Hey RWC 1972 Got a question for you!

I am working on a large project in Las Vegas and I have a question about their billing. I thought you might know the answer. This particular business is under a LGS 3 rate structure with Nevada Energy. This billing plan allows for the power company to adjust the company's usage by a "percentage loss factor" of .62. On the bill I am working on, their previous meter reading was 48795, their current reading is 49116 for a usage of 321. Their meter multiplier was 1800. This gives a usage of 577,800 kwh, however, they were billed for 961,026 kwh.

My first question is this, how does that math work out?

If you go to the rules quoted in Nevada powers tarrif schedule it says that they are allowed to do this in an effort to be compensated for the losses between the high side and the low side of the transformers, when a customer is primary metered. Are there really transformers out there that are that inefficient? They are coming with 12,470 and stepping down to 480.

The rules also say that if the customer provides their own metering devices that compensate for these losses, that this fee will not be charged. Do you know of a meter out there that will do this?

Any help you give me with these questions, will be greatly appreciated.

Jay Morris

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Permalink Reply by Jay V Morris on April 3, 2009 at 3:14pm

RWC-

I see you have responded to other discussions, why not this one? I was hoping that you might be able to clarify some issues for me.

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Permalink Reply by RWC1972 on April 25, 2009 at 6:57pm

Hi Jay,

Sorry, I've been way for awhile.

Looking over the LSG 3 schedule, they bill you at a 90% power factor and if the power factor is lower than 90% you will be billed accordingly, which they indicate with the "percentage loss factor" of 0.62 0r 62%. The numbers are pretty close as the power factor from the numbers you have provided are about 0.60.

Does this facility have large industrial motors or other large inductive loads present? This would most likely account for the decreased power factor. A transformer would not provide that amount of loss unless something was seriously wrong.

Unfortunately I do not think there is a meter out there that will compensate for those losses. However, a capacitor bank would correct the power factor but I am not sure what the utility's policy is on that or if it would make a difference in their billing.

Hope this helps a little bit.