What do you know about it?
Do you know what demand charges are?
Do you know if they apply to you as a residential consumer?
Here's what I was told by a savvy dude high up in the food chain at my place of employment:
Here's what I know:
A few years ago I filed for an LLC and I had a shop built on my property around the same time. The shop has its own electric meter. I paid for the shop out of my own personal coffers but I put a sign for my LLC on the door because I thought it would be cute to do so. The first few months of my electric bill for the shop were quite reasonable, but the bill I received after I put my business sign on the door was astronomical. I called the utility company and asked all kinds of questions. I never got any straight answers but what was said led me to conclude that they had determined my shop to be a business rather than a residence and were therefore billing it according to different criteria. I fought them over it but got nowhere. I took the sign off my door and everything. They refused to put my bill back to the way it had been. I gave up after a while and just accepted that it would always be this way going forward. But the next bill wasn't so bad. The one after that was actually in line with what they had been in the past. I assumed they actually listened and modified my account despite telling me that they absolutely wouldn't. That was a few years ago and the bill has remained reasonable this whole time; only that one month where it was several times higher than it should have been.
During that billing cycle, one thing I had been doing in the shop was testing 30HP Rotary Phase converter. One thing I know I tested, was starting it with a step-up transformer connected to its output, and a 15HP 3ph motor connected to the output of the transformer. When I started it, it dimmed the lights in everyone's house on this end of the road. Neighbors asked me about it. I no longer do that, out of courtesy for my neighbors. I have disconnects between each component. Turn on the RPC unloaded, then switch on the transformer, then switch on the loads to the transformer.
Now years later I'm wondering if that one instantaneous massive draw (had to be several hundred amps) is what resulted in the ridiculously high bill. If that was the effect of "demand charges" manifest but I lacked the prerequisite vocabulary to know what the people at the electric utility were trying to say (without actually saying) and it was never about a "business account" vs a "residential account."
Anyone have similar experience or know about this? I tried Googling about demand charges and several utility companies across the country have a one-paragraph blurb page giving the basic definition of "demand charge", but I could not find anywhere where that says which customers are subject to it, to what degree it effects a utility bill, etc. Basically no useful information at all.
Do you know what demand charges are?
Do you know if they apply to you as a residential consumer?
Here's what I was told by a savvy dude high up in the food chain at my place of employment:
- For commercial customers, each month the utility captures your "peak demand" - the highest instantaneous power you drew from the grid during any one moment during that month. This is a factor in an equation that determines your per-kWh TDU charges. So if your facility has drawn no more than 80kW at any given time for the first 29 days of a billing period and then on the last day someone starts up (4) 100HP electric motors at the same instant and then turns them all off a minute later, your bill will be dramatically higher than it would have been otherwise. Basically the utility is billing you for the capacity they have made available to you (and that you have availed yourself of), regardless of how often you utilize that capacity.
- For commercial customers, this charge is spelled out in a much more detailed itemized utility bill than what residential customers receive. He is the one who pays the bills, so he knows exactly how much it costs when operators don't follow startup procedure and put this kind of load on the grid, and that's why the company is having me automate sequential startups of large loads.
- He says he is "pretty sure" that residential customers are billed the same exact way, but it's all behind the scenes, with an entire spreadsheet of information hiding behind that single line item "TDU Charges."
Here's what I know:
A few years ago I filed for an LLC and I had a shop built on my property around the same time. The shop has its own electric meter. I paid for the shop out of my own personal coffers but I put a sign for my LLC on the door because I thought it would be cute to do so. The first few months of my electric bill for the shop were quite reasonable, but the bill I received after I put my business sign on the door was astronomical. I called the utility company and asked all kinds of questions. I never got any straight answers but what was said led me to conclude that they had determined my shop to be a business rather than a residence and were therefore billing it according to different criteria. I fought them over it but got nowhere. I took the sign off my door and everything. They refused to put my bill back to the way it had been. I gave up after a while and just accepted that it would always be this way going forward. But the next bill wasn't so bad. The one after that was actually in line with what they had been in the past. I assumed they actually listened and modified my account despite telling me that they absolutely wouldn't. That was a few years ago and the bill has remained reasonable this whole time; only that one month where it was several times higher than it should have been.
During that billing cycle, one thing I had been doing in the shop was testing 30HP Rotary Phase converter. One thing I know I tested, was starting it with a step-up transformer connected to its output, and a 15HP 3ph motor connected to the output of the transformer. When I started it, it dimmed the lights in everyone's house on this end of the road. Neighbors asked me about it. I no longer do that, out of courtesy for my neighbors. I have disconnects between each component. Turn on the RPC unloaded, then switch on the transformer, then switch on the loads to the transformer.
Now years later I'm wondering if that one instantaneous massive draw (had to be several hundred amps) is what resulted in the ridiculously high bill. If that was the effect of "demand charges" manifest but I lacked the prerequisite vocabulary to know what the people at the electric utility were trying to say (without actually saying) and it was never about a "business account" vs a "residential account."
Anyone have similar experience or know about this? I tried Googling about demand charges and several utility companies across the country have a one-paragraph blurb page giving the basic definition of "demand charge", but I could not find anywhere where that says which customers are subject to it, to what degree it effects a utility bill, etc. Basically no useful information at all.