I'm going on a trip this week and I've been trying to make sure that I pay the bills before I go, so last week I noticed that our electric bill was late. Since it didn't come in the mail (hey, they're the ones insisting on paper delivery, not me) I went searching for it on HECO's website. $200.33. That's truly unique in the dictionary sense of the word-- the first (and hopefully only) time in 18 years here that ours has been higher than $100.
But first a little background. When we connected our solar (photovoltaic) array to the grid two years ago, the old analog utility meter used to spin "backwards" as we dumped more power into HECO's grid than we were using. The mechanical dials made it difficult to automate the task of the meter reader, but it was pretty simple to read it and to process the bill. The "priceless" part of the analog meter was being able to show your neighbors "Look, it's spinning backwards!" followed by demonstrating the Dilbert Engineer's Dance of Joy.
However last August HECO (presumably notified by our neighbors of my unauthorized customer amusement at public-utility expense) replaced the "old" analog meter with a digital model. They wouldn't let me keep the old one because they shipped it back to Tijuana the manufacturer for recycling. Or else they suspected why I wanted to keep it.
The digital meter is extremely uncool for several Luddite reasons, the first being that the LCD display doesn't spin backwards. (v2.0 will doubtless have an animated LCD icon that rotates at an arbitrarily proportionate rate in the appropriate direction.) You're probably thinking to yourself "Ah, but the digital meter can report its readings to HECO over the Internet or the utility lines, thereby eliminating the expense of a meter reader." You would be technically correct but you would not be a HECO customer.
This meter reports its data over the meter-readernet. Every 15 minutes, 24/7, the meter enters three numbers into its vast memory: the total number of KWHrs delivered by HECO to that minute since the meter started recording its data, the total number of KWHRs delivered by us to HECO, and (stay with me here for the technical part) their difference. You engineers are correctly suspecting that anyone who uses memory to store the difference of two numbers already stored elsewhere in memory is not an honors graduate of the smart design school.
So now the meter reader has to use an electronic download tool to obtain the 15-minute-increment data (because just transcribing the monthly numbers off the display would not justify the expense of employing a meter reader). The meter reader delivers the data to the billing processors who upload it into their automated (finally!) billing system.
However the clerk still has to tell the system which numbers to use to calculate the bill... because HECO's 1990-era billing system is not set up for electronic meter readers. So last week a clerk had to choose whether we paid for (1) all the KWHrs HECO's delivered to us since last August, (2) all the KWHrs we've delivered to HECO, or (3) the difference. You know where this is going. Of course these numbers are helpfully printed on the bill so I could quickly figure out what happened.
Luckily the billing supervisor caught the mistake and stopped the bill ("Ha, Nords won't see this one!!"). Unfortunately the billing supervisor didn't know that "stopping the bill" only stopped the mailed version and not the electronic one posted on HECO's website (without apology or explanation). As a slimy customer I was forced to talk to both the billing dept ("Hey, how did you know about this?!?") and the net-metering dept and, because they can't be bothered to work it out between themselves, to report their conversations to each other. Confusion & hilarity ensued, especially when the billing supervisor accused the net-metering supervisor of being responsible for the mistake-- which I promptly related to my new good buddy the net-metering supervisor.
"Whaddya do all day?!?" indeed.
The "revised" bill (in true Orwellian fashion, HECO says the first version never happened) charges for 83 KWHrs-- $19.21. Those are good numbers!
The net-metering supervisor says HECO is attempting to simultaneously upgrade their meter-reading system and their billing system. (He's hoping to retire before that happens.) The good news is that HECO's net-metering contracts have doubled in two years from just 26 to over 60, and most of the new ones are for 8-10 KW arrays.
Our 3 KW array suddenly seems somehow inadequate... I think I'm suffering from photovoltaic envy.
But first a little background. When we connected our solar (photovoltaic) array to the grid two years ago, the old analog utility meter used to spin "backwards" as we dumped more power into HECO's grid than we were using. The mechanical dials made it difficult to automate the task of the meter reader, but it was pretty simple to read it and to process the bill. The "priceless" part of the analog meter was being able to show your neighbors "Look, it's spinning backwards!" followed by demonstrating the Dilbert Engineer's Dance of Joy.
However last August HECO (presumably notified by our neighbors of my unauthorized customer amusement at public-utility expense) replaced the "old" analog meter with a digital model. They wouldn't let me keep the old one because they shipped it back to Tijuana the manufacturer for recycling. Or else they suspected why I wanted to keep it.
The digital meter is extremely uncool for several Luddite reasons, the first being that the LCD display doesn't spin backwards. (v2.0 will doubtless have an animated LCD icon that rotates at an arbitrarily proportionate rate in the appropriate direction.) You're probably thinking to yourself "Ah, but the digital meter can report its readings to HECO over the Internet or the utility lines, thereby eliminating the expense of a meter reader." You would be technically correct but you would not be a HECO customer.
This meter reports its data over the meter-readernet. Every 15 minutes, 24/7, the meter enters three numbers into its vast memory: the total number of KWHrs delivered by HECO to that minute since the meter started recording its data, the total number of KWHRs delivered by us to HECO, and (stay with me here for the technical part) their difference. You engineers are correctly suspecting that anyone who uses memory to store the difference of two numbers already stored elsewhere in memory is not an honors graduate of the smart design school.
So now the meter reader has to use an electronic download tool to obtain the 15-minute-increment data (because just transcribing the monthly numbers off the display would not justify the expense of employing a meter reader). The meter reader delivers the data to the billing processors who upload it into their automated (finally!) billing system.
However the clerk still has to tell the system which numbers to use to calculate the bill... because HECO's 1990-era billing system is not set up for electronic meter readers. So last week a clerk had to choose whether we paid for (1) all the KWHrs HECO's delivered to us since last August, (2) all the KWHrs we've delivered to HECO, or (3) the difference. You know where this is going. Of course these numbers are helpfully printed on the bill so I could quickly figure out what happened.
Luckily the billing supervisor caught the mistake and stopped the bill ("Ha, Nords won't see this one!!"). Unfortunately the billing supervisor didn't know that "stopping the bill" only stopped the mailed version and not the electronic one posted on HECO's website (without apology or explanation). As a slimy customer I was forced to talk to both the billing dept ("Hey, how did you know about this?!?") and the net-metering dept and, because they can't be bothered to work it out between themselves, to report their conversations to each other. Confusion & hilarity ensued, especially when the billing supervisor accused the net-metering supervisor of being responsible for the mistake-- which I promptly related to my new good buddy the net-metering supervisor.
"Whaddya do all day?!?" indeed.
The "revised" bill (in true Orwellian fashion, HECO says the first version never happened) charges for 83 KWHrs-- $19.21. Those are good numbers!
The net-metering supervisor says HECO is attempting to simultaneously upgrade their meter-reading system and their billing system. (He's hoping to retire before that happens.) The good news is that HECO's net-metering contracts have doubled in two years from just 26 to over 60, and most of the new ones are for 8-10 KW arrays.
Our 3 KW array suddenly seems somehow inadequate... I think I'm suffering from photovoltaic envy.
![:-\](https://www.early-retirement.org/sk/forums/images/smilies/undecided.gif "Undecided :-\")
