Readers,
Perhaps you’re wondering how my story about rural South Kitsap resident Chris Sherrod and his go-arounds with PSE turned out. On Aug. 28, I wrote that Sherrod couldn’t reconcile his PSE bill with a day-by-day readout of his electricity use he’d obtained from PSE. Some days he knew he’d used electricity showed no use on a day-by-day kilowatt usage readout. And he also noticed that fractions of kilowatt hours used seemed to be rounding up, but not down. Here’s the story:
http://www.kitsapsun.com/news/2012/aug/28/utility-customer-go-round-and-round-over-meter/
At the time, PSE spokeswoman Dorothy Bracken said interruptions in signals emanating from a meter box such as a van parked in the way can result in days showing no use, followed by days showing more use, with it all evening out in the end. PSE ended up replacing the box after my story ran.
But the rounding-up questioned stumped her. She did some research and has since gotten back to me. Most of the rounding up was in the thousandth-of-a-kilowatt-hour column. When the number ended in 5, the five was rounded up on the bill that resulted. The number 0.105 on the usage readout became 0.11 on the bill.
Bracken said use at the thousandth-of-a-decimal level is record in multiples of 15. That’s why Sherrod was seeing a lot of 5’s on his printout. No rounding up was involved, Bracken said. She also said that the bar graph that PSE customers can access at pse.org is only a representation. Billing isn’t based on the graph, but the usage data.
So Chris, there’s your answer.
Rachel Pritchett, reporter
