No electricity for up to 11 miserable, sweltering days, and now, some of you are saying your electric provider charged you for kilowatts there’s no way you could have used when you had no power.
How is this possible? And what can you do about it? KPRC 2 Investigative reporter Amy Davis has answers.
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Most customers have not received electric bills that cover the period when the Houston area lost power from Hurricane Beryl. For most, the power outage started on July 8 and continued through July 19, for some. If you have an app or an online account from your electric provider, it may show usage each day or week so you can monitor how much you’re using before you get the actual bill. It’s these readings that are showing usage that has a lot of people concerned.
When more than 900,000 customers lost power back in May, we investigated what caused this inaccurate information. And more importantly, we made sure, in that case, that the information was corrected before customers received their bills.
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.
We’ve heard from viewers about this happening during the last big power outages
Craig Wolcott has received daily messages for more than a decade about his electric usage. After 4 days without power in May, he realized something was way off. He called KPRC 2 News when he noticed his Smart Meter Texas account showed otherwise.
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 Davis: “I mean it was lights out.”
Wolcott: “Correct.”
Amy Davis: “Dark.”
Wolcott: “Correct.”
Amy Davis: “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.
In that instance, Wolcott’s usage data was corrected before he received his next bill from Gexa, but depending on your billing cycle your electric company may send you a bill showing usage for the days you had no power. Your next bill based on an actual reading of your electric meter should be accurate.
You can double-check that it is by reading your meter and making sure the numbers on your electric meter match the numbers on your electric bill. Customers can create a free account on Smart Meter Texas to monitor electric usage.
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.
Do you have a question for Investigator Amy Davis? Email AskAmy@kprc.com.