High electrical usage

[Unregistered-BillHart]

I hate these forum. Hard to track threads. Thus I don’t stop by as much as I did, and may not respond to this one.

First of all it is unlikely that it is a meter problem. Most meter problems would cause low readings.

If I understand this correctly you have power coming to a pole with a meter. And that feeds the service entrance. It will have fuses or a breaker and a disconnect. If it has a breaker then that is also the disconnect.

The panel might also have breakers that feed an AC units (or heat pump) and also well or septic or sewer system pump. If you have any of those they might be feed from the house panel instead.

Then from the service entrance you have an underground feeder to the house which has a sub-panel in it.

High electric usage has been traced to well and septic/sewer umps that have bad controls or leaks that cause them to run much more than they should.

I have also head of cases where there where heat pump systems running in AC mode, but with the backup heaters stuck on.

And cases where the neighbors have tapped into the power and where children had hidden grow lights in the attic.

After checking the for any pumps and for heat pump/AC problems then my best bet would be on a bad underground cable.

Note – most any bad wiring in the house would have shown up by now as a fire or the circuit melting in two.

I have not though of all of the possible failure modes, but I think that this could also be cause by an electric water heater with damaged heating elements.

Watch the meter and when it is spin fast, start tripping breakers. And what what happens.

Start with the main breaker in the house.

If turning it off does not cause the meter to stop then you know that it is the under ground feeder or something else feed from the service entrance if you have that setup.

Then try the other breakers in the house or in the service panel depending on which show the problem.

But you want to do it in a logic manor and then varify it by turn the breaker back on.

In the house if you have a large number of breakers turn off one half of them. If those are not the problem then turn them on and turn off the other half.

Then take the bad half and turn half of them back on. Etc.