I need some advice on a customer's situation. This guy has been paying $250 to $400 bills to the utility for many, many years. He's my former boss (from the machine shop I worked at once upon a time) - and can afford it, but I went over and analyzed his service in prep for doing a solar system and discovered that the house sits there all day (they are work-a-holics) drawing less than 4amps /120vac. I've got access to his APS account which now has detailed reporting and according to APS, his load never goes below 17 amps 24/7. Kind of looks like the meter has a sticky spot in it causing it to show a minimum floor of usage. If I'm right, he's probably mistakenly spent like $20,000 on our friends at the utility.
The question is: what can be done to prove to the utility that the meter is bad so they will refund him? I imagine that if we have APS come check out the meter, they'll replace it and "lose" the old one. I could wire a second meter in series pretty easily, but I don't imagine they will accept that as proof. Do we need to get a lawyer involved? Are there any certified monitoring services available that will hold up in court? Ideas?
The question is: what can be done to prove to the utility that the meter is bad so they will refund him? I imagine that if we have APS come check out the meter, they'll replace it and "lose" the old one. I could wire a second meter in series pretty easily, but I don't imagine they will accept that as proof. Do we need to get a lawyer involved? Are there any certified monitoring services available that will hold up in court? Ideas?
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