Verifying Use of KW-HOURS on Your Electric Meter

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In this very easy experiment requiring no special equipment at all other than visual access to the electric meter that your power company takes reading on.  Only take visual readings and do not touch or tamper with your electric meter in any way - the current at the meter is deadly!

EXPERIMENTS Take a meter reading at a given time of day as shown at this link. Take a meter reading the next day. Calculate the KW-HRS used.  Then, conserve power for a day by turning off lights, etc. and take a meter reading the next day.  Compare, daily KW-HR usage and calculate annual savings by conserving power. Under normal power usage, record the number of revolutions of the rotating dial per minute.  Then, have someone turn on an electric oven or an electric space heater while the other watches the dial - you will see an significant change in the speed of the dial. Record the number of revolutions of the rotating dial per minute.  The difference in your two readings will give you the number of revolutions per minute from the range or heater alone. The number of watt-hours per complete revolution should be stamped on the meter somewhere. Or use a procedure as described here., or call your power company to get the number of watt-hours per revolution. Our particular meter indicated 2 watt-hours per revolution.

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