Revenue Protection with
Meter Site Testing

Verify Meters, CTs, PTs, and Wiring are Accurately Billing Your Customers

Save Time and Money with Meter Site Testing

The success and profitability of an electric utility company depend heavily on accurate Meter Site Testing. If your electrical metering is faulty, inaccuracies will result in billing errors. These errors can exceed hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue per year. That’s why it’s imperative that your company use reliable and accurate meter test equipment. With features that allow for greater speed, precision, and convenience for your technicians, PowerMaster® electrical metering equipment will meet all of your electric meter testing requirements.

Versatility in the Field

The three primary methods for field testing electrical meters can all be performed easily with our PowerMaster® line. All PowerMaster® site analyzers feature NIST traceable reference standards, so you are compliant with all regulatory meter test equipment requirements.
  • Customer Load – verify meter accuracy under real-world operating conditions. This allows your technicians to test functionality and accuracy under actual billing conditions, taking into account harmonics, imbalances, and extreme power factor.
  • Phantom Load (controlled current source) – use a controlled sinusoidal current source with customer site voltages to check meter accuracy with this ANSI C12-compliant application. Testing points include Full Load (FL), Power Factor (PF), and Light Load (LL).
  • Phantom Load (controlled current and voltage source) – perform thorough phantom load testing with both controlled sinusoidal current and voltage sources. This allows for fully isolated meter testing similar to laboratory conditions. 

PowerMaster® site analyzers provide ease of use in a compact and feature-rich package. They’re built-in to a rugged Pelican hard case, enabling them to stand up to the rigorous demands of field testing and light enough to carry into the most difficult-to-reach meter sites.

Pelican Cases
True three phase reference standard with optional three phase current and voltage sources for ANSI C12 phantom load meter testing. Customer load testing is readily performed on electric meters, CTs, PTs, and transducers. You can add the MTA-15Z accessory to facilitate ANSI C12 meter testing on self-contained meters at the customer’s site or in the lab.
Powermetrix extends its revolutionary line of handheld three phase analyzers with the PowerMaster® 6 Series, now with Powermetrix Remote Manager (PRM)®. PRM enables wireless control of essential and various metering site accuracy tests contained within the PowerMaster 6 Series.
Simple yet versatile reference standard with embedded current source to facilitate ANSI C12 phantom load meter testing at the customer’s site or in the lab. It features a universal, zero insertion force meter socket for any ANSI meter form.
Our most compact true three phase reference standard for testing meters under customer load conditions. It also enables the technician to test CTs and PTs, and with CAT IV 600V and IEC-61010 safety compliance, it protects them more than anything else in its class.
meter site testing

Billing vs Metering Accuracy

While it may be true that meters are initially calibrated under strict laboratory guidelines to ensure stated accuracy before they’re installed, meters and meter sites aren’t always perfect. If you are not using a utility revenue protection unit like a PowerMaster, one or more of the following errors will remain undetected:

Wiring errors

Faulty connections, incorrect wiring, incorrect wire gauge, missing commons, and grounds all can lead to significant error rates in individual meters. At a residential site, this error may add up to small amounts of revenue loss, but at industrial sites, the losses can be significant.

CT and PT errors

When CTs and PTs are overburdened, installed in the wrong accuracy class, incorrectly labeled, incorrectly sized or the wrong ratio, errors can be compounded.  Even if you’ve tested the meter and it’s working perfectly, installation errors may still lead to revenue loss.

Administrative error

Sometimes a simple error can lead to big losses.  For example, when the billing multiplier is incorrectly entered into your system and the error is not discovered for months or years later, the losses can be large. Theft of services And, finally, meter diversion, CT tampering and test switch tampering by electricity thieves can lead to significant losses as well.  A regular meter site testing routine can catch these thieves early.

Problems Can Become Exponential

Let’s take a look at how small errors can lead to huge financial losses. At a typical commercial site in your utility district, you may have a meter site that has several problems. The meter is off just slightly. The CTs are overburdened by a few loose connections here and there. And a typo at the administrative office caused a small billing mistake. Our research shows that a 33% loss to the utility at such a meter site is typical. The national average cost of electricity is estimated to be $0.12/kWh. Now using a simple formula, we can see how a small error can lead to exponential losses.
Usage     X     Cost    X     Error   =   Loss
Here’s how it might stack up at a single commercial site: utility revenue loss In this example, a single site can cost a utility district more than a million dollars in five years. So how many sites are costing you money in your district?  It’s a chilling question…

Powermetrix Integrated Site Testing Solutions

With Powermetrix’s utility revenue protection unit, you get a full-site solution. We don’t just test the meter. Our utility revenue protection analyzer tests the whole site. This will give you the utility revenue protection you and your customers demand.
  • SITE DIAGNOSTICS – vector diagram analysis, harmonic analysis, waveform analysis
  • METER SITE TESTING – customer load and phantom load
  • CT & PT TESTING – ratio, burden, and burden measurement
  • ADMINISTRATIVE ACCOUNTABILITY – cross check test database with billing database