HOUSTON – No lights, no air conditioner, no nothing. If you were one of the 900,000 people who lost electricity for several days this month you might expect your next bill to be slightly lower than normal. One man in the Heights called us when he noticed his account showed he used electricity on days when that was impossible. Investigative reporter Amy Davis explains how to check your account.
You might not know this but your electric meter outside your home is a smart meter. You can sign up to get notifications that tell you exactly how much electricity you are using each day.
Craig Wolcott has been getting the messages for more than a decade. It wasn’t until last week that he realized something was way off. High winds knocked trees into power lines all over the Heights on May 16th. He was without power until that Saturday evening.
Wolcott: “The meters were dead. I mean nothing had power here.”
Amy: “I mean it was lights out.”
Wolcott: “Correct.”
Amy: “Dark.”
Wolcott: “Correct.”
Amy: “You’re not running anything.”
Wolcott: “Absolutely nothing.”
When CenterPoint restored Wolcott’s power, he found messages from Smart Meter Texas showing that on Friday he used 22.23 kilowatts of power and on Saturday it shows he used 17 kilowatts.
“That’s when I realized, ‘Okay, something is not correct here.’”
He called his electric provider Gexa Energy.
“Basically said, ‘We have nothing to do with that. We just bill for basically what we’re told you use.’”
CenterPoint owns the lines and meters. CenterPoint tells your electric provider how much electricity you’ve used. They also keep an hour-by-hour real time record of your usage online. It shows Wolcott used power all day long on Friday.
But when he called CenterPoint to ask what the heck was happening a customer representative told him it could take two weeks for someone to come check his meter.
“But I expect you to contact my energy company and notify them that on these 2 days, you’re reporting inaccurate information and she flat out said, ‘We will not do that.’”
Alyssia Oshodi with CenterPoint corporate says the Smart Meter Texas website and CenterPoint are automatically populated with usage data from your meter and when there is no power to allow the meter to communicate the systems populate with estimated usage.
“We ask that customers wait several days because the system will go back and basically interrogate the data and be able to get the correct- in this case- no usage that actually occurred,” said Oshodi.
Wolcott has noticed some numbers shifting his in accounts. They’re still not totally correct but CenterPoint said if in about a week yours hasn’t been corrected or if you get a bill for inaccurate usage before those numbers are corrected, call your retail electric provider. If they don’t help you fix it, call the Public Utility Commission.
Customers can create a free account on Smart Meter Texas to monitor electric usage.
Do you have a question for Investigator Amy Davis? Email AskAmy@kprc.com.
