I’ve lived in my house for just under two years. Last summer, I noticed something strange. Our electricity bill increased by 40-90% depending on the month. This year, I finally tracked it down and discovered our meter was being mixed up with our neighbor’s. Here’s how I tracked this down and what you can do to prevent it from happening to you.

Background

I have an amateur interest in electricity, conserving energy, and energy efficiency in general. I care about my carbon footprint, as well as my bill, and I’m passionate about innovation in this space. I’ve made it a habit to have a good idea of how much electricity different appliances use and, in general, I try to be aware of where my electricity is going. Years ago, I bought a simple Kill A Watt to quickly get an idea of how much power things use.

Summer 2019

The first time I noticed a problem was when we got our July bill in the summer of 2019. It was about 40% higher than usual. My grandparents stayed with us (in their motorhome) for a week that month, and their motorhome has a big air conditioner, so I chalked it up to that, though that still seemed high.

A couple months passed and the problem got worse. It went from 40% higher than normal, to a peak of about 90%. I couldn’t explain that. We don’t have central air conditioning. Most of our heavy appliances use natural gas. We did use a portable air conditioner briefly, but never for more than a couple hours a night. I also measured the power usage of the A/C and thought, there’s no way this adds up. This confusion continued until we got our October bill and it returned to normal, and I forgot about it for another year.

Summer 2020

And…it came back! I first noticed this year in June when the bill jumped about 20%. I figure it’s reasonable for the bill to fluctuate a little, but not by that much. Plus, what made even less sense is that we used supplemental electric heating this winter, so if anything, our bill should’ve been higher in the winter! Again, no central air conditioning, so another unexplained bill. I tracked power usage on everything I could think of, to make sure I hadn’t missed something. For awhile, my big suspect was our fridge. It’s 18 years old, so I figured, maybe there’s a problem with it and it uses more power than it should, especially when the ambient temperature is higher. I cleaned the coils and played around with the fridge settings, then waited for our next bill. It got worse.

This year, I noticed our power company has a cool interface online where you can see your daily power usage. Very handy. I noticed that, in non-summer months, it was very consistent, ranging between 9-12 kWh per day. Then, in the summer months, it just goes all over the place. Sometimes it was 8, other days it went as high as 24! This seemed loosely correlated with the temperature but I just couldn’t explain that, due to a lack of central cooling in our house. I finally decided to call the power company at this point. Naturally, they did not take me too seriously, and were fairly insistent that it was my air conditioning (that I didn’t have). I was told to hire an electrician to investigate.

Then it got weirder. In late July, I noticed that in recent weeks, our daily power usage (according to the power company) dipped as low as 1 kWh per day! That’s just not possible, I thought. My electronics, combined, should use more than that per day, not even counting heavier users like the fridge. The power usage still fluctuated quite a bit, but there were several days where the power usage was as low as 1-3 kWh. I called the power company again and, no surprise, they took this much more seriously and agreed that wasn’t possible. I insisted that the peaks in usage didn’t make sense either, that I couldn’t explain those, but no luck there…they were really only interested in the low days and said they were opening an investigation that could take “at least a few weeks” to finish.

And then…

One night, I finally put it together. I wondered if my bill was mixed up with my neighbor’s. My neighbor had moved out in July, and that’s about when the daily power usage fell to almost nothing. I also happened to know that they have central air conditioning. I looked at my bill and noticed it actually has the meter number on it, very helpful! I looked at my meter and the number on the bill wasn’t even remotely close. It wasn’t off-by-one. The format looked consistent, but the values looked randomized. I was wondering whether I was even looking at the right number. So, the next morning, I took a look at my neighbor’s (vacant) house’s meter. Sure enough, it exactly matched what was on my bill.

A few frustrating phone calls later (not important), and the issue is fixed. We got the charges corrected and are enjoying a large credit on our account that ought to last us about 6 months (after having lived here only 2 years).

In any future house I live in, I will be sure to check that my bill’s meter number matches what’s on the property. I highly recommend everyone do the same, because I get the impression this is fairly common. A quick search online and I found about half a dozen news articles about this happening, often more egregious cases than my own. Most of us may not notice a mixup, either because the usage is fairly consistent or we just don’t know how much power we use. Thankfully, you should be able to check the accuracy of your bill in about 5 minutes if your meter is easily accessible. Simply look for the meter number on your bill (hopefully all power companies give this info), and then look physically at the meter for a sticker from your power company, and see if the numbers match.