What can cause a electrical meter to blow up?

Question

My store electrical meter just blow up this morning along with other three from different tenants (they all are next to each other). What is the possible cause?

Answer 1

lightning strike

Answer 2

A power surge or a lightning stroke.

The power meters that supply your house of business are able to take a huge amount of current at 240 volts.  However, just like power station transformers this is not enough capacity to survive a stroke of lightning.

It is also possible that a major switch was thrown in the power grid sending a huge power surge through the lines into your building or a transformer nearby could have failed and shorted out.  Since the affected tenants are next to each other it tells me that it was one surge, one event, that ran through 3 meters.

I know of no way that you can do anything in your store to cause that kind of power surge without tripping the circuit breakers first.  The power surge HAD to come from outside of your building so that means it is the power company's responsibility.

They can claim "act of God' in a lightning stroke, but this is a normal complication of their business so they should be held liable for it.  They should replace those power meters and you should NOT be charged for it.

According to Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voltage_spi...

"In electrical engineering, spikes are fast, short duration electrical transients in voltage (voltage spikes), current (current spike), or transferred energy (energy spikes) in an electrical circuit.

Fast, short duration electrical transients (overvoltages) in the electric potential of a circuit are typically caused by

- lightning strikes

- power outages

- tripped circuit breakers

- short circuits

- power transitions in other large equipment on the same power line

- malfunctions caused by the power company

- electromagnetic pulses (EMP) with electromagnetic energy distributed typically up to the 100 kHz and 1 MHz frequency range.

- Inductive spikes

In the design of critical infrastructure and military hardware, one concern are pulses produced by nuclear explosions , whose nuclear electromagnetic pulse (NEMP) distribute large energies in frequencies from 1 kHz into the Gigahertz range through the atmosphere."

Three circuit shop's power panel circuit breakers cann't fail at the same instant and the only source of an EMP is a nuclear bomb or highly specialized DOD equipment, so that leaves a power spike, surge, or other failure in the power grid, or a lightning strike.

Answer 3

The Lightning Strike may have caused this, but I would have expected the Transformer up stream from the meters to have also blown. Check to see if others near by, other locations next door, have also had a problem.

Another possibility is that something physically hit these meters, especially if located near a loading zone, where truck traffic could have struck.

I've seen the results of lightning and it's amazing what can happen, but generally it shows signs of arcing to ground through the conduit pipe, ground rods fried, metal siding burned path to ground and a whole lot of damage to items connected to the circuits such as appliances or machine equipment. If none of these items are affected then I suspect the external damage possibility.

Answer 4

lightning

Answer 5

Technically, too much current going through the meter. That is why lightning strikes are hazardous. These contain large amounts of current.

Answer 6

Lightning strike or a high tension line fell on one of the drops going into your apartments.