Residents voice anger over Oncor’s smart meters
Angry over high electric bills and Oncor’s new smart meter, dozens of Grand Prairie residents came to State Representative Kirk England’s Town Hall meeting Saturday morning at City Hall to voice their complaints with the utility company.
Representative England arranged the public meeting after his office received many phone calls from constituents with complaints of the new meters and high electric bills.
Oncor was on hand with company officials to explain what the company plans to do to resolve the problems. Also, Oncor setup educational kiosks with energy saving tips and customer service representatives were available to help consumers with their bills.
During the meeting many took the podium to tell their experience.
One longtime Dalworth area resident said, “When they changed the meter I said, ‘Well I guess I can be like rest of the folks. I can expect a large bill.’ I did get that large bill.” The next month he said his bill went from $200 to $755.
Oncor maintains the new meters are reliable and accurate and tests have yet to find one measuring inaccurately. It does admit workers misread meters in about 7,000 installations that caused these customers to be overcharged. Those errors were detected through the company’s internal process and corrected.
Chris Schein a spokesman for Oncor said this winter’s unusually cold weather is the blame for consumers’ high electric bills not only in Texas but throughout the country.
Representative England disagreed with Schein saying, “I think there’s a problem and I think it’s more than just weather.”
He said he also believes it is “a reasonable request” for Oncor to stop installations until the meters accuracy can been tested and is joining other lawmakers to monitor the utility.
“We’re going to watch and make sure that the bills are fair, that the implementation of this new smart meter program is fair or we’ll have it stopped,” Representative England said.
