Neon John wrote:

So you have a self-reading meter. That's nice. If you'd told us that in the first
place it would have saved all of us a lot of time and effort.

If I would have known, I would said so. This wasn't an exercise in
deception on my part.

4. As I had suspected for some time during this discussion, there was
more than 1 thing going on, which clouded the issue:

You suspected? Geez, that's what several of us were trying to hammer into your hard
head!

Well, I've learned to take Usenet stuff with many grains of salt. The
catch-up loads of laundry theory you espoused early on (1/19 5:59pm)
pretty much shot YOUR street cred. How DOES that work? 5 loads every 5th
day uses more electricity than 1 load/day? It's still 5 loads in 5
days. 5=5.

I didn't suspect it at first, I was the victim of occam's razor and
several things happening at once was not the simplest solution. After
some discussion here my suspicions grew, but not until I saw the turtle
report and the HDDs did I become convinced. That's what data has over
opinion and speculation.


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.

In other words, the storm disrupted your normal activities, which is what I said in
my last post in this thread.

Of course it did, I didn't use any electricity. So what? The storm
*didn't* disrupt my normal activities *before* the storm,and only
minimally afterward thanks to a gas generator and wood burning stove. In
fact,the avg.kwh/day *after* the storm was 10% LESS than before the
storm. So much for the catch-up theory. The usage before the storm was
150% of average. (see recap above)

Your last chance, John and I'll type slowly, so please try to keep up.
*My* unusual usage started days before the storm, and continued days
after the restoration of power. One can draw a line on the turtle report
the day it starts and the day it stops.
Can you say "coincidence"?

I plan to monitor my meter closely if not daily for a while.

I'm not sure that'll do much for you since you can call up your turtle report on the
web.

Not to 'Joe consumer'; not at this REC.


If you're THAT concerned then perhaps you should get one of the several available
instruments that connects to your service and displays on an inside display real-time
usage as well as cumulative stats for the month. Some even have alarms that can be
set to warn you when your rate-of-use exceeds a certain value. And some can send
data to your computer so you can trend data yourself.

On 1/19, at 4:50 pm Neon John said:
"One of the most useful things you can do is to read your meter every
day at the same time for some period and look for patterns. "


But feel free to change your mind.
Your input is stimulating if not always correct or consistent.

--
Steve
southiowa

weltschmerz
Pronunciation: 'velt-"shmerts
Function: noun

: mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state
of the world with an ideal state