Robert Green wrote:

His bill probably holds the sad tale of a one time excursion
into a higher rate zone that's cost him big time. I'll bet he
now becomes very aggressive managing his peak load.

I've located some PDF documents that my local utility has on-line.

I have to have a "12-month average demand" equal to or more than 50 kW,
or have a 12-month rolling kwh consumption greater than 150,000 KWhrs in
order to have a demand meter. 150,000 kwhrs divided by 12 is 12,500 kwh
per month, which is about 4 times my average monthly consumption.

So no, I don't think I've experienced any one-time excursion into a
higher rate zone, at least not in terms of being demand-metered (if
indeed there are any other ways of entering a higher rate zone).