Many times we hear of or see ordinary people who are struggling to survive receive over the top of electricity bills for thousands of dollars. Many blame it on their electricity meter or just assume that the electricity company has grossly overcharged.

In some cases this is true. Nobody ever questions if the man who reads the meter is wrong.

As an ex electricity meter reader and about to retire to New Zealand, I can tell you what is happening in some cases. Meter reading figures can be altered by simple technology. Some meter reader simply swings his or her own personal electricity usage onto other customers.

Others, and even worse get kick backs from some businesses to offset usage to ordinary customers.

I personally have even known two meter readers who where receiving cash money from people who had rented or bought a home and where growing or producing drugs and using thousands of dollars worth of electricity. This huge amount of electricity usage was then simply added to some poor persons bill. Whist the criminals only paid a few hundred dollars every few months for electricity usage.

As I will be living overseas, but my children and grandchildren will still live in Australia, I hope someone where you live will also help to expose this worldwide and criminal rip-off of people that can least afford it.

Cheers

I have a good friend who lives up in Trinity County who has been “off grid” for the last 11 years since he built his house. There is grid power about 2000 feet away, but PG&E wanted a large amount of money to run electrical service down to his property.
He has a solar system with an inverter and batteries. His PV array is on a tracking mechanism out in the yard. It uses water and weights to move his solar panels to follow the abundant sun during the hot season.
He uses wood for house heating, and also has a wood fired water heater (a hassle), also solar water heat coils.
He also has an AC alternator-DC generator combo for backup when he has huge parties that need to power musical equipmentand to charge the batteries.
Now he has his own hydro-electric generator 1000 feet down at the river. That generator puts out 500 volts of DC constantly during the wettest months, enough to charge his batteries and then some.
So the excess bleed off power generated now is used to heat water. The battery bank can only store so much power, so the extra would be wasted unless he built up his battery bank. The batteries are expensive and only last a finite amount of time. He said that he drives down to Sausalito to buy his batteries from a company that has the best prices in California.
Now with the economy the way it is, there is a lot of industrial equipment for sale very cheap due to the mills closing, and some of it requires 3 phase power.
Now he is building a wood shop to start milling and planing all the wood he has, and PG&E said that they would run a line down to his property for no charge if he agreed to but a lot of electricity. So he might also have grid power soon, but it won’t be 3 phase power like what is available in more urban areas.
What he will do is buy a 3 phase alternator that takes single phase power and converts it into 3 phase either electro mechanically or with solid state power electronics.
All his solar and hydo-electric gear, costs a bundle of money, probably 1000 times as expensive per kilowatt hour as buying power from the grid.
Some people have no choice but to generate their own power, but in most areas that is not necessary and far too costly. These people that tell others who don’t like what the power companies are doing to go off grid are ignorant, arrogant, assholes and don’t have a clue of what is happening in the world today. If they actually knew even a little bit about electricity, they would not be saying what they say.

Hi Tom, While going off grid is certainly an option for many people, there are those that for whatever reason- location, poverty, etc cannot do this and are therefore stuck with the utilities. Should these people be forced to have a smart meter?