Fast spinning Meter

[christiansparky]

Can anyone enlight me on other causes on why a meter would spin very fast besides the obvious appliance consumption. Can faulty wiring also cause the meter to spin out of control? Electrical leakage, loose wires, ground fault, can anyone help. This is a single Family Home we are talking about.

 

[mjf]

Faulty meter?

 

[christiansparky]

I thought the same thing but when I power of a 15A circuit to the house the meter slows down. It oly happens when This particular circuit is energized.

 

[gar]

130313-2154 EDT

christiansparky:

Turn off all breakers except the main. Does the meter spin at all? It should be stopped.

If stopped, then turn on one 120 V breaker to a circuit that has no load, or that all loads on that circuit can be turned off. Again the meter should not spin.

Assuming it does not spin, then put a 120 V 1500 W heater on that circuit. Find the calibration constant for the meter. Others can help you with this. Then use a stopwatch and time one or X revolutions and calculate power.

If the calibration is approximately OK, then individually test each circuit for a high power load by using one breaker at a time.

.

 

[Jraef]

Just heard of another one here in California last month where a house was a foreclosure and supposedly abandoned. The next door neighbor started to get whopping PG&E bills. So he called an electrician friend of mine, who went through that process of elimination and found that there were 2 garage circuits that were pulling a lot of power but were not supposed to be connected to anything. Longer story short, the abandoned house had a pot grow operation in it and they had tapped off of 3 neighbors' services, two cords from the left, two from the right, two from the rear. All nicely buried in the landscaping, into the garages through the foundation vents, run up the inside walls in EMT and tapped into outlet boxes that had extention rings on them. He said the interior work looked too good to be done by amateurs, must have been electricians. They used yard stuff to cover everything exposed where they couldn't bury it. Nobody noticed it.

 

[SG-1]

My fast spinning meter was caused by a fault on a circuit to a well pump, maybe a 150 feet from the service. It did finally burn a wire off. 30+ year old romex that had been used for UF.

 

[__dan]

High electric bills are often defective appliances that run all the time. AC units with no refrigerant, refrigerators have defrost heaters that get stuck, electric heat on at the wrong time (bad thermostat). Replacing an old good fridge with a new one could drop $40. / month by itself from the electric bill. New ones draw peanuts. One 75 watt lamp on all the time is ~ $7./ month, making a 750 watt continuous load ~ $75 monthly. Electric DHW with a bad thermostat making scalding water is another.

Next likely would be bad connections at the service and main. Heat test the main panel by putting your hand on the closed cover and seeing if it warm or burns your hand (gently). Saw one service change running hot, burned main bus or breaker. Homeowner told me they knew the electric bills were high and blamed the meter. Her husband had taken a baseball bat to the meter at Halloween to get a new meter, like two years earlier, and they were still paying $250 monthly. Saw a tiny store paying $800 / month running the RTU with a refrigerant leak.

 

[christiansparky]

I greatly appreciate the input on this matter. I will continue to troubleshoot the issue and let you guys know what i find thanks

 

[K8MHZ]

I thought the same thing but when I power of a 15A circuit to the house the meter slows down. It oly happens when This particular circuit is energized.

Interesting.

What are you using as a load?

 

[GoldDigger]

I thought the same thing but when I power of a 15A circuit to the house the meter slows down. It oly happens when This particular circuit is energized.

Either there is a load on the 15 amp circuit that you do not know about or else there is a wiring or equipment fault that is drawing a lot of current but not tripping the breaker. Use a clamp-on ammeter to see what is going out of the 15 amp breaker!

I have heard (friend of friend) of a guy who wired up his own hydraulic auto lift and inadvertently connected one 240 phase to the motor case and through that into the concrete pad the lift was bolted to (outside the garage). The result was a constant 40 amp drain on a 50 amp breaker and a very unexpected next month's power bill.

 

[christiansparky]

I know there is no equipment load so I have to look into it a bit more and trace the circuit out and see if there is another load on this circuit I don't know about. I will also use a clamp-on ammeter to see if I have a problem there as well. Thanks for that info guys very helpful.

 

[PetrosA]

Underground lines to outbuildings, yard receptacles or post lights can have breaks in them that will cause this. The strangest leak I saw was in a second floor soffit where a gutter guy pierced a 14/3 NM, causing the leak to run to earth via the gutter.

