How to read your meter

Alternating Display

Your alternating display meter employs a digital readout that switches between displays, such as your kilowatt hours (kWh), energy usage and other system data.  A number in the upper left corner identifies the alternating display.

For a residential home, display 110 will show your consumption.

If your home has solar panels and is on net energy metering, display 130 will show your consumption.

If your home has solar panels and is on Solar 2.0, display 110 will show your consumption and display 120 will show the received solar production received by the utility.

                                                                 
 AMI meter picture
Digital Display 

Your digital meter tracks your electricity usage, in kilowatt hours (kWh), much like a car odometer counts the cumulative total of miles driven. The running total of usage is displayed numerically, from left to right. For example, if the current reading is at 71189 and the previous meter reading was 70575, then your usage in that span would be 614 kWh (71189 - 70575 = 614). Should the meter surpass its highest possible reading number, usage continues to record and the meter display starts over beginning with all zeroes. 

 Digital meter picture
Analog Display
Reading an analog meter is like reading the dial of a clock. Just start at the right and write down the reading of each dial from right to left. Each dial turns in the opposite direction to the one before it. Before you read your dial meter, check the direction of your dials. If the pointer is between two numbers, read the number the pointer has just passed, always the lowest number, making sure to check the direction of the dial before recording your finding. Practice on the example below:

Picture of meter dials

 Analog meter

If the read totals 52,363 you're correct!

If you were to read your meter again, at the same time tomorrow, you can subtract the reading you took today to determine how many kilowatt-hours used in one day. To calculate cost, multiply the kilo-watt hours used by your electric rate.