Meter arcing

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Hi all

A friends electric meter has been arcing and the board changed some partially burnt out wires in their side of the meter.

He has received a very high bill, compared with the year before he has used an ADDITIONAL 2700kw over a three month period

I’m thinking has the arcing used that excessive amount of electric, is that a possibility?

If so is there anything I can refer my energy company to that will support this?

Thanks all
 
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No, he claims he always sends actual once estimated bill arrives

Nothing changed on usage in terms of new appliances etc

Just thought maybe the arcing may be the culprit
 
And is the three month period covering the time before the repair or after ? Did the meter get changed ?
 
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Wasn't there someone on here whose meter was flashing every couple of seconds when the lighting circuit was on? Turned out to be a faulty transformer or something, but was hard to diagnose.
I think that was taking a couple of KW without any noticeable damage, although it wasn't in such an obvious place.
To the OP, perhaps there were two faults. Generally you'd get arcing when there's a reasonable load.
 
If this was down to arcing, there would be some very serious damage.
Surely the fault (as in being faulty) lasted for (a lot) less than 3 months, it's just that the bill for the quarter in which the event occurred was 2.7MWh higher.

But that makes your point even more germane - whatever/wherever this "arcing" was, a fault which dissipated 2.7MWh (equivalent to the energy in well over 2 tons of TNT) would do something a tad more significant than "some partially burnt out wires".

Jazz - there is absolutely no way that this fault was responsible for that increased consumption.
 
And is the three month period covering the time before the repair or after ? Did the meter get changed ?

Meter did not get changed, trying to get pictures of the fault from mate.

The quarter bill ending in March is the one in question also the repair was done in March
I will post more details of what the fault was when it get it
 
Hi all, please see attached photo of damage, is it likely that this may have caused the excessive high usage?
 

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this is a history of the KW usage based on bills

Gas Electric
Dec 2015 - March 2016 7756 1312
March 2016 - June 2016 4717 1967
June 2016 - Sept 2016 2519 1319
Sept 2016 - Dec 2016 5640 1168
Dec 2016 - March 2017 5519 1549
March 2017 - June 2017 4996 4741
June 2017 - Sept 2017 745 407
June 2017 - Sept 2017 1492 1049
Sept 2017 - Dec 2017 5735 1448

Sept 2017 was the time when they changed utility company
 
Hi all, please see attached photo of damage, is it likely that this may have caused the excessive high usage?
No - but you already knew that (assuming you believe what people tell you) - we didn't need a photo to know that if a fault had released that much energy the house would no longer be standing. Think about it - 2.32 tons of TNT. If it had lasted an hour it would be the same as setting off nearly 10,000 sticks of dynamite in that time.

Plus, as flameport points out, it's before the meter, so cannot have had any effect on the readings.

Whatever caused the spike in usage it wasn't that, and your friends supplier won't entertain any sort of claim.
 
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Maybe you should be asking your friend to think about appliance usage . any electric fan heaters been used at the time ? Is / was water heated by immersion heater whilst maybe gas boiler was out of action ?? Something was using electricity then and not subsequently ???
 
Interestingly there could have been a current path between the incoming live and neutral on the metered side, but most meters do not measure current on the neutral conductor
 

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