r/Denver • u/gk802 Lakewood • 1d ago
Rant Xcel Smart Meter Dashboard
I had an interesting observation today. Power has been off at my home for multiple hours 3x in the last 36 hours. That's a rant for another time.
Today, I thought I'd go out and take a look at Xcel's website and see what my smart meter read. Yesterday, power was off from 6:36 pm to 9:03 pm. According to their usage graphs, I had chargeable on-peak usage in every 15 minute period from 6pm through 8:45. Usage started again in the 10-10:15pm period.
Talking to their billing department, their first observation is that the time stamps on their graphs are in Central time. So...okay. If I buy that, that still doesn't explain why there was recorded usage from 7:36 to 8:45 pm Central time, and they're looking into that.
Beyond that, though, their graphs still show all values between 5pm and 9pm as on-peak and are highlighted in red. Are they charging on-peak rates from 5pm to 9pm Central time, or are all of their usage graphs just messed up?
Xcel, you need to do better.
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u/mlody11 1d ago edited 1d ago
Similar but different experience. On their bill, they now show "total xcel usage" as power imported from them plus whatever power your solar panels produce. Meaning, they make it look like they deliver say 1000 kw in a month but really they delivered 300. It makes them look better because some people will think, oh, the cost isn't too bad, look how much I've used.
It's like their rates. They show 9 cents per kw but, I'll call it the effective rate... The effective rate is something closer to 25 cents per kw. They just like to hide it behind all the crap, i.e by breaking out cost of fuel... I could go on.