What advice would YOU give?

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] A few years ago, a friend called me and said: "Since you are an "electrical guy" and deal with the power company quite a bit, I need your advice." He then went on to tell me that he had purchased a big industrial building in order to set up a machine shop, and after a couple of years he had managed to round up enough equipment like welders, compressors, lathes and mills that he could finally begin doing some work. The building had been vacant for years, and when ownership passed to him, he began getting bills from the power company for 7.50 per month as some sort of minimum billing just for the meter to exist. The building has a 480V three-phase service. So far so good. HOWEVER, when he began running the shop and using electricity, he expected the bill to go up, but nothing changed. So he surmised that he had just missed that billing cycle. Next month same thing, 7.50 dollars. This went on for SEVEN months and he began to get concerned about what to do, he didn't want to get in any kind of trouble, so he called me and asked for my advice. I gave him some advice and he took it. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] WHAT WOULD YOUR ADVICE BE? [img]/forums/images/icons/crazy.gif[/img]

That's easy. Call the electric company and tell them to read the meter. Sounds like the meter reader has been skipping the building. When they finally get around to it, he'll get a much larger bill (7x) than he's expecting. Do I win a prize or is this a trick question?

[img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img] The problem with that was that we were concerned that the power company would "make up a number" for the power useage for the seven months that the shop was running, and there would be no way to prove that he didn't use twenty kazillion KwH. The meter was being read regularly, but since it was a current coil meter, the current doesn't actually flow THROUGH the meter, but is read remotely off the two CT coils. A broken wire, a bad coil, or a defective meter caused it to not register any power useage. What we decided to do to be on the safe side was consider the seven months of free power sort of a "housewarming gift" from the power company, and the first thing the next morning call in to the power company office and say: "I'm ready to start using power out here, and I'll need to have the service man check my service and see that it's ready to go." Sure enough the service man came out and routinely installed a brand new meter. The next months billing was for a normal amount of KwH useage. [img]/forums/images/icons/tongue.gif[/img]

Ku-wel!!!

Pat

This happened to me, the meter was broken and they did charge me more in the following months. Quite a surprise after a couple of nice cheap months. hahaha

I would tell them before too long the bill will just keep adding up and the guilt of not paying may eat away at him.