Smart electric meter in Los Angeles recording very high reading/ LED lights possible issue?

[Paul002525]

Hello,

I created this account as I have ran into a huge issue with my electric bill. I have been living at my house for 1 year right now. Every 2 months I have been paying anywhere between $60-$80 for my bill. I opened my bill today and it has jumped for $650 for this cycle. After calling them and going outside to verify the reading on the meter I was assured the meter reading is correct. Now I generally use about 400KW every 2 months. This time though its showing me as having used 2400KW. I have not obtained any new equipment or changed my usage. I did some research and I have this LED lamp in my room which uses 5 (100W) lamps. Before this month I would turn it up about 80% on the dimmer and for the last month I have been doing it at a 100% high on the dimmer. I did some research and saw that some smart meters get confused by such LED lights (Energy saver which is 100W but says it uses only 8W). So I wanted to get your input on what I can do to correct this? And how I can get my bill adjusted as its a big hardship on me with that sort of a jump.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

To avoid confusion, the units of energy that you pay for are kilowatt-hours (kWh) not kilowatts. The power consumption of a lamp or appliance is measured in watts, 1000 watts (W) make one kilowatt (kW) and one kilowatt running for one hour uses one kilowatt-hour. The important distinction is that kWh are units of energy that you pay for, but kW are units of power that show how quickly that energy is being consumed.

An LED that uses 8W uses 8W. The 100W reference is only a comparison to a traditional tungsten bulb that gives a similar amount of light. There is nothing about the LED itself that is 100W. Obviously there are LED floodlights that are actually 100W each but I don't think we are talking about those here.

Your normal consumption of 200kWh in one month seems quite low but not remarkable. If we deduct that from the new 1200kWh and divide by the 720 hours in a typical month, the minimum load that could legitimately be causing that consumption is 1200/720=1.7kW running 24/7. That's a fair amount of heat but if a panel heater came on in an outbuilding and you didn't know about it, you could register that amount of consumption quite easily.

Assuming that there is nothing kicking out the heat of a powerful hairdryer that you don't know about, then you need to find what is registering on the meter. It probably has a light that flashes a certain number of times per kWh. You can calculate the number of watts (power) the meter thinks is in use by counting the number of flashes per minute. E.g. my meter flashes 800 times per kWh. If it flashes four times per minute that would be 4 x 60 = 240 flashes per hour. 240/800 = 0.3kW or 300 watts of load.

So try turning everything off that you can, and see what the background consumption is. Then turn on suspect devices and see if the consumption matches expectations. E.g. with 5 x 8W LEDs on full, the meter should register only 40W which on my meter would be 40/800 or 32 flashes per hour, about one every two minutes. Note that I am suggesting to monitor the meter itself, not use your own separate power meter, as they can be inaccurate on some loads including LEDs and you want to find out what the PoCo's meter itself is doing. That should be accurate on all normal loads as it uses a more sophisticated measuring system than the clip-on types that you can buy.

Report your findings...

 

[James]

I agree with everything that @Lucien Nunes has said above.

just to add my thoughts that have been touched on above.
realistically, the only thing likely to increase your usage like that is an electric heater Or A/c unit.

has the temperature dropped considerably since the last billing cycle?
anything changed in the amount of hot water being used or a leaking faucet?

it may be worth taking a meter reading twice a day, once in the morning and again before bed time.
try to keep the time of day the readings are taken fairly constant.
after 3 days post the meter readings on here , we may see a pattern that helps narrow down your usage.

 

[Lucien Nunes]

I agree with everything that @Lucien Nunes has said above.

I wouldn't, there's a mistake! My meter would flash 32 times per hour on a 40W load as stated, but that's 0.04 x 800 not 40/800 which is some random nonsense I typed.

 

[Paul002525]

Thank you guys for your input on this. So to answer a few things I have to say that I have not had the A/C unit which is also a heater on at all over the last 48 hours. I been tracking the meter since yesterday and its still showing a very high reading. So to put it in perspective on my last billing cycle before this happened I had used 300 Kilowatts over 60 days which averages to about 5 Kilowatts per day. Since I started tracking it yesterday its registering about 8 times that. So I have done 3 readings so far and each time its about 15 or so and in total roughly 7 times the normal amount. I will continue to track this over the next few days. Yesterday I went out for 5 hours and turned off everything in the house except the refrigerator basically and zero lights and it still registered the same amount (15 Kilowatts which is 3 times higher than my daily usage only in like 5 hours).

This is really leading me to believe there is an issue with the meter which is registering such high amounts. I did some research and saw in England where they were installing smart meters with some tests it showed that some of these meters can be off as much as 7 times. I will continue to use the log and my plan is tomorrow to unplug the refrigerator and track it in about 4 hours to see what reading it shows.

 

[Paul002525]

I agree with everything that @Lucien Nunes has said above.

just to add my thoughts that have been touched on above.
realistically, the only thing likely to increase your usage like that is an electric heater Or A/c unit.

has the temperature dropped considerably since the last billing cycle?
anything changed in the amount of hot water being used or a leaking faucet?

it may be worth taking a meter reading twice a day, once in the morning and again before bed time.
try to keep the time of day the readings are taken fairly constant.
after 3 days post the meter readings on here , we may see a pattern that helps narrow down your usage.

Hi James,

I live in a condo so water and the water heater are a part of the association. I pay for those separately. My meter is only for the electrical usage inside the unit.

 

[James]

Can you post a picture of the meter?

 

[Paul002525]

Can you post a picture of the meter?

 

[Paul002525]

I took the pics as of 755AM this morning. I will be doing another reading later today. I will keep you posted as I gather more data.

 

[baldelectrician]

I use a UK version of the Efergy monitor, it is good and lets you follow it online and download data
This would be useful to compare the electric company usage with your own, it also allows real time data

home - Efergy

efergy.us

 

[LukeD]

Keep it simple .Turn fuse box off and see if readings change .If so , some bugger is growing weed and using your juice . Then go through each circuit for 2 hours and see if you get a high reading etc .LOCATE the circuit thats costing you coin

 

[ipf]

No mention of 'leakage'.
May need checking for faults if still recording a load with all circuits isolated.

 

[James]

No mention of 'leakage'.
May need checking for faults if still recording a load with all circuits isolated.

I did consider it briefly, however any leakage in the region of 1.5kw is normally noticed because of the smell created from the smoke!!

 

[ipf]

I did consider it briefly, however any leakage in the region of 1.5kw is normally noticed because of the smell created from the smoke!!

Might be a blind, covid sufferer......warring a face mask.