Dealing with a weird situation in Irvine where SDG&E has been issuing 22-25 day billing cycles for the past 6 months. The short cycles are causing artificially inflated demand charges because the peak demand gets applied to fewer days. Customer's monthly demand charges jumped from $1,800 to $2,400 even though actual usage is flat. SDG&E claims this is "within acceptable variance" but their tariff says standard cycle is 30 days +/- 2. Anyone know if there's a legal remedy for systematic short billing?
SDG&E short billing periods causing inflated demand charges
Joe, that's definitely outside the acceptable variance if they're running 22-25 day cycles consistently. MLGW had similar issues here in Memphis and we got them to pro-rate demand charges retroactively. The California PUC has pretty strict rules about billing period consistency. File a complaint with CPUC - they take systematic billing errors seriously, especially when it's clearly inflating customer charges.
Randy's right about CPUC being strict on this. Also check SDG&E's published service standards - they might have internal policies about billing cycle consistency that they're violating. The $600/month difference in demand charges over 6 months is $3,600 in potential overcharges. That's significant money and definitely worth pursuing through formal channels.