No power for days = Houston customer is still billed for their electricity usage. Were you?

HOUSTON – No light, no air conditioner, nothing. If you’re one of the 900,000 people who lost power for several days this month, you might expect your next bill to be slightly lower than normal. A Heights man called us when he noticed his account showed he was using electricity on days when it was impossible. Investigative journalist Amy Davis explains how to verify your own account.

You may not know it, but your electricity meter outside your home is a smart meter. You can sign up to receive notifications telling you exactly how much electricity you use each day.

Craig Wolcott has been receiving the messages for over a decade. It wasn’t until last week that he realized something was wrong. High winds toppled trees onto power lines throughout the Heights on May 16. It was without power until Saturday evening.

Wolcott: “The meters were dead. I mean, nothing had power here.

Amy: “I mean, it was the lights out.”

Wolcott: “Correct.”

Amy: “Dark.”

Wolcott: “Correct.”

Amy: “You don’t lead anything.”

Wolcott: “Absolutely nothing.”

When CenterPoint restored power to Wolcott, it found messages from Smart Meter Texas showing that on Friday it had used 22.23 kilowatts of power and on Saturday it had used 17 kilowatts.

“That’s when I realized, ‘Okay, something is wrong here.'”

He called his electricity supplier Gexa Energy.

“I basically said, ‘We have nothing to do with this.’ We simply charge for what we are told to use.

CenterPoint owns the lines and meters. CenterPoint tells your electricity provider how much electricity you have used. They also keep a real-time hour-by-hour record of your online usage. This shows that Wolcott used electricity all day Friday.

But when he called CenterPoint to ask what was going on, a customer representative told him it could be two weeks before someone came to check his meter.

“But I expect you to contact my energy company and inform them that over these 2 days you provided inaccurate information and they flat out said, ‘We won’t do that.'”

Alyssia Oshodi of CenterPoint Corporate says the Smart Meter Texas website and CenterPoint are automatically populated with your meter’s usage data and when there is no electrical power to allow the meter to communicate, the systems shut down. fill with estimated usage.

“We ask customers to wait several days because the system will go back and query the data and be able to get the correct – in this case – no usage that actually occurred,” Oshodi said .

Wolcott noticed that some numbers were changing his accounts. They’re still not completely correct, but CenterPoint said if in a week or so yours hasn’t been corrected or you receive a bill for inaccurate usage before those numbers are corrected, call your electricity provider by retail. If they don’t help you fix it, call the Public Utilities Commission.

Customers can create a free account on Smart Meter Texas to monitor electricity usage.

Do you have a question for investigator Amy Davis? Email [email protected].