Yeah. I’ll bet the last bill is based on an actual reading pegged to the previous real reading 8 or more months previous. The previous months were probably some half-assed (and way too low) estimates. Billings based on estimates are provisional and subject to adjustment in a future billing. Add them all up and divide by seven and that’s probably close to the actual usage per month.
What are your typical electrical rates? Ballpark ($0.05/kWh, $0.20/kWh, $0.50/kWh?). $10 in a month is just barely imaginable for a very low-use person if you have very cheap rates (like $0.05), but seems pretty unlikely. Especially if you live in a place with any weather at all.
I’ll take it. I’m trying to gather all of the pertinent info.
Having a tenant complain about this is not unusual. Usually they’ve recently purchased a space heater or two. Or maybe the fridge is going out and the compressor is staying on a lot. but they are never spikes like this.
Just to put things in context–a (normally operating) refrigerator by itself probably uses around 30 kWh/mo. If you have somewhat high rates, like $0.35/kWh, that’s $10/mo just to keep the fridge running. The bills seem very unlikely to be that low in that case.
Basically, they were erroneously low beforehand unless you have extremely cheap rates.
I’d look first at exactly what the bills say is being measured. Is the “spike” bill in fact due to enormous usage in that month? The bill should show the KWh used as well as the total amount due, and while I can’t think of a reason why the rate would spike so high in March, of all months, at least you’d be able to see whether it was due to higher usage or a higher rate.
If, as some of the other posters here have mentioned, the usage was updated after some period of estimation, the sudden spike due to the update might have also pushed the rate higher for some of the greater “usage”, in which case the total bill might have also gone higher than a simple linear extrapolation from the usage would indicate. Spreading out the usage over multiple months might decrease the rate as well.
I’ve reached out to the other tenants, so far only one has gotten back to me and she reported that her bill also spiked at over $200 which she said she wasn’t used to. (she was at work and didn’t have her previous totals with her,
Just chiming in that those are VERY low bills. In the early 90s, immediately after college, I lived by myself in a cold-water, no-A/C walk-up, without even its own bathroom. And gas stove, with radiators for heat, the old-fashioned kind.
I ran a box fan overnight during the hottest months, and watched some TV. I did not own a computer-- just one of those souped-up electric typewriters that had disk storage and an 8-line blue/yellow display, which I didn’t even use daily.
Those low bills were about what I paid per month back then on that place.
I think in 2025, there are Mennonite families paying more per month.
Wow, those bills are insanely low. Literally less than the standing charge we pay each month if we use no electricity at all.
I have also encountered the big adjustment after a meter reading, and that seems to be the most likely explanation here. Should be easy to check by asking the power company.
That was my thinking. Summer months where we use virtually no natural gas, I still pay around $20 in line charges, fees and taxes. I can’t imagine it’s much different for electric (we never have a low usage electric month)
This happened to me a couple years ago with my gas bill when the meters were still manually read. I checked the meter myself (the type where you have to read the dials clockwise then counterclockwise then clockwise again, etc.) and the meter reader had goofed on one of the numbers. I suddenly had a nearly $300 gas bill when it’s normally about $50. This is just for a gas stove and nothing else, so I normally pay $2 for the gas I use and $48 for the privilege of having gas service. In comparison, my winter electric usage is about $10 for 140 kWh plus another $20 in hookup fees, totaling about $30. In the hot summer months due to air conditioning, that number can go up to $100 for 650 kWh.
Anyway, is it possible that the electric meters in this scenario are still manually read? If so it could mean a mis-read on the part of the meter reader, or as others have suggested it could be a readjustment due to multiple missed months of meter reading. Perhaps the prior months match those month’s bills from the year before? Sometimes tenants do stupid things too, like running the a/c in winter or blasting an electric space heater. I think grow lights are all LED now so that’s probably not it.
I think the surge is when they started their grow op.
Actually, I’m inclined to side with “they finally got around to actually reading the meter and adjusted the cumulative utilization (and charged for it)”.
This is the one that really convinces me that the issue is with the low readings, not the high one.
I once was getting free cable I knew damned well was a mistake. When the cable company figured it out, they wanted to back-bill me with interest. I told them I wasn’t going to pay, and they could sue me. They said they would shut off the cable. This was way back in the days when cable just meant a clearer picture and a few extra channels, so I said fine.
We eventually settled things, and I had to pay, but not what they originally wanted.
So, since then, though, any time it seems like I’m getting something for nothing, I check it out.
If I had electric bills like the first ones, I’d be calling the company up.
