Western Power ignored my broken meter and made wild guesses at my usage instead

Since November 2023, the screen on my Western Power meter has been blank. Kaput. For seven months my meter has not been tracking my power usage from the grid, how much solar energy my panels are generating, nor how much excess power is being sent back to the grid.

Busy at work at the time, and getting ready for a month-long trip overseas, I wasn’t initially too worried about not being able to view my daily usage via the online Synergy dashboard.

Synergy has withdrawn my bill estimates while this mess is getting sorted. Credit: Bethany Rae

When I returned to Perth just before Christmas, data was still not being uploaded, an issue I optimistically attributed to a boffin clocking off mentally for the festive season.

Then I got my bill just before Christmas 2023 estimating I’d used 1170 units. Nearly three times the amount I’d used the same time last year. Despite the fact that this year I’d been away for weeks.

During my time overseas Synergy had estimated I used up to 57 units of power a day, close to a record for me, and my previous paperwork showed it should have been around one unit a day.

So at the start of 2024 I called Synergy, which put me on a long hold before telling me they would tell Western Power to fix my meter.

Around the start of February a contractor rocked up, took one look and said he couldn’t repair the meter because he needed a pole top crew.

Fair enough. Safety first.

But Western Power didn’t come back out, so I called Synergy. More time on hold, more time telling my story to a new person, who promised to escalate the job.

Weeks passed. I used the chatbot feature next time I inquired with Synergy. They said the job had been cancelled because it was reported as repaired. Sigh.

Another contractor came out, took one look at the meter and said he couldn’t repair it because he needed a pole top crew.

Sigh.

In January, I spent a week in Moore River which I again paid dearly for, being charged up to 57 units of power a day despite my typical usage of one unit a day if away on holiday.

Then the kicker: being charged for nearly 100 units of power over two days despite me using literally zero power due to an outage as a freak storm cell battered the Perth Hills on January 19.

When my February bill hit my inbox it was the highest I’d ever received since installing solar panels four years ago.

As a solo parent who spent thousands to stack my roof with these panels, I check the Synergy website most days to track my daily energy consumption. It’s cold hard proof to show my kids it’s expensive to crank air-con at night.

It made me wonder how many others have their bills estimated. It took weeks to get an answer. Initially Western Power didn’t divulge the number, labelling it “meaningless” without the “appropriate context”. I sought the intervention of Energy Minister Reece Whitby’s office and the next day I was told around 46,000 meters used by residential and business customers across the network were estimated this financial year.

Western Power said bills were estimated primarily when contractors were unable to access meters, often due to dogs, or locked gates and meter boxes.

But in my case, I already had a smart meter that didn’t need to be checked by a contractor. It’s meant to talk to Synergy computers and tell them my power output and solar export. It’s clear from my experience that Western Power and Synergy aren’t talking to each other effectively either.

And while Synergy says they use bills from corresponding months for estimated readings it doesn’t explain why they estimated I used nearly triple my usual usage.

I tried again in March to get someone out to fix the meter. It was mid-May before Western Power obliged.

Five and a half months since I began my repeated calls as a member of the public.

Three days after I put in a media enquiry to Synergy and Western Power outlining my experience and asking how many other people they were doing this to. Coincidence?

It concerns me that most members of the public struggling with the exploding cost of living are potentially facing similar issues with our public utilities but without the media exposure.

Two weeks later I still can’t read the daily interval data online from my “smart” meter which apparently needs up to 20 days to begin accurately communicate data again.

In the last conversation I had with Synergy last week, I asked for a credit to be applied given how they’d charged like a wounded bull. The staff member issued a follow order for Western Power to extract the data from the meter. Despite being told multiple times there was no data to extract because my meter had been broken.

Trying to extract the data will take “generally about three weeks”. I’m not holding my breath.

The Morning Edition newsletter is our guide to the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up here.