Bipassing your meter

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bensonelectric

bensonelectric

Senior Member
How often do you run into it? Our instructor was showing us some pictures of a guy who had a ran #8 from the in side of the meter, to a separate panel, which he used on his electric heaters and power tools. How does the power company miss this, since usually the tag on the meter base has to be cut, to allow access to the lugs.
 
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reynoldsk

Member
Re: Bipassing your meter

In NY, specifically Long Island, those tags arent really monitored. If a meter reader or another employee of the utility notices that it is missing they just install one.

This is a funny story that a meter reader told me once about bypassing the meter. He pulled the meter to a house once to perform testing/calibrations and while the meter was in his hands the A/C compressor, which is 5 feet from the meter pan, kicked on. Needless to say the homeowner was suited by teh POCO, I do not know what came of it.
 
paul

paul

Senior Member
Location
Snohomish, WA
Re: Bipassing your meter

I worked with a fella who once ran across a house where the homeowner drilled small holes out from the attic and behind the SE cable. The homeowner then tapped into the SE cable using square drive screws and some #10 wire to power up his heaters. Somehow the found it and busted the guy.

A guy I currently work with used to live outside of Denver 20 yrs ago. He said they never had a tag on his meter, so he always waited till the weekends our after work to do his heavy loads after he turned his meter upside down. It would be great to have the POCO pay you for the power used. ;)
 
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Ed MacLaren

Senior Member
Re: Bipassing your meter

When our POCO suspects a homeowner of meter fraud, they sometimes mount a dummy transformer can on the pole next to the real transformer. Inside is another meter to check the suspect's actual power use.

Hope I'm not giving away any trade secrets here, Charlie. :eek:

Ed

[ December 09, 2004, 06:45 PM: Message edited by: Ed MacLaren ]
 
A

apauling

Senior Member
Re: Bipassing your meter

I saw a near professional bypass. This was in the early 70's.

before the poco powered up the underground, they dug up a section and taped it to power a full scale growing operation. ran it to a box all the work workmanlike (didn't see the underground) but the arrogance and scale was fopund by the poco. don't know what happened.

over beers a few years later, someone asked me the safe way to do it. I designed a system for them. thought about it later and never did it again.

the poco's have ways to check for any imbalance.
 
goldstar

goldstar

Senior Member
Location
New Jersey
Occupation
Electrical Contractor
Re: Bipassing your meter

I had a situation like this just this past winter. A medical building (built in 1972) that I service was cited for stealing electricity and the POCO was looking for an estimated back-charge of around $16K claiming that statute of limitations would only allow them to estimate back for 6 years.

When the electrical service was originally built it was a 3 phase, 400 amp overhead service which entered at the rear of the building. The service came down the back side in rigid conduit into the building to a main disconnect switch, out the bottom into a trough where 3 (very old) meter sockets were installed, very neatly, above the trough. Only the first socket had a meter installed in it. I guess, as new tenants came into the building, new breaker panels were neatly installed near the respective meter pans for 1st floor, 2nd floor and basement, and feeder conduits ran from the bottom of each panel into the common trough.

The meter reader would probably have never picked up on this except that some unnamed geniuses piped into the sides of the two remaining meter pans for breaker panels that they added. When I rebuilt the service I found the two remaining meter pans jumped out with # 10 wire. I wish I had a digital camera to show this here on the forum. The sad part about this is that the someone at the POCO had to know about this or why else would they put the tag on the meters? I not only installed new 3 phase meter sockets but had to install locks on the troughs below.
 
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jimwalker

Senior Member
Location
TAMPA FLORIDA
Re: Bipassing your meter

I know at least 10% of our members could pull power theft off, but i dought we have more than a few that would risk it.
Any figures on what % of poco customers steal ?
 
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apauling

Senior Member
Re: Bipassing your meter

ten to fifeteen years ago in ec&m there was an article on 3 phase in an industrioal application running the meter backwards. whole plant had a negative power bill.

paul
 
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