Separate Electrical Meter for Shop?

[Brian Tax]

We just moved into a house with a 20 x 26 detached shop with a separate 200 AMP service. It is going to be very nice once I get it setup. The problem is that the electrical company charges a minimum amount for each meter if you use very little electricity. I think that this is total BS, because I am over the minimum for the house. I doubt that I will ever be over the minimum KWH ~162 per month for the shop. Does anyone have any ideas on how to get around this and is this normal practice for electrical companies? Thanks for any ideas.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

Brian,

I have a separate meter for my shop and a resulting minimum charge. It works out to about $8 monthly IIRC.

[Brian Tax]

It turns out to be about $13.50/month for me, I just don't like paying for something I am not using.

[Jim O'Dell]

Brian, I have the same set up. Mine comes out to about 10 to 14 dollars a month. My wife says that's cheap to keep me out of her hair!! When I first tried to get service on mine, TXU (Texas Electric Utility) said since I had a meter on the house, any second meter on the same property had to be billed at the commercial rate. I about flipped. In fact, It set me back about 10 months getting the shop power turned on, I was so mad. In the end I lucked out that Texas opened up the utilities so that you choose providers...the transmission is still the same company, of which TXU is owned by. So I went with another provider for the shop. No basic monthly fee for the first year and a half, and my bills were always under 5.00. Then they started charging the monthly service fee. They are probably still losing money on me though. Jim.

[Dave Lessley]

Initially I had a 14x70 mobile and a shop with the power to the shop running off of a pole by the mobile. The shop had a 100amp panel. When I built the house I wanted to locate the meter at the transformer away from the house because we were planning to build a daycare and did not want the intrusion of the meter reader. In order locate the meter at the transformer I had to have a total of 400 amps of service and pay a $200.00 setup fee. I wanted to upgrade the Shop to 200 amps and bury the wire so it worked out fine. 200 amp at the house 200 at the shop meter at the transformer. About three months later they went to reading the meters with wireless technology.

Back to the point of the story. They did it all on one meter.

[Rod Sheridan]

Brian, forgive me if I'm in left field here.

Do you have an additional fee for meter rental and wiring that's owned by the utility?

If not what you are seeing as a minimum fee, is really the charge for the money they spend providing a meter, reading it, calibrating it, maintaining and processing your account, paying for the feeder to the meter etc.

Doesn't seem unreasonable to me...............Rod.

[lou sansone]

I have a separate 3 phase meter for the shop and it is more like 70 bucks minimum... got to love how they treat the commercial customers

Lou

[George Bregar]

I just has mine put in...the installation was free but I pay $8/month. Cheap versus running 220' (x4) to run a subpanel. That said, if my garage was with 150' they would require it be run from the house.

[Steven DeMars]

Run lights on your property, re-wire your HVAC to it, whatever . . .

This way the minimum is absorbed/used up by the usage . . .

Steve

[Rollie Meyers]

I have a separate 3 phase meter for the shop and it is more like 70 bucks minimum... got to love how they treat the commercial customers

Lou

Here in PG&E territory, that is what is called "standby" AG customers pay that for their AG pumps based on the HP.

[Russ Boyd]

When I built my shop last year, I was going to do the same as you, but found out the extra charges PLUS they were going to charge the shop at a commercial rate (?!). I ended up changing the meter to the shop then running huge ( don't know what size) wire to the house to feed off same meter. Basically just relocated the meter. Just one bill now with now extras. Also got my box at the house updated in the process.

[Chris Damm]

Around here they will charge you a second minimum rate plus charge you commercial rates (higher) on the second meter. I would just add a subpanel off the first meter.

[George Bregar]

Of course you can run off one meter. For me it was 220' at over $10/foot for the wire, and gods know how much to trench. I'd be dead before that would payback at a $8/month ROI.

[Dan Friedrichs]

Run lights on your property, re-wire your HVAC to it, whatever . . .

This way the minimum is absorbed/used up by the usage . . .

Steve

I think most utilities charge fixed fees each month in addition to usage charges. So using more power just decreases the percent of the bill that is fees, but it's never a better deal to pay for 2 meters (until you start to consider the cost of the wire needed to eliminate one of them).

[Brian Tax]

Thanks for all of the info, if I was starting from scratch then I would probably go with one meter, but since everything is in place it is just not worth it to change. I just hope that they don't change to commercial rates for the second.