Possibility of old meter being faulty

conspiracyinc · 12-09-2022 6:37pm #1

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My small workplace has the attached meter installed, we’ve recently been tracking the usage and it seems quite high for a v small two person office, significantly more than I use at home. An effergy elite monitor shows significantly lower usage. Wondering what the likelihood of a faulty meter is given it’s clearly quite old- Google tells me it’s rare for a meter to be faulty. Do they have a ‘sell by’ date? Thanks for any insights- it seems a bit of a mystery.

meercat · 12-09-2022 8:25pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058263077/possibility-of-old-meter-being-faulty

Hard to tell exactly from that photo but it looks like there’s 2 supplies coming from that meter load side. Is it possible that there’s 2 distribution boards being fed from the same meter. Post a photo showing more detail.

conspiracyinc · 12-09-2022 10:17pm

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I’ll get a better one tomorrow. There are two supplies, there’s a separate business downstairs and we’re upstairs. Fella downstairs has much lower readings than ours despite the fact the two office sizes and electric usage should be similar. That’s part of why we’re wondering if there’s something wrong with ours

John.G · 12-09-2022 11:43pm

You can do a quite reasonable test, get a kettle and plug it in (with water), there is a black mark on the spinning disc in the meter, when this passes the vertical black mark in the center of the horizontal arrow, start your "stopwatch" and time how long it takes the disc to do say 3 full revolutions, the power is 3/time in secs X 24000 watts, ie if 3 revolutions in 36 secs then power, is 3/36 X 24000, 2000 watts. The bottom of the kettle will give its power in watts, compare the two. It won't be 100% correct as the voltage won't be exactly 230 but it will certainly show up any big differences.

You can also use the "1/10" kwh meter (in red).

meercat · 13-09-2022 7:10am

How many meters are there in total. Post a photo of the entire setup at the meter position

there’s too many cables connected to your meter. There should be just 4. Normally live and neutral in and live and neutral out (load)

id suspect that there’s also someone else connected to your meter due to the fact there’s 4 cables connected to the load

conspiracyinc · 13-09-2022 10:52am

Thanks, more pictures here.

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conspiracyinc · 13-09-2022 11:02am

Thanks will try this. With all lights off and everything unplugged the meter is still moving slowly, 40w based on your calculation. When everything is turned off at the fuse box it stops. It’s the fuses that control the lights that seem to be causing it to move even when they’re turned off.

meercat · 13-09-2022 12:06pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119611239#Comment_119611239

It looks like it’s powering 2 different premises. What is that white clamp meter reading. It may be a second premises monitor. Perhaps there’s a landlord fuse board tapped into the same meter.

there doesn’t appear to be an earth neutralising link either which would need to be checked and rectified

conspiracyinc · 13-09-2022 5:52pm

The white clamp is an electricity monitor we’ve been using, it’s giving readings less than half of what’s being recorded by the meter but then we don’t know how accurate it is. Sounds like we need to get an electrician to have a look at it. It seems an odd set up, they’ve been out twice to install smart meters but after looking at it said they couldn’t do it.

10-10-20 · 13-09-2022 8:45pm

It seems an odd set up, they’ve been out twice to install smart meters but after looking at it said they couldn’t do it.

Some would suggest leaving it alone then. 😆

meercat · 13-09-2022 9:10pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119613570#Comment_119613570

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119611638#Comment_119611638

If you only have the clamp over 1 of the cables then you aren’t reading the total load.

I wonder are the trip switches in the photo also fed from the same meter

Doolittle51 · 14-09-2022 8:23am

The property is split in two, so are there some communal areas? If so, there could be heaters for the communal area, lights, maybe some outside lighting that stays on all night? And how is the water heated? Any chance that there's one hot water tank supplying both units? Lots of possibilities really!

Jim_Hodge · 14-09-2022 11:29am

Old meters are more likely to slow down than give false high readings. Look at usage.

Citizen Six · 14-09-2022 11:50am

As mentioned, you are only reading one of the two loads coming from the meter. You need to put you own meter on the mains/incoming side, to see if your meter and the ESB meter are getting the same reading.

Then you need to find where each of the load circuits are going. One obviously to you, but where does the other one feed.

Possibility of old meter being faulty

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