Electrical usage for your house???

[DavidVT]

Eddie,
I pulled the following quote from an earlier post of yours in this thread:

"I have a 1,200 amp meter that I ran two line from to my house. One goes to a two hundred amp breaker box that just does my HVAC and water heater. It's way under utilized, but I plan on needing it down the line when I open the RV Park."

I wonder if your multiplier has something to do with the size of your service?

I was once told that commercial accounts (up here at least), pay for their KW usage and for the capacity they are capable of using. Seems a bit fuzzy but the justification is that to maintain all that high current capacity to the customer, the customer must pay for the capacity of the 'pipe' and the 'juice' that flows through it.

A local high school down sized their service this summer so they could save a large amount of money on this capacity issue. The service originally was sized for electric heat, something that has not been used there for decades.

Good luck!

 

[EddieWalker]

David,

That was my understanding too. I'm expecting to use allot of electricity one of these days, so I figured the mulitplier of 8 was due to that expected useage. From what I've learne,d they can put in a multiplyer of 1 to 20 onto a meter. Some meters also come with a built in multpilier, but they have that amount printed onto the meter so it's obvious to see. Regardless of the multiplier, the electrical usage would be the same. If the militplier is correct, then the meter would actualy read 1/8 the actual usage, then they mulitiply that by 8 to get my correct usage.

Eddie

 

[ToadHill]

When I put up my house, the electrician hooked up the ground wire in the wrong place in the main electrical box and I thought my bill was high. True it was a bigger house than I had previously but the bill went up sky high. It took me a couple months to find that when I touched certain parts of the house, I got a shock. Come to find out Some of the electrical current was draining through the grounding rod and into the earth.

We changed the placement of the main ground, the shocks went away and the electrical bill was cut in half.

 

[EddieWalker]

I wouldn't think that was possible. Where did he put the ground wire? Was it done in the panel? Did you personally fix this or did you hire somebody to come in and fix it?

Eddie

 

[ToadHill]

He put the ground wire in the same eail with the common wires. That was inside the main box. I hired a different electrician to look at the problem and he found the trouble. He said that because the house had aluminum siding I was getting the shocks, and while hooking the ground up to the common bar isn't usually a problem, sometimes it can do what I found was happening in my case.

I don't know enough about electricity to know if this is the case or if he was just covering for the other guy.

 

[heehaw]

i guess i would have to put the ground wire back an do a little testing to see how that could happen? i have seen mobile homes with this exact problem, but it was always when the hot an neutral were reversed. say you have a 120v motor with a two prong plug on it: reverse the plug in the recepticle an you will get this exact problem...theres a reason new plugs can't be reversed, easily.
heehaw

 

[EddieWalker]

A technician from Oncor came out this morning and it looks like the miltiplier is correct. Inside my meter box are some transformers. Those transformers are what dictates the multipier. They reduce the voltage that goes to the meter. There was also something to do with risistors, or resistance, which is also calculated into what the multiplier is. He went through it fairly quckly, so I asked him to explain it again so I could understand. It made sence, and he had the numbers on everything behind the meter to support what he was saying. My Dad has a degree in electronics, so he was able to follow along better then I did. He said the tech was right, and I couldn't find any fault with what he showed us. He did tell us that there is nowhere on the meter reading that shows the multiplier. We were givin the wrong information from the person on the phone. Looks like Dad spent all day on the phone trying to find somebody to explain to him how to read the meter, only to get totally bogus information.

I'm back to where we started.

Eddie

 

[heehaw]

are you looking at what you are paying monthly, or the number of Kwh's being used monthly? i didn't realize you are rated as a commercial customer? from what i was told by a local machine shop here at one time, they paid their electric bill, goverened by the peak load: as if that load were on all month long: so they were very careful not to run more than a certain number of motors at the same time: trying to keep the "peak load" down?? this made absolutely no sense to me, as a "mulitiplier" makes no sense to me either, since i always thought we all pay for what we use, but commercial stuff is diffenently figured different than residentual.
heehaw

 

[Scooby074]

Commercial is billed differently. Like HeeHaw says its based on your peak. Your meter may have a sweep style display with 2 pointers on it. There will be a tagged lever there thats used to reset the "peak" pointer when the meter is read. New digital ones are different.

Things like Power Factor really play into the rate that commercial users pay. Shaving a small amount off your PF can pay huge dividends on your cost of power. Probably not applicable to your situation.

Other ways to save commercially are to go on short notice disconnect, where the power co. can call and have you shut down certain high power machines (or shut down completely). This usually is only offered to the very highest electrical users in your area.

 

[EddieWalker]

I'm worried about how much electricity I'm using. My bill is totally unique due to my situation and being commercial. I take that as part of the process and don't have any issues with that part of it. I just feel that I'm using more electricity then normal.

After the Technician left, we started doing some tests on the lines. The two mains that come from the meter to the house and the two panels were both checked. Neither are drawing any electricity with the breakers off at the house. The panel to the house, shop and RV are pulling 9 amps during the day with the TV, computer and a few lights on.

The panel to the utility room where the water heater and HVAC are located is drawng 18 amps with 15 of those going to the HVAC unit. The water heater and lights are also pulling some power, but it was pretty small compared to the HVAC unit. It's fairly cool out today and I set the AC to 72 in order to get it to start up.

My bill for last month has me using 2,464 kWh for a 30 day period. I figure that 24 hours in 30 days is 720 hours in a month. When I devide 2,646 by 720, I get 3.42 kWh that I'm using on average, every hour.

Adding up my usage for right now, I'm using 27 amps right now, home alone. Actually, it's only 11 amps because the AC is off.

Does this add up? or make sense?

How many amps should a 2 1/2 tonne AC unit draw? That condensor seems to be the main thing working and the biggest draw of power. Is that where it's going?

Thanks,
Eddie