In mid-May of last year Jersey Central P&L changed my meter to a "smart" meter. As you can see from the attached, my electric bill jumped from approximately $150.00 to $550.00 in the next full billing month. Usage went from 1050 KWH to 2809 KWH a month. My highest usage on the old meter was 1372 KWH. Since the change it has not been less than 2100 KWH. For July 2025 our bill was $768.00 and no one was in the house for the last 10 days of the month, no tv, no electric stove use, no AC, no lights for those 10 days. Our August 2025 bill was $771.00 and we did not use the AC once in August, used the stove only 5 times as I cook outside on the grill in summer.
For over a year I have been tryin' to get JCP&L to fix or change the meter, calling them almost daily. Getting nowhere. Their website is the most evasive site I have ever been on. The printout pictured here took me over 2 hours to locate on their site. All I wanted was to see my usage over the last 2 years, not some classified data. The next day I tried to look it up again and was blocked from printing it.
Yesterday the wife and I drove 13 miles to a local JCP&L office to try and get this resolved. They said we cannot help you here you have to drive to another office, so we drove there (45 miles away). Got there and they sent us to another office, 32 miles from that office. We drove there. Walked into the building into a small alcove, maybe 5x6 feet. In front of us are 2 small bullet proof windows with a curved slot under each just big enough to pass a paper. Was a buzzer there said ring for service, we rang waited a minute then rang again. Repeated this for 6 or 7 minutes and finally a lady came over (we could see them sitting there the whole time). We showed her the paper pictured here and she said "So, what is your complaint?". Then a guy came over, long and short of it we stood there for almost 2 hours as he tried to find our info on the company computer. Supposedly they will change the meter but he said the new smart meters are never in error.
Many of my neighbors have houses almost like mine with pools in the back yard just like we have and their new meters did not jump their usage like ours did. I know of no one in my area who has $700.00 electric bills.
We have not changed any appliances or added any new electrical gizmos in the last 2 years. Had an electrician check the whole house out, no shorts detected. Water holding tank is not waterlogged causing the well pump to run excessively.
Ok, my rant is complete!!
Eric

Was your old meter an old analog with the dials? Those are the best, they only slow down over time. We don’t have smarts yet, but when we change a customers meter to digital, their bill usually goes up, but not that much.

One of your neighbors tapped into your power to grow weed or something?

Jake, yes it had dials, was 3 years old when they switched it for Smart meter. My neighbors bills went up about $20.00. when they switched the meters, all were switched the same day in May 2024.

Don't pay the bill and you'll get there attention might be time to go solar if that's a option.out electric company is non-profit but our bill keeps going up.

my parents lived in a 1 bed apartment with a refrigerator 1975 , range and 1 electric clock besides some lights.

dad got the electric bill knew something was up , he knew what was up , the apartment was over an upholstery shop with 2 big AC units and a bunch of big sewing machines

dad go the power company out there and demanded they pull his meter, they told him it was some amount to hook it back up if it was pulled , he said pull it , if I am right you will be fixing it for free.


pulled the meter , entire upholstery shop shut down , owner came out screaming , they didn't live there very much longer.

You might want to be sure they don't have your new meter number swapped with a neighbor's. Happened to a guy at work with his water meter during a blanket change out.

That’s some pretty terrible customer service. I’ve been seeing where, in general, New Jersey customers have had their electric bills go up on average of 25% this year but that doesn’t explain the crazy prices they expect you to pay.

We haven’t installed new analogs in probably 17 years, but there still lots out there. Over the years, I have had “meter investigate” jobs on me where the customer is just complaining about high bills. The rare time it’s a meter info screw up, it’s usually in duplexes or bigger places. I can usually look at their house and shop, then tell them my hydro bill and that just kinda breaks their spirits. If they get mad, I tell them to move to any other province and see how much it’ll cost them…..lol. It’s expensive, but still “cheap” here.
When I ask if anything is plugged in and they sometimes say nothing but the TV and kitchen light. By looking & listening you can hear a lot more stuff going on……especially the 4800w construction heater with the broken thermostat switch in the crawl space that’s been pumping heat for who knows how long….lol
Happened to me. Was gone for a week and came back to my garage at about 65 when it should be 40-50ish. Outside was -40. If I wasn’t on the equal payment plan my Feb bill would’ve been around $1200cad.

We had that problem. Turned out to be the electric heat pump was broken and ran all the time. Put in a new heat pump and bill dropped from over 700 bucks a month yo less than 150.

Do you have a well pump that’s fried?

Or a well pump that is cycling continuously, we had one in a rental cabin that had holes in the galvanized pipe, everything worked fine but electric bill went way up.

Eric your electrician should be able to tell you where the usage is at. Also the utility should be able to give you time of day usage by the hour. That's what the smart meters are for as well as not having to send someone around to read them monthly. Also read your meter daily,twice a day,or every so often and record until this is cleared up. Hard to compare with neighbors without knowing who has what. You are getting poor service from your utility. Maybe call the utility board at the state level.

