Projected Gas and Electric Bills on Online Account: just a bunch of BS????

[coppertop]

We moved to a home built in 1948 about a year and a half ago.  The home needs a lot of work, including insulation, new circuit breaker box, and windows.  Our bills are a lot higher here than they were at our last home for those and some other reasons, so I enrolled on their on-line system because you can supposedly review your projected bill.  Yesterday, my projected combined bill was noted as $113, which makes total sense, because last month's bill was just shy of $115.  Today, the projected bill says $220, which made me suck in my breath in astonishment.  We have done nothing different this weekend and have not been using air conditioning or heat or anything else which would spike our bill.  We weren't even home for most of Saturday. The representative on the phone could tell me nothing other than that our daily usage has been less than 15 kwh for the past several weeks and couldn't answer my questions as to why the website is suddenly showing a higher projected bill, just saying "we can't do anything until the bill comes out on June 1," at which time they could come out and "check the meter."  That's like locking the barn door after the horses are stolen.  Do any of you attempt to monitor your power bills and if so, have you found wildly crazy projections?  They also cut me off from projections within the week before the bills come out, which I find to be weird.  Really, what good are these projections if they have nothing to do with actual usage?  I really need to keep my bills down and thought this would be a good tool to help with that, and this is the first time I have seen such a crazy spike in the projection.  We have BGE, which as I understand it, is part of Exelon.  We haven't enrolled with any alternate providers.

[uniwelder]

I wouldn't really worry about it.  You know how much you expect your bill to be, so when the power company's software predicts it correctly, they're doing something right.  When they predict something really wacky, there's a glitch.  So much software has glitches. 

I haven't seen predictive estimates from my power company, but it is cool to track real time usage from their webpage.  I can look back and see usage in 15 minute increments.

[zygote]

The electric company used to only come read the meter like twice a year (I live in an apartment building where meter access was annoying), so our monthly bills were almost always based on estimated values. If we overpaid for a few months based on their overestimate, they would adjust when they actually read the meter. Now they've installed a smart meter that they can read remotely, so our bills are accurate to our usage every month. Theoretically I think we can also track real time usage, but I've found it to be somewhat glitchy so I don't look at it much.

From your description, the projected bill is probably based on an algorithm that takes into account past usage at that address, past usage in the neighborhood, and the weather patterns. At least, that's how our estimated bills used to be calculated. It may not be super accurate if you don't use the AC as much as others in your neighborhood, but it's probably pretty accurate for most of their customers on average.

I wouldn't worry about it too much, though. It will balance out whenever they read the meter. And now you know it's not a real time measure of your actual usage, so you can look for other ways to monitor. Maybe a kill-a-watt device or similar?

[K_in_the_kitchen]

My estimates (separate gas and electric bills) can vary wildly.  The electricity is usually more accurate but a big swing in the weather at the end of the billing cycle can throw it off.  The natural gas is the real wild card though, because of the rate variability the utility company has to pay.  For example, my January usage was 83% of my December usage, but the bill was $100 higher because of the price of natural gas.

I do track usage, but I don't pay attention to the estimated price of the bill.  I look to see when we use the most electricity during the day.  I can see when we are watching TV or using the Instant Pot.  I know that it cost $3 to heat the house to 66°F the morning of the coldest day in April, whereas it was $9 on a comparable morning in January (because of those high rates) l.  When gas was crazy high I saw that it cost $1 just to heat the water for a bath, and I switched to showers until the rates came down.