Client near Dripping Springs TX is on the Pedernales Electric Co-op self-read program where the customer reports their own meter reading every month. Problem is nobody at the business has been doing it consistently and the co-op has been estimating. Wondering if anyone has dealt with PEC and their self-read procedures.
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Self-read programs — any experience with Pedernales Electric?
I have two co-op clients in central Texas and the pattern is the same as yours. Co-ops write their own service rules, so the first thing I do is get the current member service policies and the rate schedule the account is on. The estimating and self-read procedures are almost always spelled out in there, including how many consecutive estimates they allow before they send someone out.
Before you argue about the estimates, pull the full read history and check which months were actual reads and which were estimates. On my last one the estimates ran high for most of the year, and the first real read produced a credit that the client never noticed because it got netted against a later bill.
Before you argue about the estimates, pull the full read history and check which months were actual reads and which were estimates. On my last one the estimates ran high for most of the year, and the first real read produced a credit that the client never noticed because it got netted against a later bill.
Practical point: if nobody at the business is going to report the reading every month, get them off self-read. Ask the co-op whether the meter can be read remotely or whether they will put the account back on a normal read cycle. A lot of co-ops have rolled out AMI over the last few years, and the self-read arrangement may be a leftover from before the meter was swapped.
Then the estimates stop, and you are only arguing about the past.
Then the estimates stop, and you are only arguing about the past.
One caution. Texas electric co-ops are member-owned and largely set their own rates and rules, so the complaint route is not the same as with an investor-owned utility. Your leverage is mostly the co-op's own written policies and the board. Read the dispute section of the service rules before you write anything formal, because some of them have short windows for disputing a bill.
Pull the demand figures too, not just the kWh. If the rate has a demand component and the demand was estimated along with the energy, check whether the estimate used a recent actual or carried a peak forward from a high month. Estimated demand that repeats an old high month is a common place to find money on accounts like this.