PG&E customers question big bill increases

With reports from several Mid-Valley residents of soaring energy bills since May, some suspect PG&E's SmartMeter program that has raised controversy elsewhere.

After three months of ballooning bills, Elvin Gorham of Yuba City said he has had enough: He wants what he calls his "dumb meter" back.

"I'm not even using my air conditioner today," said Gorham, 76, who said his monthly bill went from $102.75 in May, when the meter was installed, to $456.31 in June and $793.70 last month. The bills rose even as he began taking steps to use less electricity, he said, such as turning off air conditioning.

Gorham, who said he and his wife can't afford the higher bills on their limited income, isn't the only one seeing the pattern of higher bills.

Brenda Azevedo of Yuba City said her PG&E bill rose from $83 to $102 in her apartment from June to July, even though she consciously cut back on how much electricity she used.

Another Yuba City resident, Vanessa Webb, said her July bill last year was $350, but rose to $530 this year, even though she has been home less and used her air conditioning less.

Both women said the prices began soaring after the utility company installed new meters under the SmartMeter program. Several readers who commented online about a letter to the Appeal-Democrat about higher PG&E bills reported similar hikes and blamed the meters, which utility company officials say allow them to read usage remotely and with more accuracy.

But the meters can't explain everything, as the original letter writer, Bryan Morrison of Yuba City, said he hasn't had one installed yet.

At his home, the bill went from $169.70 in May to $977 in July, even though he was on vacation a third of the month. He said utility officials told him an employee read the meter incorrectly, and will credit him for the overcharge on future bills.

"I just want them to bill me for what we used," Morrison said, adding, "I'm confused why there's a monopoly for PG&E, where they can just raise our rates or put in these meters."

A spokesman for PG&E confirmed Morrison would be credited, and would offer a meter test and energy audit for Gorham's home.

Overall, spokesman Brian Swanson said, the utility company has found only 10 accuracy errors in new meters, after installing more than 6.3 million of them.

"It's important to us for our customers to have as much confidence in this new technology as we do," Swanson said, adding the utility company does several tests of the meters before and during deployment.

He said there are several possible explanations for the higher bills, such as increased energy demand from temperatures rising between June and July or problems with transmissions of information from meters leading to estimated bills for some customers.

As well, new, more accurate meters may be recording a truer level of electrical usage than the old ones did, he said.

Swanson encouraged customers who saw aberrations in their bills to call the utility company through a dedicated phone number for the SmartMeter program, 1-866-743-0263.

Some of those explanations didn't wash with customers, though. While it might make sense for July bills to be higher than June, they said, they'd expect them to be lower than in July last year, when the Yuba-Sutter region experienced more days of temperatures over 100 and 95 degrees, according to National Weather Service statistics.

"I've run the air conditioning much less because it's been such a mild summer," said Ajayab Dhaddey of Yuba City, who noticed on his bill he had used less kilowatt hours compared to a year earlier, 37 to 55, but still saw his bill go to $506, double a year earlier.

A spokesman for the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates companies like PG&E, said the agency in the midst of an independent study of the SmartMeter program to determine where the problems stem from.

The spokesman, Andrew Kotch, said the report, which should be completed within a month, is also taking milder weather and rate changes into consideration.

Swanson said the utility company has seen fewer problems with the meters as more of them are installed, and added PG&E believes they will ultimately benefit customers.

The meters allow customers to monitor electrical usage online on an hourly basis, he said, and a related program will give customers who opt in an alert when they should reduce their usage, and thus their bills, during peak demand periods.