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How to check the electricity meter at home yourself?

Every month, people pay for electricity, the consumption of which is accounted for by an electric meter. However, often the amount of electricity consumed is much higher than the actual energy consumption. This casts doubt on the quality of the meter. Let's look at how to check the meter at home.

Why do they lie electricity meters?

During periods of seasonal change, electricity meters often overestimate their testimony. These devices are lying. In various forums, many discussions of such cases can be found.

Some people claim that for one night of the operation of the refrigerator, the energy meter counted as much as 4 kW - that's a lot. At the enterprise, which deals with the supply of electricity to the apartments, residents are informed that the meter is working exactly. But engineers from the same enterprises openly declare that they lie counters, and even as they lie. This is especially true for budget systems, such as the Mercury counter. Very often they complain about him.

The real picture is that the device can be used to produce overstated figures even if it is working properly. The first reason is the reduction of the voltage in the network due to the fault of mass use of air conditioners or heating equipment. Household appliances change the efficiency in the direction of reduction, if the voltage is below 220 V.

So, for an electrical appliance to achieve a certain task it is necessary, for example, not 0,19 kV / h under the passport, but from 0,25 and above. This picture can be observed with all home appliances. It turns out that the same consumer of electricity at different times on the meter will spend a different amount of energy, although it seems that everything is fine.

In this case, you must necessarily test the meters, so as not to pay energy companies for what they have to pay for themselves. The fact is that the electricity supplier must maintain the required parameters in the network. If the parameters are violated, then in Europe, the supplying company pays for it.

When should I check the electricity meter?

To check the device of the account it is necessary in cases if in its work there are infringements, namely the strong growth of consumption or, on the contrary, sharp recession is noticed. With an emergency check, you should not delay, a quick reaction in this case will avoid serious fines and problems. Also, the check should be carried out with the connection of any new equipment, if the energy consumption remains the same as it was. And one more situation is a decrease in real consumption, if the meter does not change its performance in any way.

Also, the electric meter is checked once during each year. Such timely checks can also help to avoid serious problems.

Are you familiar with the situations described? Then it is worth using simple tips on how to check the meter yourself. During testing the device will be checked for self-propulsion and error. You will need a stopwatch, a multimeter, a 100-watt bulb and a calculator.

Verify the connection is correct

This is a very important point. It is important that the meter is correctly connected to the electrical network. This can be a 220 V network or an industry standard of 380 V.

Single-phase meter

In apartments single-phase meters are used, the network for such apartments is also single-phase. To connect in this case, four terminals are used. The correct circuit is one where the phase wire will go from the electric line to the first terminal of the counter. Through the second terminal, the line usually goes into the apartment. It is also considered correct when the neutral wire goes to terminal 3 and exits through terminal 4. How to check the electricity meter at home for correct connection? Just count the terminals and see where and what goes.

Three-phase meter

For residents of private houses, a slightly different connection scheme is used, since in this case there is likely to be a three-phase electricity meter.

In the scheme, only the number of cables and terminals is changed. In general, the principle of connection is the same - the phase from the electrical line is connected to terminal 1 and exits terminal 2. The second phase enters terminal 3 and exits terminal 4. The third phase approaches terminal 5 and exits the sixth. Zero is connected to terminal 7 and goes to the 8th.

That's all you need to know before you check the meter.

Testing the meter on the self-propelled gun

What is a self-propelled gun? Everything is very simple - it is energy accounting, if at the current time, there is no expense for it. That is, the meter can read the indications independently, without using electrical appliances.

To verify that the drive of the device does not rotate by itself, it is necessary to completely turn off all automata that are in the electrical panel at the bottom of the device and serve outlets, switches. Also it is necessary to disconnect all electrical devices.

How to check the home electric meter for self-propulsion, if there are no machines in the electrical network? It happens and this - this test is even easier. All electrical appliances and switches are disconnected from the mains. In this case, the electricity consumption should be absent.

After disconnecting it is recommended to wait about 10-15 minutes. Then a visual test is performed: if the LED flashes on the front panel or the disk is spinning, then this test device did not pass. The owner has no choice but to check the correctness of the electricity meter in the management or service company.

If the device is functional, then nothing will be blinking or rotating. The LED can blink once in 10 minutes, the disk should do one turn for the same 10 minutes.

We consider the measurement error

So, in the course of this test, it is necessary to calculate the error of the accounting system. To do this, the incandescent lamp, multimeter, stopwatch, and calculator are useful. As a multimeter, it is best to use an electronic device.

As a load, the most common incandescent lamp is recommended - the whole problem is that modern home appliances are able to adjust their power depending on the situation. As a consequence, the passport capacity will not correspond to the real values. If there is an error already at this stage, the result of the check will not be accurate.

How to check the accuracy of the electricity meter

The first thing to do is to measure the mains voltage, here you will need a multimeter. How to use this device, you need to know in advance. The figure on the display of this measuring device is better written on a piece of paper.

Then measurements are made of the current intensity of the bulb. The tester is switched to the current measurement mode and connected to the lamp. Together with the current strength for the calculations, the power of the light bulb is also required. This can be learned with a simple formula from the school course of physics - the tension is multiplied by the power. In addition, you should also calculate the resistance of the bulb - the voltage is divided by the power.

Now it's time to go to the check. Let's see how to check the electricity meter at home for accuracy. For this purpose, when a light bulb is lit, it is measured how long it takes for the registration device to use 10 LED blinks or 10 turns of the disk. At the same time, you need to monitor the voltage in the network. For example, the device can do 10 revolutions in 2 minutes, and the voltage can be 223 V.

Further on the meter body it is required to find the value of its constant - it is denoted in pulses per kWh. Also, the meaning can be different. For example, the electronic meter "Mercury" has this data on the front panel.

We use formulas

Using the formula P = U * U / R, calculate the actual consumption of electricity. This is done in order to find out how much the lamp actually consumes at the current moment.

To check it is still necessary to find out what power was consumed during the verification period, for example, let it be 2 minutes. To find this out, the actual consumption needs to be divided by the time of verification, in this case 120 s.

The error can be checked using the following formula: 1000 is multiplied by the number of revolutions divided by the constant from the front panel of the device. For example: 1000 * 10/3200. The error is determined by subtracting the figure from the previous step from actual consumption. Further, all this must be multiplied by 100. If it turned out about 5%, then this is an insignificant error.

E = (P * T * A / constant number of pulses - 1) * 100%,

Where E is the error value in percent, P is the lamp power, T is the time for which the counter will make one full revolution, and A is the gear ratio of the meter.

Tests for magnetization

Often the web asks questions about the counters of the Mercury brand, and also the Neva on the level of magnetization. The thing is that these devices are equipped with a special antimagnetic seal. If this device was tried to stop using a powerful magnet, then this same seal will change its color. As a result, when checking equipment from the service and management companies, you can get serious problems.

If the device is not new and its model is simple, then the magnetization is checked with a needle. If it is drawn to the panel of the device, then it is magnetized. The level of magnetization decreases if you remove the magnet from the panel in two or three days. If the device does not even want to demagnetize, then special demagnetizers are sold for this.

That's all there is to know, how to check the electricity meter at home. This information will help to avoid unnecessary expenditure on bills and serious problems.

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