Tony Serviente wrote:I stand corrected Kitty, should have said continental US, and my condolences. Now if you had about three football fields of solar panels, or maybe hooked up to little geothermal from one of those handy volcanoes... Bert and Phil, yes, demand metering is vexing. I once forgot to reset my timer when we had a time change, so the kilns kicked on an hour early. My electric bill went up $700 for the month. If that only happened for 1 second instead of an hour, it would have been the same. But like you Bert, the power company decides what kind of metering I get, and right now there are no viable options in NY state, so I just try to be very careful, and on weekends when there are no restrictions I get in double or triple firings if I can.
Tony, I don't understand what kind of meter you could possibly have? On any given firing cycle your relays kick in and kick out. A meter can only register two possible inputs, the time of day and the instantaneous power that is being consumed. I assume that the meter is averaging over some periodic length but the point is, the meter can't possibly know that you have a 15 hour firing schedule and since you started it 1 hour before the cheaper rate you would get dinged for the higher rate for the whole firing cycle. At least that is what I believe you are trying to infer. Point is, if you started 1 second before the higher rate vs 1 hour you should certainly see a difference in the charge. I'm not disputing you saw a larger bill, you obviously had to pay it, but the way that electrical power is metered is not what I believe you are describing.
In my case, I pay 9 cents/KWH between the hours of 8am and 9pm M-F and 4.5 cents/KWH from 9pm and 8am and on weekends. The power I use in those respective windows is billed at the rates I described. If I have a cycle that starts say at 8pm, I'll pay 9cents/KWH for the first hour of the firing and 4.5cents/KWH for the rest of the cycle.
I don't know how big and how many kilns you have but it sounds like it must be a lot if the accumulated 1 hour delta on firings for one month amount to $700. That just doesn't smack right to me (like I think you are really getting hosed by possibly a miss reading of your meter) Anyway, I thought I'd at least pass that on.
Phil