Check your PG&E bill (updated 11jan22)

George Rebane

PG&E continues to provide its customers with added dimensions of its incompetence as the power utility of northern California.  We have covered the litany of its poor performance in these pages, and now add another to the list.  The December bill arrived with a blatant and obvious overcharge for electricity not delivered.  During the last series of snowstorms along with thousands of PG&E customers in the foothills, we too lost our power for eleven days.  It went off at 1215 27dec21 and came back on at 1600 6jan22.  Our bill (below) showed that they continued our electric service unabated on 27dec21 through 29dec21.

We have one of those ‘smart meters’ that are now standard in PG&E’s service area.  It is supposed to automatically report power usage to their accounting and power management systems.  There they have a computer algo that takes this data and massages it into the above graphic along with the billed amount using a complex formula of time-dependent rates.  Obviously, their data gathering system and/or algo is faulty, and this blatant revelation strongly implies that they may have been overcharging their customers for some time now.

So check your electricity bill, and if yours is also in error, do something more than just bitching to the PG&E billing department.  Write a letter to the California Public Utilities Commission and demand that they get PG&E to account for the performance of their metering and billing system, and prove that they have not been screwing up for who knows how many months/years.  It is implausible that such an error is a onetime affair that was caused by the storm.  (Note that the algo did not revert to some constant default usage level, but actually varied the post-shutdown daily usage.)

I ascribe the problem to the ongoing cadre of ignorant, incompetent, and slothful dunces that populate PG&E’s management ranks.  Their hardworking field crews are capable, hardworking, and fully acknowledge that they have to be the public face of an organization that has had a rotten head shed for years.  The PUC should hold them to account for this and numerous other sins too many to list.

[11jan22 update]  Jo Ann called PG&E and went online to our account.  The nice lady at the other end apologized that the bills they send out continue to have bogus indications of power usage, and that they are working very hard to fix it.  She further assured us, and showed us the appropriate page online where the usage numbers for the power outage period had cross hatches below them, indicating that these were not the actual numbers to be used to calculate our bill.  She was very accommodating and informative about their problem and their consumers’ misapprehensions.  In the future we should ignore the bill they send us and log in to our account online to see the actual data that goes into calculating out bill.  What a way to run a railroad.

Comments

[Michael Kesti]

I, too, have a smart meter and one of the benefits is that I can see daily and hourly usage and price on the PG&E website. I won't be billed for another week but I see that the website data correctly show zero usage during the outage. I'm curious to learn what the website data show for you on the outage days for which you are being erroneously charged.

[scenes]

"Note that the algo did not revert to some constant default usage level, but actually varied the post-shutdown daily usage."

Hah. I like that. It's like those fake VU meters that people stuff onto internet streaming UIs.

Given the economic and reliability realities of utilities, it would be interesting to look at a well-run one and see what's different. I was always well-disposed towards ATT back in their glory years, but they definitely had issues.

I suppose it's just another version of any government service. No need to compete, heavily driven by a subset of activists (just like most legislation) and internal politics. The Priests of Amun-Ra would be well acquainted with the issue.

[Michael Kesti]

A commenter on Facebook's Nevada County Peeps group claimed that those overcharged can expect an adjustment on the next bill.

[Bill Tozer]

[11jan22 update] Jo Ann called PG&E and went online to our account.

So, good doc, what did you do? Walk around in your slippers working on the income stream while you lovely bride did the heavy lifting with PG&E? Yes, you said she is in charge of the outgoing and you are well kept (fancy word starting with the letter f), but I hope, referring to outgoing, that you at least take out the garbage. It’s your job. Incoming means bringing in the firewood.

Mystery solved. Thank you Jo Ann

[scenes]

"A commenter on Facebook's Nevada County Peeps group claimed that those overcharged can expect an adjustment on the next bill."

In that case, they could expect it on every bill.

A quick google for 'Los Angeles electric rates'
"Los Angeles area households paid an average of 24.0 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) of electricity in December 2021,"
and then 'Phoenix electric rates'
"According to Electricity Local, Phoenix residents pay an average of 11.96 cents per kWh of electricity."

[Bill Tozer]

flâneur. The f fancy word is flâneur.

[George Rebane]

BillT 113pm - As you may have gathered from previous confessions about my disposition toward life Mr Tozer, I have publicly declared myself to be a kept man since at least the turn of the millennium. (As the son of a self-promoted Estonian peasant - my dad was born in their log cabin farmhouse, but refused to continue farming, becoming an electrician instead - I am the first generation of our strain of Rebanes to have been born off the farm, and due to God's grace and the benevolence of the US of A, I was to rack up a whole list of firsts for our family.) So I was able to marry up, although my in-laws did keep a gimlet eye on me for a while. However, since my college sweetheart and bride-to-be saw that there was something there that she could work with, I can say with certainty that after 60 years I am now definitely off probation.

Being well-trained in optimization theory, early on I began taking the road not recognized by my less-discriminating hard working peers, and assumed a more philosophical modus operandi, the proper label of which I was ignorant of until reading a similarly directed man, Nicholas Nassim Taleb. He let me know, that I, like he, sought the life of a flâneur. Since he was much more accomplished at this life-craft, I humbly took the nom de vie of flâneur-in-training. And thanks to the competence and tolerance of my bride, I have been making great strides in earning those stripes - soon.