 

[GoldDigger]

Underground lines to outbuildings, yard receptacles or post lights can have breaks in them that will cause this. The strangest leak I saw was in a second floor soffit where a gutter guy pierced a 14/3 NM, causing the leak to run to earth via the gutter.

A leaking gutter, you say? :lol:

 

[christiansparky]

It turned out to be a underground circuit supplying the garage. Thank you guys for all your suggestions it really helped to narrow it down.

 

[Ruff Elec]

Fast Spinning Meter

Fast Spinning Meter

For whatever it is worth, the utility can come out and test the meter for accuracy. A meter disk assuming it is a mechanical meter should not spin with main breaker off and no taps before the main, IE Fire alarms. There can be a meter creep which is considered 1 rotation in under 10 minutes, creep is acceptable. Someone mentioned clocking the meter. On the face of the meter there is a kh. Clock the disk spinning, since it is probably very slow, go one rotation. The calculation would be the kh times number of rotations divided by number of seconds, (assuming this is a simple single phase, non ct rated meter). For example, 1 rotation on a 3.6 kh meter taking 25 seconds. This would be a load of 144 watts. Many times someone has played with the f or s screws, these are there for the meter tech to "dial " the meter into 100% accuracy when tested if it is off by les then 2%. I have had weel pumps that were unknown to be in home run endlessly, have had uf cable leak to ground, have had tampering IE trying to use magnets which will afect the magnetism of the meter and thus affect braking ability of the meter magnetism, have had unknown loads such as heat tape where the thermostat went bad. Rule out the meter first by having utiltiy test it, then trace out the circuit with the load, Happy Hunting

 

[christiansparky]

For whatever it is worth, the utility can come out and test the meter for accuracy. A meter disk assuming it is a mechanical meter should not spin with main breaker off and no taps before the main, IE Fire alarms. There can be a meter creep which is considered 1 rotation in under 10 minutes, creep is acceptable. Someone mentioned clocking the meter. On the face of the meter there is a kh. Clock the disk spinning, since it is probably very slow, go one rotation. The calculation would be the kh times number of rotations divided by number of seconds, (assuming this is a simple single phase, non ct rated meter). For example, 1 rotation on a 3.6 kh meter taking 25 seconds. This would be a load of 144 watts. Many times someone has played with the f or s screws, these are there for the meter tech to "dial " the meter into 100% accuracy when tested if it is off by les then 2%. I have had weel pumps that were unknown to be in home run endlessly, have had uf cable leak to ground, have had tampering IE trying to use magnets which will afect the magnetism of the meter and thus affect braking ability of the meter magnetism, have had unknown loads such as heat tape where the thermostat went bad. Rule out the meter first by having utiltiy test it, then trace out the circuit with the load, Happy Hunting

I had the customer call the utility company to come in and check the meter as well.Just to make sure everything is covered. Thanks

 

[kwired]

If meter is spinning current is flowing - even if it is undesired current.

If meter malfunctions it is usually in favor of customer - meaning it records less than what was actually used. I have heard of many cases where customers complain of a high bill and want to blame the meter instead of finding out if they actually used the power, POCO examines meter and finds it to be inaccurate - but in the customers favor, meaning customers bill would have been even higher if it was accurate. If you think about it what can go wrong that would make it spin faster than it should outside of somehow the adjustment mechanism would get turned? Most any other malfunction would make is spin slower than it should.

 

[Rampage_Rick]

A meter disk assuming it is a mechanical meter should not spin with main breaker off and no taps before the main, IE Fire alarms. There can be a meter creep which is considered 1 rotation in under 10 minutes, creep is acceptable.

I personally had a creeping meter. Judging by the seal, it was original to when the house was built circa 1973. I could turn off the main breaker and I'd get one rotation every 90 seconds. My house was skipped in the first wave of smart meter installations, but after a couple of calls I was able to get the meter swapped. I figure my bills dropped by about $20 per month.

On the flip side, I'm aware of one model that occasionally under-charges customers. Apparently one of the gears isn't cut cleanly, and it will "snag" under light loads, essentially giving free power (but in small amounts) Any significant load creates enough torque to un-stick the mechanism and will register correctly.