A few decades ago, the power company regularly employed people to visit customers and read their electric meters. Today, power companies frequently use a “smart” meter to keep track of it—or expect you to know how to read your home’s electrical meter. Even with a smart meter, you may want to know how to read your electric meter so you can keep an eye on your power usage patterns or verify the accuracy of the power bill.
What an Electrical Meter Looks Like and How It Works
As you use electricity at your home, the power travels through the electrical meter before entering your home. The meter measures the amount of electricity going into your home.
An electrical meter usually has a cylindrical shape and a round face, measuring several inches in diameter. It also may have a boxy shape with a square face, again measuring several inches across.
The meter has a glass or plastic bubble that protects the face. The face often will have a white background that contains the unit’s dials, display screen, serial number, and model number, as well as other items.
Older meters may have a horizontal spinning disc that protrudes slightly from the face.
Find Your Electrical Meter
Photo: Grace Cary / Moment / Getty Images
In order to read your home’s electrical meter, you’ll need to find it. Look for your electric meter in these common places:
Foundation: Electrical meters may sit near the foundation of the home or building where the main electrical wiring enters.
Indoors: Some electrical power meters are inside the home, usually near your electrical circuit breaker box. Look in a utility room, a porch, a garage, or a basement.
Power pole: If your property has an electrical pole somewhere near it, the pole may contain a mount with the meter. Typically, you’d find this type of pole near an alley.
Light pole: If you live in a rural area or on an acreage, you may have a safety light pole on the property. The power company may mount your meter directly to this pole, as it often also carries the main electric line to the home.
Cluster of meters: If you live in a multi-family building or work in a multi-tenant commercial building, the electric meters for each unit may be together in one place on the property. Check near a parking area, near any air conditioning units, in a shared utility room, in a basement, or mounted to a nearby power pole.
If you cannot find your meter, call the power company. It should be able to tell you the exact location of the meter for your property.
Read an Electric Meter With Dials
An older electric meter has dials on it that sort of resemble multiple clock faces. These dials have only 10 digits and one hand, though. As your home draws power through the electric meter, the meter uses hidden gears to move the hand on each dial.
These dials measure the number of kilowatt hours (kWh) of power you are using.
Some dials’ hands spin counter-clockwise, while others spin clockwise, which can complicate the process of how to read the electrical meter. When reading the dials, just focus on the location of the hand, rather than worrying about which direction it spins.
If the hand points between two digits, write down the lower of the two digits.
If the hand seems to be pointing directly at a digit, look at the next dial to the right. If the hand on that dial is between eight and zero, count the previous dial on the left as the next smallest digit, rather than the digit at which it’s pointing.
If the hand on the dial to the right is pointing directly at zero or is between zero and two, write down the digit at which the hand on the dial to the left seems to be pointing.
Write down the numbers on the dials in the same order you see them on the face of the meter.
Read a Digital Electric Meter
A digital electric meter is far easier to read than a meter with dials. It has a display screen that shows the amount of power you use at your home in kWh.
Just write down the numbers in the order in which they appear.
Once you have your electrical meter numbers written down, it’s time to make sense of them. Understand that the number on the meter reflects the total amount of power you used since the power company installed the meter. The meter does not reset to zero each billing period.
Calculating power usage: If you want to calculate your power usage over a period of time, write down the meter numbers at the start of the period and at the end of the period. Subtract the start-of-period number from the end-of-period number to see how many kWh you used in the period. You can use this information to try to track your efforts at conserving power, for example.
Submitting to the power company: Some electric companies require customers to track and submit their meter numbers each month for billing purposes. Write them on the paper bill or submit them to your account on the power company’s website.
If the power company doesn’t require you to submit your numbers, you may have a smart meter, which transmits the numbers automatically to the power company. You also may have a meter reader who visits your location.
Should You Try Reading Your Electrical Meter Yourself?
As long as you can find your electrical meter, you can successfully read it yourself. In fact, many power companies ask their customers to read the electric meter themselves.
If you physically cannot reach your electric meter, contact the power company and ask for help. You also could call a professional electrician near you to help with any electric meter questions.
Frequently Asked Questions
The dials on an electrical meter simply represent the number of kWh you have used since it was installed. In a five-dial setup, the left-most dial represents tens of thousands of kWh, while the next dial to the right represents thousands of kWh. The following dials going to the right represent hundreds, tens, and ones.
Each meter should have a serial number printed or engraved on the face of the meter. Make sure the serial number of the meter you are reading matches your account with the power company. If you live in an apartment complex, the meters are likely located all together. Yours should be labeled according to your apartment unit.
Smart meters send the readings over a wireless wide area network (WAN) to the power company. This network allows sending small amounts of data slowly over long distances, which is perfect for smart meter readings that occur monthly. If you would prefer a smart meter, contact your power company and consider springing for the cost of replacing your electric meter.
Kyle Schurman has a passion for writing about topics ranging from home improvement to consumer electronics. His writing appears in online publications like Business Insider, New York Magazine, Scary Mommy, and multiple Tribune Publishing websites.
Kyle Schurman has a passion for writing about topics ranging from home improvement to consumer electronics. His writing appears in online publications like Business Insider, New York Magazine, Scary Mommy, and multiple Tribune Publishing websites.
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