You've probably don't think about it much: but the light meter that's affixed to your house right now is spinning away, racking up those numbers that you will pay for at the end of the month. And when you do get that bill, it's all sanitized and computer generated, so much so that you might think the reading goes straight form your light meter to a computer at BEL.
But it doesn't: there's a critical human element in between and wherever there's humans, there's likely to be error. That's just what happened in one very well case this week that was tried and resolved on Krem's W-U-B. And that got us to thinking, how can you be sure that your meter reading is accurate? After all the reading is taken by young men who view the meters from a distance with binoculars. It's not quite a foolproof system and we found out how you can work your way around it to make sure you meter is being read accurately:
Alfonso Noble Reporting
To most this device is a daunting one, every time it makes a turn that's money out of your pocket and with all these numbers moving in different direction, who can read it? But this electricity meter is really a simple device operating on a combination of current and voltage:
Marlon Smith – BEL Customer Service Engineer
"This is known as the clock-o-dial meter. What happens, you will see five dials. Essentially they are units, tens, hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands. What happens is that whenever the first dial makes a complete revolution, the second dial will go from zero to one. Just like a clock. Whenever the second dial would make a complete revolution the third dial would go from zero to one and that would continue happening."
"To make the meter turn you need both a combination of current and voltage to make the meter work. If you have only voltage present the meter will not work. If you have current well definitely you will have voltage and a combination of the current and the voltage will cause a power flow that will cause the disk to turn and then the disk with different gear ration will get the dials to turn."
And depending on how fast the disk is turning you get the little clock like devices that are on the face of the meter to move. Smith explains that while they may look confusing in reality they are not.
Marlon Smith
"Each one of these represent kilowatt hours and just as I said: units, tens, hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands and essentially and easy way to remember how to read these meters would be that if the pointer is pointing between any two digits you will take the lower of the two digits. So for example if the pointer is pointing between the two and the three you will call it a two. If it's pointing between a five and a six we will call it a five and that would be an easy way to read it."
"A meter hardly ever reads fast. With time, wear and tear and dust and dirt you find out that a meter slows down over time. So normally a meter left in the field for a long time would normally slow down as opposed to speed up."
Alfonso Noble
"So chances of people being over-billed because of a fast meter are unlikely."
Marlon Smith
"Very unlikely according to our test reports that when we bring in all those high bill meter and we do a test report and we check it in our lab it is pretty much intact or if not it is running slow. There are very, very few cases that you find that a meter goes over."
And with a kilowatt hour presently being clocked at and average rate of 38 cents there are some who still complain that this gadget is not operating well. Smith concedes to occasional wrong readings, but he attributes that to human error. He adds that if that ever occurs bel personnel are dispatched to check the readings.
Marlon Smith
"The process would be that we would immediately send to get the meter re-read, or what we will start to put in policy soon, we have some instruments, some gadgets, and the way we will handle high bill complaints is that a linesman- a technician will go out and actually do an on-site meter testing. That is not being done presently on a mass basis but that's in the future like in the next couple months or so."
That's consolation to some but not to all because in these lean times, every cent counts and in this case, every spin of the dial represents cents that are being added up. Those having questions about their meter readings are encouraged to call BEL's customer care department.