Home Improvement → [Electrical] neutral problem between house and pole

ok, been watching my electric bill like a hawk. live in central maine, forced air heat, electric hot water heater 5 people in the house. january used 2348.7kwh, february used 2558.8kwh, march used 3444.9kwh. when the bill arrived this morning i almost fell out of my chair!!! called the electric company and asked how is this possible, do laundry one day per week, avg 7 showers per week, all swirly bulbs etc etc etc. also having minor brownouts every day. the lady told me she could send a crew to look. the guy came right out and i heard them talking about "a neutral issue on our side between the house and the pole" I also heard him say something to the other guy that there shouldnt be more than 3v difference??? what does that mean? and is this why my bill is so high?? I called the electric company back and they said they would have to wait for the paperwork.

A bad neutral is a bad situation, it can cause a fire and it's really a good thing that you caught it before any trouble started. It truly is one of those thing you want to take care of NOW, not tomorrow or not later.

The neutral return line to the transformer allows each "hot" line (there are two) to keep the proper voltage. if that line is damaged then the voltage of each hot line can swing WAY out of tolerance (one will go high, the other low) and that can cause devices on the high leg to consume more power, burn out, flame out or just die early. Motors on the low leg may overheat or burn out trying to start.

Meanwhile, the high-resistance neutral can become very hot (at least in your case it sounds like that was outside, hopefully not near anything flammable).

gary, thanks for your rapid reply. i just got a call from the power company and the gal there tells me that it is NOT why my bill has jumped so dramtaticly. is she accurate or do you have any thoughts??? i am paranoid about the bills because i got hurt in august of 13 and am unfortunately living off short term disability. if you have ever lost your power you know its the worst.

A neutral problem won't cause your electric bill to rise. For some reason you just use more electricity.

Given the cold weather this winter and extended run times on your forced air heating, when was the last time you checked and replaced your filter?

I got caught by this during this winter. My heat pump ran more than normal and my regular 30 day check interval on my filter was too long. Could not understand why my system was running so long, noticed usage increase, and when I checked my filter, it was almost completely clogged. Now I get twice the air flow after changing the filter.

You and I are in Virginia not about 70 miles apart. You got caught because the severity of the weather not a filter.

Dec 15 to Jan 15 2013 I used 2024 kWh Around $200
Dec 15 to Jan 15 2014 I used 4230 kWh Around $430

Heatpump was running on strip heaters a lot due to the very low outdoor temperature.

Exactly! We had a neutral problem last year. Apparently whoever did the 100 amp upgrade a few years before we bought the place hooked the service wires back up with wire clamps off the old service panel then wrapped them in electrical tape. Over time the electrical tape became brittle and started to break. The connect started to corrode. The power company came and fixed it at no charge. I'll take a picture of them and upload them. People will get a kick out of what some 'hack' did.

It was a combination. I had a significant increase in air flow when I replaced the filter. Lets put it this way, before changing the filter, the line coming into the air handler from the compressor was its usual hot temp and the return line was warm to moderately hot. Once I replaced the filter, the incoming line was still its usual hot temperature but the return was cool.

That tells me there wasn't even enough air flow to pull all the latent heat out of the coils. So in essence, the unit was running longer because it wasn't supplying enough BTU's to the house to keep it at temperature.

a bad neutral will cause 120v devices to draw more power on the higher leg, and the devices on the lower leg will have to run longer. warmer weather SHOULD be making your bill go down if you have electric forced air heat, you didn't say what kind you have. you didn't say if you have a well pump either.. if you are in a hot climate, and use window AC's, a bad neutral will make them run longer. there's a correlation somewhere between the bad neutral and the bills getting higher. this kind of jump is not from lighting, btw.. compare your bills from much further back, the same months last year would be best. is something outside or inside getting used more in the warmer weather? that's a clue too..

please explain to me how a higher voltage will cause a non resistive load to use more power? and even with resistive there is a limit to how high it can go

Does your power company put the average temp for the month on your bills?? Mine does and it gives a baseline for comparison for month/month, year/year. I also figure what the total price/kwh is every month to use for comparison also. One bill was extraordinarily high and it turned out the cost per kwh had jumped 50% ...

What made the cost per kWh jump 50 percent? That would be a tremendous rate increase. Did you mean your usage jumped 50 percent?

na it happened around here with people on variable. i know a guy who had a 500 dollar a month electric bill turn into a 1700 dollar bill next month, because the rate went from 9c to 32c

Really the only thing that won't is something with a switching power supply. And no, the only limit for a resistive load is when it melts and burns open.

/M

Electrical tape alone is not weather protection.

Yeah, you need duct tape for that!

first thing I would suggest is to compare the meter reading on your march bill with the current reading on the meter..

it could be that your bill was based on an estimated read and not an actual read.. if it was an actual read, there is a possibility that a wrong number was entered into the system for your reading.

I see a 1000 kwh increase on the march bill compared to previous months - for me who used to work for an electric co and saw hundreds if not thousands of bills, a 1000 kwh jump is usually a sign of a mis-read meter.

if your meter is reading a lower number than the reading on the bill, call your electric company with this info and they will re-calculate and send you a new bill.

I see that you mentioned you have forced air heating, but I don't see where you told us the fuel source for the heat. Gas, oil, electric strips, heat pump? It has been a COLD winter in your part of the world so I suspect that any heat that uses electricity as its heat source would be pretty expensive.

I had a 1000 kWh jump late last year also. Turned out they mis-read the meter. I went and looked at the meter right when I got the bill and could see that was the case. They sent out another reader and corrected the amount before it was due.

Being an unusual winter the average daily temp is the big factor here. I just threw that in because some basic record keeping for comparison can explain major bill differences. Without a baseline it's difficult to tell just where the difference is. The chance of a misread meter is slim with most meters being read remotely now days, and can be confirmed by a taking a reading manually. My bill comes the day after they read it.

I had two big bills in a row, and looking at the average temp showed the reason right off the bat. In the past 3 years I've been keeping an eye on it, there has never been an av/temp in the 20's and those were 22 and 25. The lowest I've ever had was 32.