If you have an electric , hot water heater If one of the elements , have a short to ground . They may continue to heat water. But are brutal wasters of electricity. . If at all else fails . and you get no satisfaction. from the utility. Perhaps a ladder or something ,could fall , on the meter. So it would need to be changed. . In the meantime go over your various loads and try to correct any problems. Another heat waster is roof or pipe deicing , cables that are still plugged in. old243

You, or an electrician, can use an amp meter to test individual loads in your electrical box to confirm if there are any unusual loads. Some areas charge by the highest usage on either leg supplying your service. (Not sure if this is still done or not) If they do, you can save usage by balancing the load between both legs.

Sounds possible that there may be a dead short somewhere or that some piece of electrical equipment may have been damaged when the meter was changed.

Two short stories - when I was a kid, dad had electrical work done in the basement. Sump pump piping was all metal, including a 6’ section coming out of the house. Dead short quadrupled the electric bill and killed all the grass above the pipe.

Our bill at the Fire Dept. was quite a bit higher than it was suppose to be. Other city complexes were much lower. City officials complained for years. Unbalanced load was corrected and our bills were reduced by 30%.

Electrician has checked out the whole house, no shorts. Utility company will not give out any info as to usage per hour or day. Easier to find teeth in a hens mouth than get any info from JCP&L.
You can see by the paper I show here the bill jumped the moment the new meter was installed. Basically tripled the daily KW usage the day it was installed.
Well pump is 2 years old. Grew up with the owner of the well drilling-pump installer company. He checked that out for me, all is fine. I have been fighting with the power company since July of 2024 when the bill jumped to over $700.00.
I marked the glass on the meter with an X to see if they change it

Contact the Public Utility Commission and log a complaint, call every day and complain. That was the only way the electric company would address my problem.

Just read where electricity jumped 7.5 - 8% on a national average, and we experienced the same as you upon the installation of one of those smart meters.

It's the reason we're burning wood again, and raising thermostat settings in the summer...This will be a problem going forward with all the A.I. startups and the mass amount of electricity that venture requires.

Hope you find relief....We need nuclear power A.S.A.P.

Call local TV station and tell them what you told us. They live for that king of thing........and once they get on it, utility will get on it......as they hate bad publicity.

Eric if you have any underground wire you might be bleeding amps out on a small break in the wire. I’ve seen it a couple times.

I’m not a green guy at all but have lived off grid now for a year with solar. I could see the writing on the wall 10 years ago and started planning. The new administration has took the handcuffs off the modular nuclear guys so hopefully they can bring some new power online. The AI centers are using an unbelievable amount of our grid power now and pushing rates up dramatically.

With your bills you could pay for a system in a couple years

That’s brutal! I thought most companies have the app where you can see everything.
Without smart meters, mines by the month between reads….
Electrician can’t check between meter & main without the utility there, but a lot just cut the seal here and do it themselves.

Did they mess up the billing and place a multiplier on it ?

I know our rate is going up as Basin is building a new base load plant that I believe is natural gas because predictions for the future are more electric usage, Siemens makes a monitor to give you hard data to help you argue with the electric company you must have an apple or google account to download the app, here is a link.

https://www.siemens.com/us/en/products/energy/low-voltage/new-homes/inhab.html

Our electric utility prints the last year's usage on the bill that comes out each month. It should be no secret. Nor should the rate they charge on the usage. Then or now.

Delivery rates are going sky high here in N.Y., we're getting screwed big time. These companies are out of control.

It's going to get out of hand when all these data centers come on line

Got ours today. $140 bux
Gas was $69 bux
Trash water sewer for 2 months was $146 bux

That’s why about 4-5 years ago we said no more bit coin operations. Companies all over the world were coming for our cheap power and cold temps. The constant steady draw is crazy. They were showing up at old rural farm properties telling the owner that if he’d upgrade his service to +800A or bigger they’d pay exponentially more for the property. One small 60 acre parcel worth about $250000, they offered him $2mil after a service upgrade. Some small operations sneak through the cracks, but we find them come winter, then they’re shut down.

Steve49ers is right. These data centers area bidding on huge amounts of electricity that doesn’t exist jacking up the rates for everyone. Plus all the infrastructure costs to upgrade the sites for the centers gets passed on to all rate payers.

Our town went through this a while back, I read everything from the paper to Facebook, neighbor to neighbor everyone was complaining! Same thing went on with them. Not sure if it had gotten better or if they just got use to it because the complaining has slowed down. People went to the electric company, the city board, also made the local news ky3. But pretty sure they all just said move on, nothing was going to be changed

If it’s consistently bad enough month after month, out here a customer can start a meter dispute……that’s after we’ve given his service a quick once over and tried to check some of his side of the meter. We connect a $25000 little piece of equipment to the service, the cust gets a new meter and the old one is sent back for testing. When the info comes back saying the meter is measuring within 1% or whatever the number is (which it always does in my cases) the customer is billed $80 (probably double that now) and the cost of a new meter.
I’ve showed up at these “meter investigates” to hear the cust say that nothings running. But I see a hot tub steaming on the deck, every light I can see is on. Meter is just humming away and I say “Holy smokes! Yea, that things movin!”…….lol.

