Quite the opposite. current would continue to flow in a burnt out cable.
As such what your are alos saying is that the current be high enough to cause an out of sight electric bill? To my knowledge the earth is a extremely poor conductor and would not add appreciably to the electric bill. Or would it just charge the earth around the faulted cable causing an electricution safety issue.
Going back to the OP, you still are of the opinion that a damaged underground cable is causing their high electric bills.
I have seen one phase of a 240 open delta burnt out(high leg) and the bill get so high the church wanted to turn the heat off for the winter. (The service was CT metered at the pole). We went in and looked around for awhile, actually we were going to remove the power pot and convert the church back to single phase. I connected the Dynatel to the individual legs, the high leg showed fault. When we dug the wire up, appx 6 ft. of it had burnt back toward the pole, and the ground it was buried in was hot.
In other words, yes, I am saying a bad underground can cause the bill rise appreciably. I don't know what is causing the OP's bill to be so high. A bad UG is where I would start looking, but only because I have the Dynatel and it is quicker than anything else.
How were they able to maintain 3p power with a conductor fried as you have described?
Boy, did that work out well. It's nice to see a problem identified and resolved, they didn't need 3ph after all which it fairly simple regarding 1ph and the POCO came across with credit.
You had to walk away very pleased with this job which appears to be a win for everybody.
This particular job actually started a new policy for us. We don't CT meter underground services at the pole any longer. I really never understood why the policy change. This situation was a fluke IMO. In any other circumstance the homeowner would notice a power problem, and we could fix it immediately. Maybe the company was looking for an excuse to implement this policy, I don't know...I think it was an embarrassment to have to pay back the money and admit that all the engineers and billing department people that told them they were really using all that energy were wrong..
An electrical inspector told me a story of when he was troubleshooting a high bill at a mobile home. He checked the connections at the panels & other high energy draw equipment. Did not find anything. Was walking around the outside to see if anything might be apparent, when some of his tools jumped out of his pouch. He jumped back and took a look see. There was excess wire ran to the home (above ground) and coiled up with the jack from the frame tongue into the ground. Created some electric magnet!
These are two of my outside salesman and mine favorite statements, it looks like #1 applies here but we always had a couple of back up to cover things of they don't;
1) It's better to be lucky than good.
2) I can't afford them as a customer.
When we really got ticked of at someone it was "_____ you, strong letter to follow"
Just a little humor if you're not fussy.
