Saving electricity

[Mace Canute]

I never said I wanted to take meter mine out but THEY had a problem with THEIR meter it was bunt on the back bad I have pics somewhere lines had some down some big high transmission actually came down on to our street lines. I know this did it but when they turned on my power and the bill went crazy they said it was my fault their meter was burnt for not keeping up my box and I needed to pay the bill

If this was required, there should be documentation somewhere that spells it out in black and white that they can produce to prove it to you and it should be tied into whatever conditions of service they have that you agree to when you made application for power. What do they expect you to actually do to a meter box that's sealed, other than make sure it looks ok from the outside? They strike me as being dishonest, either through ignorance or through design.

Meter box shorted out on one of my rental properties this past Christmas Eve. insurance paid all but deductible for replacement and paid to replace the Federal-Pacific 100amp breaker box that was inside to a 200amp outside installation.

Fire melted the retaining ring holding the meter in allowing it to fall out, shutting down the fireworks just before causing a major fire.
It was a brand new remote-read meter that had been installed a month prior. First time the electric company, electric contractor, or the insurance adjuster had ever seen it happen.

Wow! I have NEVER EVER seen a meter box fail that bad nor heard of it until now! It looks like it developed a high resistance fault that allowed a continuous arc to occur and turned it into a miniature electric furnace. Of course, any insulation material inside the box plus the meter itself would have been vaporized and added to the fire. Darn scarey and darn lucky it wasn't worse.

[HickoryNut]

Farm Bureau did me proud on the deal, even put the family in a hotel on Christmas day and two more days after. We all figured the prongs in the box got tweaked when the new meter was installed. My renter claims his electric bill has gone down 30%, probably due to less resistance in the meter box/breaker box and I'm really glad the air conditioner starts up with much less strain now and will aid its longevity. REALLY lucky, the eave and the paneling on the inside had just ignited when the FD got there.

[3930dave]

Thanks for posting that Hickory Nut.

It is good to hear that you received excellent support and service from your insurance company.

I'm hoping that all the details of your fire made it to the desk of your area Fire Marshall, and ideally to somebody senior in Electrical certification testing (probably UL down your way).

You may have had a one in a billion event, only time will tell how many of these come up elsewhere.

Old analog meters were geared, mostly metal - simple, tough, and not much to burn. As more "smarts" (ie. electronics) have been packed into newer meters, their performance and failure modes in extreme situations has changed.

(Simple rule in engineering - As complexity goes up, reliability goes down. If anybody has trouble sleeping at night, lookup "Performing MTBF Calculations").

Between the power surges and the EMI from being that close to major arcs, I can easily see an electronic meter being off by 30%, or more.

Even w/o a fire, there can be significant $ impacts to a meter problem. This discussion has been a good reminder to keep an eye or your meter/bill and for the general public to call their utility and/or a licensed contractor if they have any doubts or concerns.

I'm going to cross-link the page with Hickory's initial post, over to Safety.

Rgds, D.

[chucko]

"They strike me as being dishonest, either through ignorance or through design." yea that is kind of what I told them.....well maybe not those exact words "wink wink" but that was the jest of what I said