Old 60 amp meter sockets

I was at my neighbor's house helping him clean up from storm damage in his yard and I noticed an old meter set up on his garage,it is no longer connected to the POCO lines.It has the service entrance cable ran from the roof where the drip loop used to be,then it goes into the top of the first meter socket,from the bottom of the first,then there's another identicle meter socket connected to it with a nipple.the wires run from the load side of the first one into the line side of the second one,and out to where the fuse panel used to be.Is the old way of commercial metering?I'll post a picture of it later in the week when I finish up in his yard.

 

I think it was a separate meter for a water heater, or in some rare cases, lighting.

 

Interesting. Two meter bases wired in series?

Waiting to see the pictures!

 

I'll be down there again tonight or tomorrow night,I asked him what the garage used to be,and he said the guy who lived there back in the 50s used to do alot of welding in there.I asked an electrician at work about this set up and he said back then that was how they had demand metering.one meter was for a watt-hour meter and the other one was for a peak use meter.I'll have pictures up soon.

 

Here are the pictures!

 

My only guess is something was wrong with the first meter socket and they just set another one. I can see the first one appears slugged unless those are fuses.

 

My best guess is the second socket was for a different rate for special useage and was originally wired from the line side of the top socket, but the special rate was discontinued and all metering was converted to the bottom meter and the top socket was slugged and covered with a blank. I remember seeing a lot of these old sockets like that as remnants of back when water heating was given a special rate. When the power company converted to just giving a water heating credit, one socket would be slugged and blanked off just like the ones in the picture.

 

That could be possible,I was also thinking that the top one with the bypass slugs was an old way of using it as a main disconnect.