Meters

An analog electric meter has dials from left to right, measuring kilowatt-hours (kWh) by the thousands, hundreds, tens and ones. A kilowatt-hour is the electricity needed to burn ten 100-watt light bulbs for one hour. Some meters have four dials, some have five dials, and some may even have six dials on the face of a meter. Each dial has 10 numbers and a pointer. Every other dial is numbered counterclockwise. The hands follow the direction of the numbers and advance only when you are using electricity.

When reading your electric meter, keep these hints in mind:

1. Stand directly in front of the electric meter so that you can clearly see the location of each pointer.
2. If the pointer is between two numbers, read the number the pointer has just passed.
3. If the pointer is between 9 and 0, always read 9.
4. If the pointer appears to be exactly on a number, read the next lowest number unless the pointer to its right has passed zero. Since the first dial has no dial to its right, the number must be read independently.
5. If your meter is a smart meter or has digital numbers, use those as your reading.
6. Each meter is numbered. Make note of your meter number.

What is the reading of the example electric meter shown below?

Figure 1. Read the dials from left to right.

• On the first dial on the left, you’ll see the pointer has passed 8, and is sitting between 8 and 9. In these cases, round down to the smaller number that the pointer just passed, in this case, 8.
• You’ll notice the next pointer to the right spins the other way and is sitting right on the 4. However, in this case, the very next dial on the right has not passed zero. So, you would read this dial as 3.
• The next dial to the right has passed 8 and is between 8 and 9. Just as we did with the first dial, we’ll read the smaller number that the pointer has just passed, which is 8.
• The second pointer from the right has just passed 9 and is between 9 and 0. Since the hand is spinning counterclockwise, we’ll read this as 9.
• Finally, the pointer on the far right is directly on number 5. Read this as 5.

The answer is 83895.

How to read the amount of electricity used in one week:

Figure 3. A week later, at about the same time, the reading is 2-8-3-9.

If you subtract the earlier reading from the new reading:

 2839 New Reading
-2635 Earlier Reading
 204 kWh used

The answer is 204 kilowatt hours used.