Steve IA said (on or about) 01/21/2008 17:34:
I'll try to cover this as clearly as possible, answering as many of the
questions that where raised as I can. I spoke at length with 2 reps of
the REC this morning. They were both sympathetic and helpful.
1. They do not estimate. They don't even physically read anymore. Every
27 hours or so each meter sends its progress back to the REC computer
which records this information. At the end of the cycle this data is
turned into a bill.
2. The data from the individual meter reports is available to the
customer in what is called a 'turtle' report. This shows meter reading
and usage for each ~27 hour period. Turtle info: http://tinyurl.com/yo3lcm
3. The REC said they were also surprised that the overall usage didn't
go down more than it did with the outage and all. They could offer no
explanation other than 'it was colder'. They didn't have the actual
Heating Degree Days!! They said they had considered including it on the
bills, but hadn't yet. I found the heating degree days at
www.weather.gov . Click on the map for your location then select
climate/local from the menu on the left side of the screen.
Locally Dec 07 had only 4% more HDD than average, but 31% more than 2006
which was unusually warm. A comparison with last years bill could be
misleading.
4. As I had suspected for some time during this discussion, there was
more than 1 thing going on, which clouded the issue:
a) the colder than last years temperatures which would increase usage
across all customers,despite the outage and (drum roll please)
b) My 'turtle' report showed I had days of increased usage starting Nov
23 and ending about Dec 23. Every day in this period was higher than my
22kwh/day 6-year average and some were 2X that average (44,48,49)!!!
Before 11/23 and after 12/23 and continuing until today, my usage has
been normal average.
Recap:
Oct 25 - Nov 22. Normal usage: 13-22 kwh/day 408kwh/28days=14.6kwh/day
Nov 23 - Dec 11. Extreme usage: 28-49 kwh/day 574/19 =30.1
Dec 11 - Dec 17. No usage: power outage 0
Dec 18 - Dec 23. Extreme usage: 28-44 kwh/day 163/6 = 27.2
Dec 24 - Jan 21. Normal usage: 16-33 kwh/day 612/29 = 21.1
For some reason, which I'll probably never find out, we used an unusual
amount of electricity for nearly a month, interrupted, luckily, but the
power outage. Whatever the draw, it went away and as far as I know it
went on its own.
I plan to monitor my meter closely if not daily for a while.
Other answers:
The REC said they had many neutral lines down yet and they were
repairing them as the could, thus the 1 line vs. 2 line question.
Thanks for all the support and kind helpful input.
If I figure more out, I'll let you know.
If you have more comments/questions, fire away
Steve
Way Cool!
I was a participant in a pilot program in which the [deregulated]
electric company that I paid for my electrons put a demand-sensing
inductive loop around the main feed cable as it entered the panel.
The installed a power line networking gateway, a 4 port router (one
port connected to the gateway), and a special thermostat which was
also connected via the power line network and gateway to the Internet.
Their plan was to offer a special rate to customers who agreed to
allow the power company to shed load by raising the thermostat set
point by 2 degrees. That way they could avoid having to buy so much
expensive power during peak periods, pass a little of the savings on
to the customer, and profit from the rest. As a bonus, I could
manipulate my thermostat via the Internet and -- of more interest to
me -- see a demand curve on my house which showed the periods of
highest use and gave me a clue about what I could do to lower my usage
independently. Of course they went out of business.