Electric Meter

First, turn off everything in the house for as long as you can stand it and make sure the meter does not advance.

If you pay 16 cents/kwh and your meter is off 1% in their favor and you use 1kw all the time they owe you $14/yr, plus interest.

You'd need a meter 5x or 10x more accurate than PoCo's meter, and I can't readily find a published spec. for this number.
If you can find a stable 10A load, like a toaster, you could measure the volts and amps going into it, probably to 0.1%. A 100A, 240v load would be better, like the aux heat coils for a heat pump. Everything else should be off.
To get high accuracy, measure and record the values until you get bored. Volts x amps x time = watt-hours. 240v on average at 100A on average for 0.1 hour = 2.4 kwh.

If you find credible evidence for "an error" in their favor and make a fuss, they'll be watching you! Along these lines, the Gas Company [GaCo?] tried to entrap me after I called them on their bad behavior, on behalf of a customer of mine.
http://www.heretical.com/berne/nigysob.html

BTW, if it really is an "error" half the time in the long run it would be in favor of the consumer. I doubt that this will be the case. By this standard, politicians almost never make an error, regardless of them calling it a "mistake" or that they "mispoke."

"The amount of energy represented by one revolution of the disc is denoted by the symbol Kh which is given in units of watt-hours per revolution. The value 7.2 is commonly seen. Using the value of Kh, one can determine their power consumption at any given time by timing the disc with a stopwatch. If the time in seconds taken by the disc to complete one revolution is t, then the power in watts is
P = 3600 x kh/t
For example, if Kh = 7.2, as above, and one revolution took place in 14.4 seconds, the power is 1800 watts. This method can be used to determine the power consumption of household devices by switching them on one by one."

So if you're looking for a 1% error, 10w, then t = 3600 x kh/P = ~ 43 minutes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Electrical_meter.jpg

The 7.2 designation is at the four o'clock position.

Don't know what your local rules are, but all the Utility Commission standards I've seen don't even consider a meter out of calibration unless it is more than 2% off. If it is an induction disk meter, the odds are much greater that it will be slow (to the consumers benefit) than fast (to the utilities benefit).

Our shop typically tested around 1200 meters a year and in over a decade, I can count the number of meters that were fast (over 2%) on one hand. Of those, most were 2 to 3%, one was 9% and the only one that was significantly off (30% fast) was because the house had taken a direct shot of lightning (all the wiring in the house was melted) that had negated the residual magnetism of the meter's damping magnet.

If you have a high bill complaint and have already had the meter tested, your time will be much better spent finding out how you are wasting energy.

SKIP4661 said:

What is the best way to check the accuracy of the power companies meter. Had it checked by the power company, they said it is OK. I have my doubts.

Click to expand...

I don't take offense at this (well....maybe a little :whistling2, but just for the record, after 35 years in the business, I have never been party to, or seen anyone else, falsifying a meter test. And that's with four different companies.
There's really no reason to. For one, as noted, induction disk meters are extremely stable, accurate devices that if and when their accuracy declines, it is generally in the customers favor. Fast meters are a rarity, believe it or not.
And for a company dealing with millions of dollars in energy costs on a monthly basis, refunding or crediting a residential customer his rightful share is not big deal.

And for what it's worth, when we do a meter test, we usually stay and do exactly what has been described here....we help the home-owner go through his house looking for reasons for the high usage.

But let's take this a step further. A meter is not the only component of a bad bill. On apartment complexes, services get mixed up quite often and getting billed for your neighbors usage is much more common than a erroneous meter.
Meters are simply misread (although this should have been caught at the meter test).
AMR (automated meter reading) systems often fail. Did the electronic reading match the mechanical register? Admittedly a problem if you only have an electronic register, but billing/consumption histories can be looked at to see if there have been sudden changes.

But far and away the most prevalent cause of a high bill is, something you are depending on to work, isn't.

Bad thermostats, leaking seal on refridgerator door, dust-clogged coils on a refridgerator or AC, leaking water well or water heater tank, strip heat coming on with the cooling (yes, this happens more than you'd think), or (also VERY prevalent) just using too much of everything. There is no free lunch....if you want your house to be 65 degrees in the summer, ya gotta pay for it!