Turn your main breaker off in your house, check meter to see if you are still "using" power.

Eric, call the NJ Board of Public Utilities and file a complaint (800) 624-0241 or you can file online:

https://www.nj.gov/bpu/assistance/complaints/inquiry.html

I used to work for the telephone company over in Warwick and this is where our customers in Vernon NJ would file a complaint. Believe me that the BPU will get on Jersey Central but quick!

I lied lol just looked on the news and people are calling for an audit, so I guess there is still problems

Did that and it still appears to be using power, blinking one square of four on the meter.

That’s not good. Somethings leaking between the meter & the main. Megger them cables. You sure you hit your main? Your service underground from the meter to the main?

Nothing is leaking,you are being ripped off

The only thing to do is get a second device to measure what's coming and to compare the two numbers... or change the meter and see if it changes. Nothing says you can't have two meters... have an old one and a new one.

I would make sure both loads on both sides of your panel box are even. I bet being off or some kind of noise or something could be possible? Even if that was the case though it wouldn't match a secondary meter and you would know something was off.

At the factory we would pay an electrician to hook a lie detector up to the meter and it would have a paper chart recorder for example...

Can you get the lawn mower to throw a rock and break the meter?,

Can he not contact PUC if he can’t dispute his meter? You have to have some sort of protections there for the customer, here we’re obligated.

Haha, I’ve had talk with customers like you…..lol. The only meters that might “keep spinning” are the old analogs, and very slowly at that. The couple I saw would’ve tacked on 25 friggin cents a month, but when real load was applied, it measured less than actual. If that meter is spinning more than just a trickle with the main off, there’s something tapped in or you got a problem that’ll eventually expose itself as fire or part power. We change thousands of meters every year here, it’s a federal regulation. They’re all sent back to the manufacture for testing, and when they find that they’re not measuring to within industry standards, the whole batch of meters from that serial number gets replaced.
Only way is to connect a PMI and see what’s going on, and the utility has access to this pricy equipment. Or try getting 2 amp clips off Amazon and clip them up on the hot legs & neutral at the mast, or if you’re U/G find a spot in the panel before the main. Not sure if you’re underground, but breaks are pretty common.

Eric are you or a family member experiencing any of these?

Some residents living in homes with smart meters have reported experiencing various symptoms, including:

Headaches and migraines
Sleep disturbances
Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
Concentration difficulties
Fatigue
Dizziness
Heart palpitations

Those dots are like the spinning disc on the old meters. the faster the dots go from 1-4 dots...1-4 dots, the faster your meter's "spinning". If the dots aren't cycling there's no load.

Yes, the faster the dots move from left to right the more load/usage, could be meter specific. If you are showing usage with the main turned off you have an issue.
There is a few reasons that can be checked by a quality electrician. I have seen in the past, are usually related to corrosion. On the lugs, in meter base and main panel, if using aluminum wires, there should/needs to be anti-oxidant. If none was used or little was used after time corrosion builds up. When your meter was replaced this may have unintentionally jarred the connections caused this to surface. Underground wiring of service entry into the house not in conduit. After time and cold cycles will cause some issues but since this happened after a meter change my money would be in the meter base. You most likely will be able to see the corrosion on a lug.
If you could leave your main off for an hour two, write the numbers down on meter and then turn off main, write numbers down just before turning on to see usage during that time. It may not show too much because there wont be much load. As load/usage increases the corrosion/resistance will increase causing more usage. The longer you could leave off, the more accurate you will be.
This is just my internet opinion and may be way off base since I cant see it or test myself .

I have a friend who works at JCPL for 43 years , I can ask him if you want me to ?

They changed the meter today. The squares that indicate usage move much slower on this one. Also all the digital numbers clear off to a blank screen about twice a minute, the old one did not do that. We will know the answer on October first when Septembers bill arrives. Eric

I wonder if they will reimburse you if the replaced meter is found to be at fault.

Reimbursement by a power company, that's a good one.

That's what I thought.

If his usage goes back close the range it was prior to the jump when the previous meter was installed with this new meter, they absolutely should recalculate his usage for the entire time the faulty meter was installed and cut him a check and an apology letter. They have a record of his usage so it is not rocket science to adjust based on averages.

I doubt that will happen. At best, they may give him credit against a future month’s charge.

Interesting. All of our digital meters cycle through the displays like that. Maybe it was factory defect or they stuck the wrong meter in. When we cross over to smarts, it’ll probably be contractors doing the swaps. They inspect our poles and tag them. I’ve seen lots of customer owned poles stamped and even fence posts…..lol. Sometimes they don’t higher the sharpest knife in the drawer.