corresponds to what my measurements are and my bill should be dropping accordingly. Seems the highest demand I've had in the last three weeks is 1.5 KW which is a long ways from the 4.2KW I had three months ago.
It's disappointing that I couldn't prove that the meter was set up wrong, but what's one to do?
I can't believe nobody has commented about this subject! What about all the erroneous peak readings in the past and the over-billing??? Awesome work! I'm in the Philly area and Peco just sent me a notice about how they can put switch on my airconditioner to cycle it with others in the area to balance the load. Where do you find the time? - Regards Howard
ReplyDeleteThis project took around a year to get to this point, so it was little bits of time spread out over months. I spent the interim time trying to get information on metering and the various rules they have. They certainly didn't offer to give me any money back!
ReplyDeleteAs for smart meter control of the appliances in my house...fat chance! My needs inside my house are none of their business and what would they do if the electronics messed up and I had a high bill? Refund the money? I don't thinks so.
There's also a ton of privacy issues as well as safety issues. One can easily tell if someone is home by tracking their power usage and I don't trust the security of a power company's records.
Thanks for visiting.
Agree with you whole heartedly. Very cool website. by chance do you write embedded code for a living? I psychoanalyze people who do.....I service instrumentation in the field and try to figure what the designers had in mind every time I troubleshoot something.
ReplyDeleteActually, no I don't do embedded code for pay. I got into this to protect myself against some of the rising costs and to have fun doing it.
ReplyDeleteI also wonder what the heck they were thinking when they did some of the stuff I've seen.