Evaluation of the Switching Surges Generated During the Installation of Legacy and Smart Electric Metering Equipment

Recently, electric utility customers have voiced concerns that some electronic devices inside their home were damaged during the replacement of their traditional solid-state or mechanical electric meter with a new “Smart” meter. In an effort to understand if and how this could occur, research has been performed to analyze the transients that are induced downstream as the meters are swapped out. The meters are swapped out in a mechanical fashion without turning off the electricity from the utility. Experiments were set up and performed to mimic as close as possible the installation process. A number of experiments have been performed under different loading conditions. Additionally, controllable surges have been introduced to the input of the meters to observe the ability that each different type of meter has on suppressing them. In the experiments, all of the different types of meters have been tested with and without various different types of loads including pure resistance, pure inductance, parallel resistance/inductance, and electronic loads such as a personal computer.