Electrician is reattaching Meter Can to garage tomorrow.
If he physically has to remove the actual meter to fix the Meter Can.....how is the meter reading re-established when he puts the meter back? Do these meters have a battery in them to maintain the current reading if the meter is pulled from the electricity supply? If not then what reading does the meter show when re-connected?
It is a 'smart meter'. It feeds back usage to Center Point automatically, no physical meter reading is required.
Thanks

 

Hi, I hope the power co. has been notified about this disconnect.
Geo🇺🇸

 

Contact your power company and let them know your meter was removed for repairs. They will send someone out to replace the security seal. I have never had to do anything regarding the meter's reading or billing.

 

Meters hold their memory indefinitely.
Otherwise if they didn't.... they'd lose their memory every time there was a power failure.

 

I believe electronic meters use non-volatile memory chips in them. So they don't lose the meter reading when they are disconnected for any period of time.

Regardless - it will always remember the reading. Otherwise power outages would be problematic too.

 

A word to the wise: Don't always believe the "electronic" meters the power companies are so in love with. They can and do LIE.

I lost power during an ice storm. Some lights still worked (figured out later that the ones that worked were LED) but that was all. I reported the outage and a few hours later, I got a text that power had been restored. Really? So I reported it again and soon got another text that power had been restored.

This called for investigation and I found around 37 volts on multiple receptacles. My first thought was a compromised neutral, so I pulled the cover off the main panel and found 37 volts to both neutral and ground on each leg and 74 volts across the legs. This was with the main breaker On and Off. ???? I reported it again, packed up and went to my daughter's.

This back-and-forth went on for several days. I ran my phone battery down 3 times waiting to talk to a human at the POCO. I finally called my landlord, who happens to be an electrician, told him what I was finding and he said, "Baloney!". He showed up, found the same readings I had, scratched his head and called a contact at the POCO.

The contact told him their "fancy ***" meter was online so I had to have power. He said, "That's great, but 74 volts won't keep the house warm of the food frozen, so you need to send someone out here!" (First time I had ever seen him be boldly assertive.) He left and I waited for the POCO, got cold, went to the store to get a cup of hot coffee and when I got back about 10 minutes later, I had full power. Wouldn't you know it! I wanted to know exactly what the problem was.

So, did the meter lie? I did have power, it just wasn't usable.

A few weeks later I was telling a neighbor about it and he said they lost power too, reported it repeatedly and ended up staying at a friend's house. We are the only two houses on that transformer so the problem had to be at the transformer.

The phrase caveat emptor and its use as a disclaimer of warranties arises from the fact that buyers typically have less information than the seller about the good or service they are purchasing. In my case, I had more information, but no POCO contact to whom I could pass it.

 

"Meters hold their memory indefinitely.
Otherwise if they didn't.... they'd lose their memory every time there was a power failure." - PJ Max

Yes that makes absolute sense thinking about it. Center Point tech confirmed that also, I guess I got a bit nervous about billing going forward etc but it is obvious that the smart meter must have some sort of battery back up. Hopefully all will go well. The CP tech even gave me his name and direct number so synching everyone up for the job should be ok....should be..

Thanks for the responses.