Americans are confused and worried about the installation of smart electric meters. Some believe the meters result in higher bills. In North Texas, where Watchdog Nation founder Dave Lieber lives, Oncor Electric Delivery denies that.

The Watchdog is on the case. Here’s the latest.

Remember that Oncor maintains the power lines and installs the new meters. Your electricity provider handles your billing.

Installation update

Almost 1 million new meters have been installed in Oncor’s service area. That’s about one-third of the more than 3 million residences and businesses that will receive them by 2013, the Public Utility Commission of Texas says.

The PUC hired a company to test the meters, and that continues. So far, 1,400 meters have been tested “and all were found to be accurate,” according to the PUC.

Oncor has acknowledged that 1,800 customers’ meter readings were in error, but the company blames human error during conversion to the new meters. It says the meters themselves are fine.

Meanwhile, in California, Pacific Gas and Electric has admitted that there were 43,000 cases in which smart meters had problems, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

“The utility found 23,000 meters that were installed improperly, 11,376 that failed to retain consumer usage information and 9,000 that had trouble connecting with the wireless network,” the paper reported. The utility said that only “a few” customers received inaccurate bills.

Turns out that the meters that were installed incorrectly were gas meters and that the “vast majority” of those customers got inaccurate bills, the paper reported.

California state officials, like those in Texas, continue investigating.

Installation difficulties

Thanks to Melodi and George Faris of Fort Worth for teaching me two important facts about smart-meter installations.

First, Oncor can enter your back yard to install the meters without your permission.

Second, during the installation, the power to your home will go off for several minutes.

Melodi Faris told me how she watched an Oncor installer climb over their wrought iron gate, then push a button that opened the gate to her driveway. When Melodi Faris confronted the installer, he denied climbing the fence. He said he reached through the gate and pushed the button. She measured the distance and told me that’s not possible.

After the power went off, the family’s phones went dead. Permanently.

They filed a claim with Oncor for the replacement cost, but it was denied. Oncor stated in a letter that it is not responsible for “voltage fluctuations or electrical interruptions.”

An Oncor spokeswoman told me that proper installation procedures were followed. Oncor left a notice on the front door that it would be doing work, and the installer knocked before entering the property. No one answered.

As for jumping the fence, she said, “In normal circumstances, he would use a ladder.”

Power goes off “no more than a minute or two,” she said.

“Every person should have protection for their appliances,” she added. “Surge protectors. That’s what we recommend.”

Website problems

A new website — www.SmartMeterTexas.com — is supposed to let customers with smart meters manage electric usage.

Greg McKinney of Arlington, who works on websites for a bank, says he cannot get the site to work for the new smart meter at his home.

“It’s as though they didn’t test the test before rolling it out,” he says.

He wrote to me: “Dave, I don’t know what you can do here, but it’s frustrating that with electricity deregulation, I’m supposed to educate myself about electricity usage. And the very tools that the PUC puts out there” don’t work.

The PUC tells me the site is operated by Oncor and other transmission and distribution utilities. Users must have smart meters for about a month or two before the site will work.

So far, 2,000 electric customers have enrolled, the PUC reports.

Doing the right thing

Donald Martin of Fort Worth is trying to do the right thing. He says he tallies his kilowatt-hour usage by looking at his smart meter every day.

“When I received my last bill, I compared their current meter reading to my recorded reading,” he wrote. “Their reading was 37 kWh more than my observation.”

He called TXU Energy, his retail provider, but says he couldn’t communicate with the rep and got frustrated.

The Watchdog contacted TXU. A spokeswoman listened to the tapes of his calls.

“He was really upset ….,” she told me. “He did not let us help him.”

Meanwhile, an Oncor spokeswoman told me that Martin’s problem was that his bill stated his meter was read on May 12, but the actual reading occurred on May 13, hence the difference in usage.

“We have two business days to get in there around that time to actually read the meter,” she said. “We read it the next day. Sometimes that happens. We try to stick to the schedule. We read so many meters in a day that this might happen.”

She also taught me — and you — a new trick to get better service from Oncor. Each city has an Oncor community manager. The managers’ phone numbers and e-mail addresses are listed on Oncor’s website.

Here’s how to find it: Go to oncor.com and look for the Community tab on the upper-right corner. On the drop-down menu click on Community and Customer Relations. On the left side, click on Local Contacts, then find your city and the local area manager.

“That’s something you can do if you don’t feel satisfied,” the Oncor spokeswoman says.

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Read Dave Lieber’s previous post about how Smart meters are becoming urban legends.

Read an earlier Dave Lieber post about how Oncor doesn’t have a sufficient emergency alert system for its customers.

Read the Dave Lieber post about how to fight your electric company.

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Read Texas PUC Chairman Barry Smitherman’s presentation to a Texas legislative committee in May 2010 here.

The latest PUC news release about independent smart meter testing is here.

Here is the complete rule for Texans about smart meters from the PUC.

This is the smart meter website that the state offers Texans to measure their usage. This is the PUC announcement about the site.

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

The battle cry for residents in a seniors community in Fort Worth, Texas goes like this:

“I’m gettin’ beat ’cause I want to use some heat!”

Residents tried to figure out why their electric bills have doubled in the past few months.

Last week, they called a meeting and invited me. They showed me their bills, almost all of them from TXU Energy. They had a lot of theories about what went wrong — meters not read properly, for example.

After I bit, as I first reported in the Jan. 31, 2010 Dave Lieber column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I gave them my initial expert opinion.

It was bitterly cold in late December. Of course bills go up.

But then I dug deeper into their cases, looking at their bills and asking each resident two crucial questions:

What kilowatt-per-hour rate do you pay?

