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I have a bad terminal spring on the line side of my electric meter. The service is 200A, underground. The meter is 40 years old, and has studs, and the line and load have lugs which are fastened to the studs.

Now the line side (which gets fed from the POCO (power company) ) feeds to the bottom of the meter socket, but inside the socket it is fed to the top side (line side) of the socket. So the line side wires are cut short, and have lugs on them. This is the problem.

Modern meter sockets, at least the ones I can find, have the line feed on the top, and my wires are about 8" too short.

POCO prohibits splices on the line side, but I can splice on the load side. I don't think they will be cool with an upside down meter, though!

So the POCO planner has offered the following ideas:

  1. Pull a new secondary run from the pedestal mounted transformer about 175 feet away,
  2. Dig up the line feed, and put a pedestal mount meter about 6 feet from the house,
  3. Adjust the grade a bit so that a near-ground meter is far enough from the grade, so that it can easily be read.

Some POCOs will crimp an extension to the line side, using serialized crimps, to thwart power theft. Mine will not do that.

Any ideas for me to explore?

mongo
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1 Answers1

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Assuming the service is in conduit, ask the POCO to open up the junction box at the transformer end and check whether there happens to be sufficient slack available there. If there is, pull some of that slack into the meter can.

Or move the meter base sideways along the wall, closer to the transformer. If you (carefully) remove a section of the horizontal conduit, shortening its total length, then you "gain" conductor length. The gain here depends on the angle at which the service approaches though. If it comes in at a 45 degree angle to the wall, for example, you'll need to move the meter at least 12 inches sideways to gain 8 inches of conductor.

Greg Hill
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