City Light underbilled 3 of its biggest customers

Seattle City Light, already under fire for overbilling some customers, now admits it underbilled three of its largest commercial accounts, perhaps by as much as $1.5 million.

Because of faulty meters, Boeing, Nordstrom and Seattle City Hall used more power than they've paid for — in one case, for as long as 13 years.

City Light credits Nordstrom with uncovering the problem. After the retailer moved into the old Frederick & Nelson building in August 1998, it asked City Light why, when it was in a larger space, its power bills seemed low, said City Light spokesman Bob Royer.

City Light found that Nordstrom had been underpaying because a meter had been wired incorrectly, and it owed about $150,000. City Light then audited the meters of the city's 74 largest commercial customers. That was completed in December.

In the Boeing situation, the miswired meter had been installed in 1989, and the company had been underbilled for 13 years. While Royer wouldn't say how much Boeing owed the utility, he confirmed it was around $800,000.

Boeing spokesman Ron Ciro said the company met with City Light last month and asked for "historical data" to prove the city's underbilling claim. After that information was supplied, Boeing and City Light agreed to a joint test of the meter; Ciro said that will happen in the next two weeks.

"They told us it was a faulty meter that may have led them to underbill us for a period of time," Ciro said. He said he was reluctant to discuss any back payment.

Royer said that by state law the city has to collect money for energy used. "If we show it was used, then we have to collect," he said.

The underbillings had no impact on the rates City Light charges all of its other customers, he said.

Ciro said the meter was in a building that Boeing calls the 2-10 building on East Marginal Way South. The meter measures electrical loads north of its wind tunnel.

Royer says the faulty meters are called "complex meters" and measure power for the city's largest customers.

"These are very big, complicated things, and they were put in a long time ago," he said.

Asked whether the problem would have been discovered without Nordstrom, Royer said, "they're a good customer. That was the trigger to audit all the complex meters."

When pressed to explain how the problem could have gone undetected for so long, Royer said, "Dammit, we found out about it and fixed the problem."

Brooke White, spokeswoman for Nordstrom, said the company felt obligated to alert City Light.

"We work hard to deal fairly with our customers, and we want to have that kind of relationship with all our business partners," she said. "This was something we wanted to make right."

The third underbilling was discovered at City Hall, where a meter installed in 1992 was miswired. Over the past 10 years, City Hall has been paying for about half the power the building was actually using. Royer said City Light sent a letter to city officials Tuesday telling them they believe City Hall was underbilled about $580,000.

The City Hall error was discovered last fall, said Royer, adding that the city could challenge the data.

"We're working with them, trying to understand what may have been wrong," he said. "We don't want to make a presumption we're 100 percent right until we work through the information with our customers."

The underbillings are just the latest of problems that have beleaguered the city utility. Last month, City Light admitted it had overbilled 78 customers, some by thousands of dollars, when a high-bill filtering system was not working for two days.

Susan Gilmore: 206-464-2054 or sgilmore@seattletimes.com.