"dpb" wrote in message ...
On 5/29/2011 10:03 PM, Robert Green wrote:
...

No, I beg to differ. I always feel much more comfortable encountering
service personnel and such knowing as much as I can learn elsewhere. I
believe the OP has learned a great deal from this thread and could get
to
the point where an encounter isn't even necessary. 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 get no feeling OP has really learned a thing...it seems to all just
pass over as it doesn't fit into the preconceived notion.

I'd be reluctant to say that. Once a thread gets to a certain level of
"tension" it becomes more a question of ¿Quien es mas Macho?

His complaint is he has a few months w/ very high usage; not that the $
amount is high at relatively low total usage (as would be the symptom of
a demand-induced premium). I think the likelihood he actually has a
demand meter is very low.

Checking what I have for the beginning of the thread (and my newserver gets
swamped when those Teranewsians' server fails g) he started, at least,
asking three specific questions:

1) when coming up with a total current measurement, do I include the
current flowing on the neutral line?

2) He was looking how to calculate the "worst case" (all loads operating
simultaneously I assume)

3) He wanted to know if there was an error in how he intended to calculate a
maximum load.

That's at least why I recommended the Kil-O-Watt. He described a large
number of easily tested, non-hardwired loads on his premises.

I do see in reviewing the thread from top down that his 1st line reply to
RBM was:

"RBM used improper usenet message composition style by full-quoting:"

Maybe that's his newsreader automatically set to net-nanny "FULL ON" (-: So
maybe you're right, the OP has a bit to learn about not biting the hand
that's feeding him and was contributory in this interesting thread turning
slightly sour. My mistake.

From the numbers on usage he posted before, it appears to be a fairly
consistent usage w/ a couple of months extreme outliers. Both of those
are early in different years; my hypothesis is that the other months
are, for the most part, estimated rather than actually read and the one
annual blip is the catchup because they've not updated the average usage
to reflect actual since it was set up (probably before OP bought the
building).

Because I've had my own tangles with bad meters and something the phone
company called a "left on" connection (that actually turned into a national
security matter), I pay attention to news reports of billing errors. This
could just as easily be a screw-up with his electric company's billing
systems. They are forever futzing with their programs to account for new
"revenue streams" and fees and could have made any number of mistakes.
Based on the level of errors I've seen reported in DoD studies, shift
happens. A decimal point here and there, the wrong variable name, etc.

While you may be perfectly correct in why the readings show the way they do,
there are a lot of other explanations. But it terms of learning, I think we
(and perhaps he) have learned some critical things. You can't meter the
neutral of a three-phase feeder and expect to get information about total
usage, only the level of imbalance of the downstream circuits. We've
learned that it's unusual not to be able to see your meter whenever you
choose to, but apparently not universal. That's something for the OP to
work out between himself, the power company and his landlord. As nearly
everyone has said, to solve the puzzle more information is needed.

But I don't think it could ever hurt him to spend $25 on a Kil-O-Watt meter.
He indicated from the start he wanted to measure total wattage, and the KOW
will do that far better for the gear he has than any tong meter I know of.
It calculates true wattage and can measure average usage over long periods
of time. Going to the power company to investigate further knowing *exactly*
what he's got in his office will let them know that he's done his homework,
at least. That's important in dealing with them.

--
Bobby G.

"When the universe comes to destroy man, man will still be nobler than that
which tries to destroy him, because in his death man knows he is dying and
of its victory, the universe knows absolutely nothing." - Pascal