[SunRescue] Power concerns.

[Chris Byrne]

Tim,

It is difficult to do this for yourself without specialized equipment, but
you can get an good electrical contractor to do a power totalization test
for you. They can test the max draw of any single appliance, as well as
the mx draw of your entire electrical system, and they should be able to
come up with an average.

But I have two much simpler explanations.

1. Check your power rate and surchaerges. THey have been going up month
to month in some markets

2. Do you have electric heat?


Even though you may not have changed your thermostat setting, the local
environmental conditions may have caused your electric heat, water heaters,
and or other environmental conditioning systems to use more power than usual,
without you noticing naything different.


Of course the power company could just be dead wrong. I was living in a
two bedroom apartment once, and one month they said I used 14 megawatt hours.

Considering that the apartment only had a 40amp servce panel the most I
could possibly have been drawing through the wiring of the building was
4.8kw/hr, and there's only 720 hours in a month, this a maximum of 345.6
kw/hr. 

14 megawatt hours in a single month would have lit up my wiring like a toaster.

It took me six months and three inspections before they agreed that I was
being overcharged. Meanwhile they shut my power off three times for failure
to pay.


Chris Byrne

-- Original Message --

>
>Recently, we received a few bills in the mail from ConEd, which didn't
>seem right.  Our first bill, with 8 machines running, came in around
>$130.  The next two consecutive months came in near $190.  Now, we
>didn't turn anything else on, and, in fact, turned one of the machines
>off.  
>
>What's the best way to find out exactly what amount of power a machine
>is drawing, and calculate ourselves exactly how much we should be paying
>(give or take some with the lights and television, etc)?
>
>We CANNOT be using more power, with less computers running, and turning
>off lights constantly.  Something's fishy.  I want to find out if
>someone else is drawing power from our feed (we're in a house with three
>apartments).
>
>Any info would be appreciated.
>
>-- 
>
>
>Tim Harrison
>Network Engineer
>harrison at timharrison.com
>http://www.networklevel.com/
>_______________________________________________
>Rescue maillist  -  Rescue at sunhelp.org
>http://www.sunhelp.org/mailman/listinfo/rescue
>