When does your contract expire?

Almost nobody knew the answers. Their problem, it seems, is much worse than high winter bills. Most likely, these residents are paying more than necessary because they haven’t shopped around for electricity. Unfortunately, many Texans still don’t know how to do that.

We worked on their cases, and in the end, I hope I solved their problem. Best of all, my solution may work for you, too. But before we get to that, let’s listen to a few of the residents:

Martha Beaman: “My bill was $28 in November. Then, in December, it was $256. And for January, it was $233. I am never at home. I work. This is stressful because my wages haven’t gone up as the bill goes up. I have to calculate every penny I earn because my job has been cut back on hours this month. I’m struggling.”

Shirley Stockton: “I knew the cold weather was coming and cranked my heater down to 65. I turned my water heater off through the cold snap, and the bill still went from $36 to $96. I only turn my water heater on every few days when I need it.” (When she called to tell a TXU rep that, she says the rep told her that hot water “is a privilege.”)

Debbie Wilson: Her bill jumped from $78 to $176 to $272: “After I got the high bill for December, I cut my thermostat to 67. I use oxygen at night, so I have to have enough electricity to pay for that. I’d rather go cold than not have my air at night.”

Anita Mayfield: Her bill went from $64 to $149. “I’m getting tired of cooking on a microwave. I wear sweats all the time. I have the thermostat turned down to 60 degrees. I wash in cold water. When you live on a fixed income, you can’t afford this. You don’t know where you are going to pay these extras from.”

Charlie Berry: His bill went from $40 to $176 to $227. “At this rate, by the time I get the next bill, I’m going to have to apply for assistance from the U.S. government just to pay my electric bill.”

Steve Kerr: “During the cold snap I was out of town for three weeks with the heating system turned off.” His bill went from $90 to $146 to $236. He is skeptical about whether the meter was read. “Whether or not it was read — that’s the $64,000 question,” he says.

Oncor spokeswoman Carol Peters said later that the bills are higher because this has been the second-coldest winter in the past two decades. “There’s a 30 percent increase in the heating requirements over last year,” she said. Oncor delivers the electricity through the lines and hires the meter readers. TXU is the residents’ retail provider by their choice.

TXU spokeswoman Sophia Stoller looked at 13 cases of Providence Village residents provided by The Watchdog. All but one seemed accurate, she said. In the questionable case, the initial bill looked too low.

TXU offers several ways for customers to get help with their bills, including a 10 percent discount as part of the Low Income Discount Plan. But you have to ask. TXU Energy Aid helps customers who say they have a hardship, such as loss of job or illness.

When I looked at the residents’ bills, I found that many are paying as much as 13, 14 or 15 cents per kilowatt-hour.

However, last week, the state-run PowertoChoose.org Web site showed the lowest prices I’ve seen — 8.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

So the quickest way to lower your electric bill is not to turn down a thermostat or turn off a water heater but to learn when your contract expires and shop for a better deal. If there’s a cancellation fee, it will be more than covered in a few months by cutting a 15-cent rate almost in half.

As proof, one Providence Village resident said she paid $250 to cancel her contract before it expired so she could switch to Green Mountain Energy. Her neighbors sighed when Helen Nash reported that her recent bill was only $93.

If you’re not sure about the best way to shop around, I’ve got you covered. I’ve distributed tens of thousands of free copies of my guide showing how to get the best buy in Texas electricity. You can find it by clicking here on “Dave Lieber Guide to Saving on Your Electricity Bill.”

You can also e-mail me at watchdog@star-telegram.com or request a copy at Dave Lieber, Star-Telegram, P.O. Box 1870, Fort Worth, TX 76101.

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What to do If you need help on your electric bill, call 211.

Customers who receive food stamps or Medicaid may qualify for the Lite Up Texas discount or other assistance.

Ask your electric company whether it offers assistance. Also ask to pay a big bill over several months, allowed under law.

On Feb. 3, 2010, Tarrant County Human Services will take applications from those who are retired or on disability and receive no other income. Call 817-531-5620 on Wednesday and ask for an appointment. Only 500 appointments will be scheduled.

Source: Tarrant County Human Services

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Dave Lieber, The Watchdog columnist for The Fort Worth Star-Telegram, is the founder of Watchdog Nation. The new 2010 edition of his book, Dave Lieber’s Watchdog Nation: Bite Back When Businesses and Scammers Do You Wrong, is out. Revised and expanded, the book won two national book awards in 2009 for social change. Twitter @DaveLieber

Watchdog Nation had a theory: Some electricity companies, despite horrendous customer service, are getting away with it. But is the theory true?

Based on the hundreds of letters we receive each year at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from people complaining about their electricity bills, we wondered what happened to the thousands of complaints about electricity companies that go to the Public Utility Commission of Texas each year.

Do the companies get penalized?

As The Watchdog columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, I conducted a study. Using the open-records law, we requested the total complaints from customers of three companies that had severe difficulties in the past two years – Amigo Energy, TXU Energy and Direct Energy. We studied the number of complaints, the number that were investigated and what action was taken against any offenders.

The findings are described in detail in Sunday’s Fort Worth Star-Telegram (7/12/09) here. And you can have the reprint of our Guide to Shopping for Electric Rates – requested already by thousands of people.

In summary, the best way to counter an electric company (or any company for that matter) that harms you is to complain, complain and complain. By forcing up complaint numbers, the trend lines show a problem, thereby making the regulators more likely to take strong action.

By the way, colleague Jack Z. Smith tells a much-needed story about how the elderly, especially, can shop for lower rates here.