HOUSTON—Ebony McMillian spent 11 days without power, but her electric bill still came as a shock.

It was $972.57.

“I looked at it and I thought, I don’t even have a house, so how am I going to have a bill this high,” McMillian said.

She was so angry, she called her electric provider.  They said her bill was an estimation based on prior usage.

“I don’t understand. I don’t know what they are talking about. Estimating what,” McMillian said.

CenterPoint Energy reads the meters and passes the information on to retail electric providers.

The company said there is no meter reading going on right now, because their focus is on restoring power to the 110,000 people still in the dark.

That means at this point, all electric bills on CenterPoint’s grid are based on estimates.

“There definitely will be people that will be billed too much and billed too little. When we get the actual reading next month, everything will equal out. Ultimately, consumers will only pay for the electricity they have consumed,” CenterPoint spokesperson Alicia Dixon said.

McMillian’s power company, First Choice Power, said they are willing to work with her. 

She insists there’s no way she burned nearly $1,000 worth of electricity in her two-bedroom Kingwood apartment.