It?s not necessarily obsolete, unless of course, your power company doesn?t offer the off-peak rate anymore. :smile:
There are still a few of those dual meter, off-peak setups around my area. Every now and then, I will get a no hot water call and it turns out that the clock in the off-peak meter just needs to be reset because of a power outage of some sort. I?m not sure if our power company even offers an off-peak rate for residential electric water heating anymore, but sometimes customers have me disconnect it just to avoid having to deal with the no hot water situation again.
When I need to disconnect them and can?t wait for the power company to get there to unlock the meter ring, I will advance the time set knob on off-peak meter to one of the off positions to make things at least a little safer, then carefully disconnect and cap off the wires to the DP feed-thru switch in the panel one at a time. I?ll put a standard DP breaker in place of the feed-thru switch to power the water heater.
You just have to remember that the off-peak meter?s switch is only a single line break, so you will still have 120V to ground on one leg, usually fused only at the utility transformer, when you are disconnecting the wires on the line side of the feed-thru switch in the panel.
The power company can then be notified to come and remove the off-peak meter and install a plastic meter blank at their convenience.
