
Electric Meter Saga (2017) - allthebest
http://www.nattaylor.com/blog/2017/electric-meter-saga/
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tcskeptic
I had a very similar experience with a water meter. When our small town
installed smart water meters, they accidentally switched ours and our
neighbors. It took me far too long to figure it out as I became progressively
more obsessed with water conservation and monitoring of usage and watched our
water bill continue to climb.

The penny finally dropped when I was standing in front of our house having
ripped open the latest water bill to see an amount now having grown to be over
$200 for the month (more than twice where it had been to start with) and
looked at my dry, parched lawn that I had barely watered and my neighbors
luxurious, green lawn. Getting our money square with the city took another 4
months and resulted in a rather unhappy neighbor.

~~~
gargravarr
Keeping historic readings of your meters is extremely useful. I made a habit
of scanning in the bills I got from my water company, which showed that on
average I was using ~40m^3 of water a year - I'm very conservative with water.
In 2015, a bi-annual bill dropped through my door asking for payment for
120m^3 of water in six months. I hadn't changed my usage patterns, and by
phoning them and quoting the previous bills, they quickly agreed it was
extremely unlikely I was using four times my annual supply in half the time.
They took it from there, investigated and discovered a leak just after my
water meter (under panels in the road). From my previous bills, they quickly
agreed to knock 99m^3 off my bill, bringing it in line with my usage.

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patcheudor
I had something very similar happen. Our power bill went up 30% in March of
last year over what it was in February after the power company installed a
smart meter. This was odd because March was so temperate that we didn't use
our HVAC once and we have a gas water heater. I called the power company and
we confirmed they were reading the right meter. Trying to evaluate it further
went nowhere as they claimed that despite the increase, we were in-line with
other homes of our size and suggested maybe our analog meter was wrong. After
a few weeks of arguing with them, I ordered and installed a Sense. It
absolutely doesn't track at all with what the power company is reading and I
shared the differences including my own measurements with an ammeter on the
120 lead legs into my meter which match with what the Sense is reading but the
power company won't investigate further. To mitigate the increase in
electricity use, I decided to get into the cryptocurrency mining business and
have gone from ~$200 to ~$600/month power bills, all of which are easily paid
from the mining. Since I was lucky enough to start last year, all the hardware
is paid as well (thanks December crypto currency market madness).

~~~
OnMyPhone
My story is sort of similar too.

Many years ago, I noticed my power bill was around $190 when it should have
been closer to $120. I wasn't home for most of that month, and I know I turned
off everything I could. I didn't even have the refrigerator running. I talked
to my neighbors who had heat and everything on in their apartment and their
bill was $110.

I called the power company who said there's nothing wrong and that I need to
have someone "look at my apartment." I got another bill for $190, while
everyone else's were low $100s. This went on for 6 months. My bills were
always $190ish. I had a $190 bill near the end of spring when I just had my
windows open for air.

I looked at the meters and found they replaced one meter, which happened to be
mine. I called several times asking if they replaced it, that my bills were
ridiculous for what I was doing and to look at it.

No word back on anything then my bills went from $190 a month to $15. So
instead of saying anything, they just started to cut my bills down for what I
overpaid. When I called asking why my bills were lower, they just said because
I overpaid my previous months bills. My bills were around $15 a month for
close to a year afterwards...

So stupid. They ended up discounting me for a few hundred more than I should
have been, but I had to cut a few things out of my budget just to pay for
something I wasn't using, but needed.

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gargravarr
Having had a casual interest in power usage, I bought a little inductive meter
with a wireless display. It proved itself, so I upgraded it to a cloud-
connected one which stores huge amounts of historic data. Every so often, I
download the logs and compare the usage the device has logged with the usage
the electricity company has billed me for. So far, it's added up roughly
correctly.

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Freak_NL

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Typographically speaking a line of body text shouldn't run in excess of 60
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