Electricity is a part of our day-to-day lives. In fact, it’s rare we go a single day without it.

You use electricity every time you turn on your television and binge some shows. You use electricity every time you switch on your light on the way to the kitchen. One way or another, electricity will show up to make your life easier. Testing energy meters is a natural progression to better understand how much we’re using and what for. Your job as a lineman is to wire, install, and tweak until you have an end result that leaves the customer satisfied.

There’s no shame in running over the basics. Here’s what you should know about testing energy meters, from the test meter itself to standard units of measurement.

Measuring Electric Power

We’ve come a long way from the folkloric kite and lightning bolt. Electric power is able to be measured in a number of ways, depending on the application, and more changes can be spotted on the horizon. Energy conservation is a big conversation cropping up around the country and for good reason. The basic unit of measure for electric power is called the ‘Watt’. A thousand Watts are called a kilowatt and one thousand watt-hours is equivalent to one kilowatt-hour (or kWh).

Today’s Measurement Standards

Even before you got into using equipment for testing energy meters you were familiar with these terms. You find them on your utility bill (which displays the kilowatt-hours you’ve been charged) or a pack of lightbulbs you bought from the store. Single-phase power is what’s used in the standard household. You’ll be talking about household electrical services as a single-phase or 120-volt AC service. Considering how many common daily applications use electricity, it’s pretty impressive we’re able to keep track of it all.

Common Daily Applications

Just about every house in the United States regularly relies on electricity to function. Keeping the refrigerator running, turning on a game console, staying connected to the Internet…it’s a constant stream of energy going from one place to another. The current transformer meter is a truly impressive tool that whittles down even the most complex arrangement into identifiable numbers. Your standard power plant produces three different phases of AC power on a rolling basis. These three phases are offset 120 degrees from one another, with four wires coming out of each plant.

Standard Voltage Worldwide

The Western way of identifying and quantifying electricity isn’t the same elsewhere. The United States will find some households using different voltages in households, such as the 120 volt standard. Others, however, might have a slightly higher or lower amount, depending. The appliances in our homes uses voltages that are thousands of times smaller, between 110 to 250. No matter where you are or what you do, measuring electricity is the only way of knowing what to pay for and just how much of a hit the environment is taking.

Transformer Testing Equipment

Testing energy meters is becoming more commonly requested. You have homeowners that want to save money and technicians that want easy answers on the job. A three-phase power, at any given moment in one of its three phases, is constantly nearing a peak. High power three-phase motors (mostly used in industrial applications) and various applications like welding equipment have more even power outputs. It’s not at all unusual to see power lines, however, reaching 400,000 to 750,000 volts.

It’s a lot to keep up with, but the results are worth it. What will you do with the aid of CT testing equipment?