Reading your own meters can help you increase energy savings by monitoring your electricity or gas use, but those meters can be confusing. Here’s a homeowner’s guide to making sense of those meters.
How to read an electric meter
Your electricity bills are by the kilowatt-hour, abbreviated as kWh. If you’ve used 1000 watts of power in one hour, you’ve used one kilowatt-hour.
Each dial on your meter represents one numerical value in the present reading. You should read the dials from right to left. If the pointer on the dial is between two digits, such as three and four, record the smaller digit. The pointer hasn’t completely passed the four, so the reading’s value isn’t yet a four.
When the pointer on a dial makes a complete revolution, the pointer to the left moves up one digit.
Even if the pointer is directly on four, the value isn’t necessarily four. If you get confused, reference the dial immediately to the right. Has the pointer completely passed the zero at the top of that dial? If it hasn’t, you need to record the smaller number, three, for the dial to the left. If the dial to the right has passed zero, then you should record four.
If you take readings two days in a row, you can subtract the first day’s reading from the next day’s. This gives you an idea of how many kilowatt-hours of energy you’re using per day, so you can get a handle on energy savings.
How to read a gas meter
Reading a gas meter is almost the same as reading an electric meter, but you read the dials from left to right.
If you use natural gas, you may be billed by how many hundreds of cubic feet (CCF) or thousands of cubic feet (MCF) of gas you use. If your utility company bills you by the “therm,” that refers to a unit of energy roughly equivalent to one CCF.
Understanding how to read your meters can help you reduce your energy use. If you have questions about how your meters work, the professionals at Action Heating and Air Conditioning are happy to help. Contact us anytime, online or by phone.
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