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Our electric bill has been running pretty high even though it hasn't been that cold and we've been supplementing with wood heat. Decided to track down the culprit and hooked up an energy usage monitor to one of our 5 sub panels. Gonna check the other 4 over the course of the next few days.
is the power company even checking the meter?
My parents go solar panels and it didn't affect their bill at all. Turns out the power company was just charging an average based on previous years, I said find a better provider or start mining bitcoin.
"find a better provider"
Most utilities are regional monopolies, there is no other option.
They've got solar; expand the power gen a little more and add a battery system.
Disconnecting doesn't seem so bad in that scenario.
Or monitor power use yourself and compare numbers. You'll learn interesting things.
I'm in an apartment and found I'm being charged about 1-2% extra because of the voltage drop between the utilities meter on the ground floor, and where I'm monitoring in my unit 5 floors up and on the far side of the building.
For every kwh I measure, I get billed ~1016wh. Had to adjust the voltage reading up a little bit to match.
Some places let you purchase electricity from a seperate broker but you still pay the utility for the lines.
Yes. Ours uses AMI meters that get read electronically.
The power company didn’t choose that. Your parents did, and then forgot to call and switch to a solar-friendly or monthly-usage based rate structure.
I lived in a semi-rural area where they didn't check the gas meter for months at a time and just kinda guessed each month.
I had that too, after a few months they’d get around to it and it’s get a corrected bill. Really confused me the first time i noticed it.
That is…wild. I’m in a pretty rural area and we had meter readers till they got to smart meters.