leakage current

[mweb]

I have a freind who has really high utility bills, the highest so far just under 4000 kw hours, their bill should only be about 750 kw hours, the only
high wattage devices are electric range, hot water heater, and well pump, with average use, I have checked current draw with clamp on meter and found
nothing out of the ordinary ,this was at the meter socket, average load to the house was 3 to 11 amps,
tv on, box fan, and range, normal rutine, so any ideas where is all this enegy is going? This is direct burial aluminum to house, if this was leaking, knicked wire, or rodents chewing it, you should be able to measure a current draw with a clamp on meter, even just a few amps, shouldnt you? Ive tried that a few times, with main shut off in house, never got any sort of reading at all, voltage always ok at both ends My gut feeling has been the undergound is bad....

Didn't mean to make this so long, My question is, Shouldn't a person be able to get some sort of current reading if the underground is leaking?

 

[stamcon]

Re: leakage current

If the 4000kw/hr was for 1 month, that is 5.55kw/hr, 24 hours a day for 30 days. That should be readable. Has the meter been clocked for a ballpark accuracy check? Is the meter at the house or remote?

 

[elektrikution]

Re: leakage current

the only way to get a current reading is if there a load connected, so if the main is shut off and you take a reading at the meter on the load side of the meter you meter should read 0. Even if there is a leak in the direct burial conductors and current is flowing to earth ground, it would not show anything on your ammeter because you are measuring at the meter , a point that is past a possibly damaged part of the conductor. Even if it was damaged the watt hour meter would not see a difference and you should not see a difference in your bill. Try checking appliances that might switch on when no one is home ; electric water heater- faulty thermostat, defective photo eye on floodlights, refrigerator or freezers that are old and cycling more often, furnace- aged blower unit motor, pipe heating cable on , or gutter de icing cable on.

 

[pwhite]

Re: leakage current

when my wife & i moved into our current home, the kwh usage was also high. nothing made any since. we contacted the local power company and requested a new meter and paid the fee for testing the old meter. as expected, nothing was wrong with the old meter, but our electric bill is
now less than $100 per month rather than the $225/pmoth before the meter was replaced. i know that some will say i'm nuts, but the electric bill has remained less than $100 / month for the past 4 years versus $225/month the year before. just food for thought.

 

[physis]

Re: leakage current

It sounds like your doing what you should to track down a current leak. I have a couple ideas that might help.

First I think if you shut of the house and get no current through the service entrance conductors that sort of vindicates the underground.

Have you tried putting an ammeter on the ground? A current leak doesn't necessarily have to go back through "your" ground but most of it probably will if it's the closest to a leak. And soil moisture should be a huge factor.

It sounds to me like it's on the building side. Either the building or an appliance. you might try disconnecting everything and measure the entrance conductors again. If that still shows nothing the tedious plug one thing back in at time method might turn something up.

although my gut reaction is, nah, the bad meter idea also seems worthy of a look.

Good luck, these can be elusive. Please post what you find, the solution to stuff like this can always be helpful to all of us.

 

[bennie]

Re: leakage current

Has there been a radical change in the bill?

Is this an anomaly?

 

[jeff n]

Re: leakage current

You might check the plumbing. If the house has mixing valves on the toilets and the toilets run or there is a leak in a hot water line or even if the hot water heater is rusting out and leaking the elements will be on all the time as the thermosats won't be satisfied. I had the leaking issue last year on a job and it ran the bill up significantly. A running toilet with a mixing valve will empty a hot water heater in a matter of hours and the elements will run the whole time.
Sounds silly but may be worth a look. Good luck

 

[iwire]

Re: leakage current

If you have a water heater element burned through, even if the thermostat is satisfied you will probably would have current flowing into the water as the thermostat probably only breaks one side of the 240.

I would think the Meter it self would be better than a clamp meter, (after all it is what's picking it up in the first place) shut off all breakers inside and the dial should be still if it is not you must be losing something underground.

 

[mweb]

Re: leakage current

Thank you all for your input, just this morning my freind woke up to popping lite bulbs, TV, VCR, computer, gas dryer and lots of other things literally smoked, the underground neutral opened up between the meter pole and the house. I think maybe
all three conductors may have been knicked when installed, or chewed on, and the neutral finaly failed first. He now has a temporary triplex on the ground for power, still frost in the gound here in Minnesota, I haven't spent a lot of time at his house because it may conflict my job....
When he gets things back to normal, we are going to do our own energy audit, and see if we may have passed something up.

Funny thing, he asked the utility company if they would do an energy audit, no, but they did come out and put up a bigger transformer..........
Thanks.......

 

[hurk27]

Re: leakage current

A simple resistance reading on the triplex would of showed this up before the damage but it hard to know which way to go. as with electric hot water heaters and other things it can be very misleading sometimes.