Not-so-light bill mystifies homeowner

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When Darleen Noonan Harrington of Magnolia opened her electricity bill in early February, she expected to owe Seattle City Light about $150 for a two-month billing period.

Instead she saw a bill for $2,238.69. At first she laughed. Then she got mad.

"Maybe they mixed me up with Bill Gates," said Harrington, a realtor who lives alone in the main part of the house and has a tenant in the basement who splits the City Light bill with her. "Can you imagine opening that?"

Harrington doesn't even have electric heat in her 4,000-square-foot home and said nothing can explain the huge bill, which asserts she used 17,547 kilowatt-hours of power over two months. That's more than enough to light Safeco Field for a three-game homestand and is nearly a twelvefold increase over the corresponding billing period the year before, when Harrington used 1,530 kilowatt-hours.

City Light officials say if her meter says she used that much electricity, she has to pay for it. Since she received the whopping bill, her meter has been checked twice and deemed accurate.

"It does seem very high, and that's odd," said Dan Williams, a City Light spokesman.

Disputing bills City Light customers with questions about their bills can call the utility at 206-684-3000.

"But what can we go on besides our equipment that measures power use? If she's used that much electricity, she owes the money. She says she hasn't; the equipment says she has."

Harrington said her total bill for 2001 was $442 and for 2000 was $682. "So the combined total for two years was about half of what you have billed me for the past two months," she wrote City Light. "Doesn't make sense, does it?"

Late last month, she had a hearing before City Light hearing officer Javier Valdez, who asked for another test of the meter. Again, the test indicated accuracy.

According to Valdez, the problem was in the August-September reading. When meter readers entered it, the number was so high it was kicked out of the computer as an "exception," he said. That's why Harrington's two following bills were estimates, based on her normal usage. It wasn't until January that the actual reading from September was recorded.

"The real problem was sometime in the month of August or September," Valdez said. "We've shown by every meter test that things are working correctly."

Valdez said the utility is bound by ordinance to charge customers for power the meters say they used.

Harrington hasn't paid the entire bill, although she did send City Light $200 "so they don't shut off my electricity."

Her daughter, Nancy Searle, said she is incredulous over why the bill is so high. "It's insane," she said. "Her normal bill is $20 to $70. I hear about people being busted for meth labs, and I assure you my mom is not growing pot.

"They should be able to look at the 38 years she's been in the house and know that something is just not right," said Searle, whose father built the house. "She couldn't possibly have used that much power."

Harrington said her basement tenant, Heidi Woolfolk, is a single woman who also uses little power. Woolfolk was equally shocked by the amount of the bill, saying she's rarely home and runs only a microwave and an oven.

The 17,547 kilowatt-hours that City Light says Harrington used would put her among the city's top energy users. The average home or apartment uses about 12,000 kilowatt-hours a year. A kilowatt-hour is a standard measure of electricity, equal to running a standard 1,000-watt hair dryer for one hour.

The amount in Harrington's bill is equivalent to running 30 color TVs for six hours a day for a year.

Williams said a factor compounding Harrington's bill is that its high numbers bump her up to a "third tier" customer level, in which users are charged a higher rate for electricity: 17 cents a kilowatt-hour for anything over than 60 kilowatt-hours a day in the summer and over 25 in the winter.

Valdez said City Light is willing to average the cost over six months, which would drop Harrington off the third-tier list and reduce the bill. For privacy reasons, he couldn't say what the new bill would be.

Harrington argues that she didn't use the electricity and had no extraordinary power demands last summer, so she shouldn't pay. In response to her complaint letter, City Light Superintendent Gary Zarker said: "I certainly understand your shock at receiving such a large bill. It is unclear why your electricity usage appears to be so high."

He referred her to a conservation hotline.

Williams said the case is still under investigation. "It's good she came to us," he said. "We need to see if there is some kind of problem on her end with something eating up her electricity."