Anyone else dealing with FirstEnergy's insane billing cycles lately? I've got a client in Cleveland getting billed every 35-37 days instead of monthly. Their August bill was $2,847 for what should have been 30 days but covered 36 days. The demand charge alone was prorated wrong - they used straight multiplication instead of the actual peak demand recorded. I'm seeing this pattern across multiple accounts on the GP-1 rate schedule. Customer service keeps saying it's "within acceptable variance" but this is costing my clients serious money.
FirstEnergy 35-day billing cycle nightmare
Frank, I'm in Youngstown and seeing the exact same thing with AEP Ohio. My manufacturing client got hit with a 38-day cycle last month. The kicker is they prorated the demand charge but NOT the customer charge, so we're paying full monthly customer charge for an extended period. Filed a complaint with PUCO two weeks ago. These utilities are getting sloppy with their billing systems after all these mergers and acquisitions.
This is becoming epidemic. Dominion Virginia Power has been doing 28-33 day cycles for the past year. I've documented it across 15 different accounts. The worst part is the demand ratchet calculations get completely screwed up. When you have a 33-day billing period, the demand charge should reflect the actual peak, not some prorated nonsense. I've recovered over $18,000 for clients just by catching these proration errors on GS-3 accounts.
TVA territory here in Knoxville. We don't see as much of this because TVA is pretty consistent with their monthly cycles, but I did catch MLGW doing some weird 26-day periods earlier this year. Turned out to be a meter reading route issue. The key is checking that demand charges are calculated on actual peak demand during the billing period, not some mathematical proration. These utilities think they can just multiply everything by days/30 and call it good.
Memphis checking in. MLGW actually sent out a notice about this last month admitting they had "billing cycle optimization issues" affecting about 3,000 commercial accounts. Translation: their new meter reading software was grouping routes wrong and creating extended cycles. They're supposed to issue credits automatically but I'm still seeing problems on Schedule GSB accounts. The demand charge calculations are still wrong on about half the corrections I've reviewed.
LG&E in Louisville has been pretty good about this, but I caught them doing something sneaky. They'll give you a 28-day cycle one month, then a 33-day cycle the next to "average out" to 30.5 days. Problem is, the summer months (June-August) always seem to be the longer cycles when demand charges are highest. Coincidence? I think not. Cost my restaurant client an extra $340 in demand charges because their peak usage happened during the extended cycle period.
PECO in Philadelphia just settled a class action over this exact issue. They were systematically extending billing cycles during high-usage periods and shortening them during low-usage periods. The settlement included automatic credits and a commitment to keep cycles within 28-32 days. But here's the thing - you have to actively monitor your accounts because the credits aren't always applied correctly. I'm still finding errors six months after the settlement.