OK, first I never expect to read "Moved to California, paying a much more reasonable utility bill.." :-)
That said, it is very hard to argue with the power company. As the article points out you can have the meter sent to a special testing lab but if it works, well it you are out of luck. About 10 years ago a friend in the Santa Cruz mountains got a bill that was out of whack (and he was a EE) and the power company would not be budged, so he pulled his meter out of the socket for a month[1] (don't try this at home!) and still got billed for a bunch of power use. It turned out that someone had 'tapped' the power wires leading up to his house, and PG&E wasn't bothering to read his house meter, just looking at how much their transformer sent to the 'only' house up there. Whoops.
One of the things I suspected, and then later proved, was that my 1st generation SunnyBoy inverters from SMA on my Solar system confused the smart meter when they installed it. It would not accurately read the power generated by the panels so was under reporting power generated. That got "fixed" when one of the inverters failed (unrelated, it was over 10 years old) and we replaced two 2500W inverters with a single 5500W inverter. The modern inverter and smart meter get along fine.
[1] Since he lives in the mountains and outages were not infrequent he had a whole house generator powered by propane that he could use.
I'm curious as to the details of your friend's story.
Maybe they do it differently in CA than FL, but I have never seen any device that measures "how much their transformer" sends installed in any normal situation.
A more reasonable explanation would be that they were using "estimated" billing -- billing that is based on a few spot checks of the meter reading, but not a check every month. This is common in places that the electrical meter is not easily accessible, such as behind a gate or being guarded by a dog(or out in the mountains). In this case they would have extrapolated previous months to produce an estimated usage and billed on that.
I have had direct experience with a local power company billing for a "demand"[1] rate that exceeded by >300% the actual capability of the transformer and wires to supply. If that amount had actually been consumed, the wires would have caught fire and/or the transformer would have failed, possibly spectacularly. After I pointed this out to them, they quietly refunded the amount without an explanation and assured me there were no other errors of this type.
I can only relate it as I heard it. I expect that by now the properties have wireless smart meters and actually reading the meter is no longer an issue.
3. Get hit by a massive bill when moving to another property.
In Norway, they do the same - you are supposed to report your actual usage, but if you don't or they believe you've gamed the numbers, they just guesstimate based on the average consumption in the area, past consumption in your home, phase of the moon, whatever.
However, when you move, both you and the new owner/renter need to read off the meter and sign a form, after which the balance is settled.
Years ago, I had a massive refund - ever the workaholic, I traveled 230+ days a year and, unsurprisingly, consumed much less electricity than the previous tenant.
The utility company refused to believe the numbers I reported (which, in fairness, I didn't report too often, as I was most often abroad during the reporting window (typically a couple of days either side of a billing period change))
After a few years, I asked them to send a representative to have a look at my meter; they refused, claiming that they had other, more important matters to attend to.
End result: When I moved after seven years, I got a refund of more than US$6,000. I had a couple of extra beers that evening.
I warned the incoming tenant that he really, really wanted to report his usage - if they guesstimated consumption based on my numbers, he'd be in for a nasty surprise when leaving the property...
My provider here allows me to report my usage with either their mobile app or website. If I forget to do it, they charge me based on some average like the one you describe. It works quite well on the whole, and seems both fair and efficient.
I had a place in the UK where the meter was connected incorrectly.
It had "Economy 7" tariff, which was supposed to mean 7 hours of cheaper electricity at night. In fact, we had the cheap rate in the day, and the expensive rate at night.
The online system never accepted my readings, and a guy would come round. One of them showed me how the meter was wrong, but didn't want to report it -- I don't think he was paid enough to care.
Maybe they do it differently in CA than FL, but I have never seen any device that measures "how much their transformer" sends installed in any normal situation.
Indeed. I don't think that gets measured anywhere, other than in a general "this areas utilises "x" Mwh, so on average, section "y" would use "z"
Shortly after I moved to the Bay in 2007, we were excited to get out the lights and decorate the house for Xmas. Our bill was $1,200 that month. We had a lot of lights, but usually ran them in Oklahoma, where electricity is much, much cheaper. No tiered pricing either.
A watt is about a buck a year, so 12 months/year times 1200/month is about 14.4 kilowatts, thats over 120 amps average load, or maybe 240 amps worth of blinkie lights. I find that unlikely to be christmas lights.
It looks like you're using national average electricity pricing of about 10 cents per kwh. In California there's a tiered pricing schedule; the more you use the more it costs -- up to a max of around 500% in Jan 2007.
With this in mind his load is closer to 24A. Seems entirely reasonable for 2007 with incandescent strings. I remember tripping 20A breakers with incandescent lights and having to run lines from different circuits in my childhood.
Yup, incandescent strings, reindeer, bush blankets, you name it. It looked like Xmas threw up on our house. I've tripped breakers before.
I would also note our bill at that house ran $400-500 when "normally cold", which I should have mentioned in my post and which only occurs here a few months of the year. Still, we were shocked and it was a lot of lights!
Grow lights and decorated the house with "greenery" for christmas? Sorry, read news too often about pot plantations and their high electricity consumption...
That said, it is very hard to argue with the power company. As the article points out you can have the meter sent to a special testing lab but if it works, well it you are out of luck. About 10 years ago a friend in the Santa Cruz mountains got a bill that was out of whack (and he was a EE) and the power company would not be budged, so he pulled his meter out of the socket for a month[1] (don't try this at home!) and still got billed for a bunch of power use. It turned out that someone had 'tapped' the power wires leading up to his house, and PG&E wasn't bothering to read his house meter, just looking at how much their transformer sent to the 'only' house up there. Whoops.
One of the things I suspected, and then later proved, was that my 1st generation SunnyBoy inverters from SMA on my Solar system confused the smart meter when they installed it. It would not accurately read the power generated by the panels so was under reporting power generated. That got "fixed" when one of the inverters failed (unrelated, it was over 10 years old) and we replaced two 2500W inverters with a single 5500W inverter. The modern inverter and smart meter get along fine.
[1] Since he lives in the mountains and outages were not infrequent he had a whole house generator powered by propane that he could use.