The electric company is not always correct: problems can occur and your customers' energy meters may not work properly. Of course, people don't want to spend a fortune on their electric bills so they give you a call to help them figure out the problem.

If a customer's electric bill suddenly jumps, it could be that a neighbor is tapping into his meter. It could also be that the power meter itself malfunctioned. Another call you may commonly receive is from industrial plants wanting to determine how efficient their operations are. Whatever the case, consider your options:

1. Monitor electricity use by hooking up an at-home electric meter. This can tell you if your customer's meter is functioning properly.

2. Prepare your employees to measure power when there isn't an AC outlet to plug your meter into: use a battery-powered digital power meter.

3. Service large businesses with industrial power meters. These multi-function machines can monitor energy usage so the company can adjust accordingly.

Action Steps
The best contacts and resources to help you get it done

Provide quality assurance with in-home power meters

You can double-check to make sure your customers' electric meters are accurate. Some folks may suspect that a neighbor is stealing electricity or that their meters are somehow faulty. Let them use a watt-hour power meter in their homes for a month and then come back to reevaluate and compare your findings with their electric bills. In addition, having this unit in their homes will help your customers identify ways to conserve energy.

I recommend: Provide your customers with The Energy Detective (TED) from Energy. Blue Line Innovations offers a programmable meter that allows customers to see how much they actually spend on their electric bill so they can monitor their usage.

Use a portable battery-operated digital power meter

Sometimes you'll need to test power in an area that doesn't have an outlet to plug into. A battery-operated meter recharges itself when you plug it into an outlet during regular AC operation. These meters have digital displays for easy reading.

I recommend: Choose to use the LED backlight on the meter from Agilent--you'll get about three and a half hours of operating time with it on and five and a half hours with it off. Find used Agilent meters at Used-Line.

Get high-performance industrial power meters for commercial customers

Larger companies obviously have more complex needs than residential customers. An industrial meter measures electrical demand and tracks load profiles, allowing your customers to manage the load with increased efficiency. These are most useful in factory operations.

I recommend: The meter from Electro Industries can be used for a variety of applications. The EIG Shark 200 measures with 99.8 percent accuracy and it's available from Optimum Energy Products.

Tips & Tactics

Helpful advice for making the most of this Guide

• •  Electrical power meters are not the only power meters in existence. Your customer may call on you to use an optical power meter to measure light. You can measure audio and radio power as well.