Electric Meters

This is Turtle.

I know of no really cheap way of checking the watts used except maybe you could get your power company to let you have one of their old glass meters they have rebuilt by their supplier. they do pay about $75.00 to have them rebuilt and you might be able to con one from them but may have to buy it. If they have the older type, They may let you have it rebuilt at their rebuilder and get you a meter pan and install a meter on your shop to see about the watts used. Your still looking a $100.00+ anyhow you look at it. The wire , meter pan , conduit / connectors [ they will or may require it ] , and something i forgot. Now they always got electronic stuff that will do this for you but most of them are a little pricey.

TURTLE

You can find them on eBay all the time:

Jim

Search for 'watthour meter' on Ebay. They are fairly common. Be careful about amperage. though. Some of the old ones were less than

I've seen 100amp meters go for about $40.

Jim

Looked like a lot of them were $10 or less. I would still check with the local electric company, which may have used and certified ones, before buying from ebay

Certify it yourself. Just put a 100w bulb on it for 10 hours and make sure it reads 1 KWH.

What if the 100 watt bulb actually uses 110, 104, 102, 98, 90 watts?

I dont know what the tolerances of 100 watt bulbs are.

John.

-snip-

I'd *check* with Electrical supply houses & the local utilities-- but I went that route for 20 years before I bought one on Ebay.

None of the upstate NY suppliers or utilities will part with them if they have them.. [I couldn't even talk the meter gal out of one when they replaced all of them in my area with digitals. Each meter has a serial number & she had to account for them all.]

What happens is all relative. Even if the meter is off by 10%, it'll be off by

Suppose after testing, you find the basement freezer uses 3x the power as the kitchen refrig/freezer, or the garage heater is using way too much power to be considered practical.

Unless the purpose is to illegally sub-meter another customer.

Run the test multiple times, with different bulbs, and average the results?

In this case, one would get a range of readings around 1KWH.

One could put in a larger/smaller bulb, and see if reads proportionally more/less.

Get a clamp on ammeter and measure the actual draw?

There is one available at the following link but it is only a single outlet and only 120 volts. Something like it are generally used to check the energy consumption of say a refrigerator or washing machine, etc. I don't know if that would meet your needs.

Kill-a-Watt Meter

Dan O.

- Appliance411.com

I've checked meters with a 100 W or other bulb, but they never read exactly. Probably someone makes a standard for $50 or more, but I'm not about to buy that for what I can pay for a meter. Besides, I don't know how to adjust the meter.

I have a cheap clamp meter, and have tried that. I think even an expensive clamp meter wouldn't be as accurate as an off the shelf kilowatt meter.

Did you offer to pay for it? Where do you think all those meters on ebay came from?

Don't need to do it for hours. I doubt that the bulb has much variation over time. Just count a few revolutions in a specific time and plug into the formula. Bulbs vary quite a bit, but I guess you could average a bunch of different bulbs to get a guestimate.

Look here.

ChrisW wrote:

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Always-- and before I found them on Ebay I was offering $100 because I remembered that a friend bought a truckload in the 70s for $25 a piece. None of the retailer, wholesalers, or electricians I talked to could even suggest where I might find a used one.

If they come from Niagra Mohawk territory, I'm guessing they're stolen--- but from the number of them listed, it seems like they must be available someplace.

Jim

It depends on how uptodate your utilities equipment is. Finding a place where the utility has just changed out old meters for a new style, e.g., going from the little dials (if they exist anymore) to a straight number system would be good, or has gone to higher amperage meters would be good.