ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Friday, March 15, 1996 TAG: 9603150059
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
IF YOUR ELECTRIC-METER cycle matched Roanoke's snowfall cycle, look out.
Some customers of American Electric Power Co. in Roanoke have found an unwelcome surprise in their mailboxes this week.
Because of heavy snows during the early January and early February, AEP was forced to estimate some customers' power usage once or twice in those months, company spokeswoman Victoria Ratcliff said.
Some meters were read this month for the first time in three months; and, if they used more power than AEP estimated, customers received bills that were much higher than during the past two months.
AEP has 21 different billing cycles and reads meters throughout every month, Ratcliff said. Meters on a route are read at the same time each month.
The January and February snowstorms fell during the same part of each month. And when meters couldn't be read, the company based customers' bills on an average of what they used during the same period last year and during the previous month this year, Ratcliff said.
"When we have a lot of snow like we had recently, for safety reasons meter readers do not go around and attempt to read meters," she said.
Complicating the situation was that temperatures remained low for extended periods, which caused the auxiliary heating of AEP customers with heat pumps to cut on, resulting in higher bills. People with electric heat were affected the most by the estimating of bills, Ratcliff said.
Ratcliff said the company could not provide an average of how much bills increased from February to March because of the estimating. Each customer's situation is different, she said.
AEP also couldn't say which neighborhoods in the Roanoke area were affected by the estimating because billing routes don't necessarily follow neighborhoods boundaries and often extend over many miles, she said.
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