Nearly every home and public or commercial building in the United States today uses electricity, and for over a century, there have been ways to measure amount and usage of this resource, and the world’s demand for energy is higher than ever. Buildings and homes will have all sorts of machines and devices in place to make sure that energy is being used efficiently and correctly, and equipment such as a transformer will make sure the electricity is flowing correctly from one circuit to another without any disruptions. Electricity meters will also be in place for a building or a home to gauge how much power is being used, and this is used to determine what the monthly or yearly energy bill should be like. It is important for energy meters and transformers to be functioning correctly for a home or public building, so energy meter testing equipment can be used by hired crews to inspect and maintain these devices every so often.

Basics on Power

Transformer testing, meter testing, CT testing, and more is done to keep a home or a public building’s energy flowing efficiently, and making sure that accurate readings of this power are taken so that an electric bill is not too high or low. The basic unit of electricity is the Watt, and watts can be grouped into a thousand for form a kilowatt. One thousand kilowatts combine to form a megawatt, which in turn is one million watts, and so on for gigawatts and terawatts. Energy meters, in particular, will measure watt use per hour, such as using a 1,000 watt vacuum for one hour, which means that 1,000 watt-hours of electricity, or 1,000 Wh of electricity. 1,000 watt-hours, meanwhile, equals one one kilowatt-hour, or 1 kWh. Usually, an electric meter will measure kWh and the electric bill will be based on kilowatt-hours used during a time period. Home appliances, meanwhile, use smaller units of electricity, such as volts, and they may range from 110 to 250 volt usage, from televisions to toasters to an electric stove. Most homes also use single-phase power, and a household electric service will be single-phase, 120-volt AC service.

Homeowners may also be interested to know what their local power plant will produce three different phases of AC power at the same time, and those three phases will be 120 degrees offset from each other. Four wires are coming out of every power plants, which make up the three phases, plus a neutral, or a ground, common to all three. For three-phase power, any one of the three phases will be nearing a peak at a given time, and high-power three-phase motors (like those used in industrial applications) and welding equipment have more of a power output.

Using Energy Meter Testing Equipment

When is it the right time for testing energy meters and hiring crews who will use energy meter testing equipment? For one thing, if an older home is purchased, this house may have a number of maintenance issues to deal with, and one of them might be a faulty, worn out electric system, which may include the energy meter or transformer. This could mean that the home’s electric bill will be too high because the meter’s reading are not accurate, so to fix this, a new homeowner may want to find and hire local crews who specialize in inspecting electric components for the home, and these crews can recommend fixes and updates for various components. They may use energy meter testing equipment, for example, if a homeowner feels that their electric bill is too high or low, and this can inform a homeowner on what to do next. After all, a too-high electric bill can cost a lot of money in the long run, so it is best to have a suspected problem diagnose right away and fixed sooner than later. This may be doubly true for a commercial or public building that uses a lot of electricity for lighting, heating and cooling, computers, and more, and a too-high electric bill will cost a lot of money. Getting the energy meter and transformers looked at can help put the problem on the spotlight, and contractors can be hired to make the right fix right away.