# I learned something about the new "smart" meters today.



## kb1jb1 (Nov 11, 2017)

Last week I was working on an old house that had the new smart meter installed two weeks ago. When I arrived there last Thursday, half the house had no electricity. The GC already called the utility company and they were on their way. Since I had nothing to do with the service, I just said it probably is the new meter and went back to my work. Turns out it was the meter and one of the line side lugs was burnt beyond repair. They came back today and replaced the whole outside part of the service at no charge. They even installed 200 amp feeders for the 100 amp service. Talking with the electrician he said he does several a week because of the new meters being used on the old meter pans. The big take away from our conversation was that these new meters cause nuisance tripping of AFCI breakers when the meters are located close to the panels. If this is true then maybe that is the cause for all the bad AFCI breakers.


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## Slay301 (Apr 23, 2018)

B phase always seems to burn up on 3 phase services around here and the windings were wrong and they were getting charged 3 times as much . I’ve probably changed 200 commercial services at poco expense


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## Norske (Aug 23, 2020)

I've also seen remote disconnect smart meters simply fail open. Got a service call for power failure on a job I'd done months ago, of course the owners assumed I must have done something when I wired their kitchen remodel. Called the utility and confirmed the customer hadn't had their power shut off, meter just literally failed open.


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## cuba_pete (Dec 8, 2011)

Funny that they have a fail position at all, but open is better than bolted.


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## Coppersmith (Aug 11, 2017)

Norske said:


> I've also seen remote disconnect smart meters simply fail open. Got a service call for power failure on a job I'd done months ago, of course the owners assumed I must have done something when I wired their kitchen remodel. Called the utility and confirmed the customer hadn't had their power shut off, meter just literally failed open.


Were you able to successfully charge the client for a service call?


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## Dennis Alwon (May 9, 2009)

kb1jb1 said:


> Last week I was working on an old house that had the new smart meter installed two weeks ago. When I arrived there last Thursday, half the house had no electricity. The GC already called the utility company and they were on their way. Since I had nothing to do with the service, I just said it probably is the new meter and went back to my work. Turns out it was the meter and one of the line side lugs was burnt beyond repair. They came back today and replaced the whole outside part of the service at no charge. They even installed 200 amp feeders for the 100 amp service. Talking with the electrician he said he does several a week because of the new meters being used on the old meter pans. The big take away from our conversation was that these new meters cause nuisance tripping of AFCI breakers when the meters are located close to the panels. If this is true then maybe that is the cause for all the bad AFCI breakers.



So, was the problem many tripped afci breakers? Sounds like he is saying the new meters cause the old meter bases to burn up... That is suspicious to me unless they made the fingers thinner than the standard meters.


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## Norske (Aug 23, 2020)

Coppersmith said:


> Were you able to successfully charge the client for a service call?


Yup, charged a full service call. On things like that I always tell them I'll take care of it at no cost if it was my fault (which it almost never is) or it will be a full service. I made sure to show him what the problem was and he was happy to pay for my time.


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## just the cowboy (Sep 4, 2013)

Dennis Alwon said:


> So, was the problem many tripped afci breakers? Sounds like he is saying the new meters cause the old meter bases to burn up... That is suspicious to me unless they made the fingers thinner than the standard meters.


Maybe the way they are removing the old ones, rocking it and twisting the blank out of it?


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## kb1jb1 (Nov 11, 2017)

Here they switched over to the lever by pass meter pans about 30 years ago so the spring pressure meter pans are quite old. The lever type clamp down better and are a heavier duty type. They are all 200 amp rated. The new smart meters have thinner fins or blades and the spring tension is not there on some installs. Under a heavy load they could get stressed out. The fact that the utility changed out everything at no cost tells me there is a problem on older services.
As for the AFCI breakers tripping, I was told that under certain conditions the electronics of the smart meters cause them to nuisance trip.


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