On Jun 11, 9:32*pm, George wrote:
On 6/11/2012 7:06 PM, wrote:





On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 17:25:34 -0400,
wrote:

On 6/11/2012 12:53 PM, wrote:
On Mon, 11 Jun 2012 06:16:06 -0700 (PDT), "
* wrote:

If pulling a meter is so dangerous, going to cause
an arc over, etc. you would think there would be
dead utility workers all over the place. *They pull
them every day. *Exactly what is going to be so
special about their method as opposed to a fire
fighter doing it?

The guys doing the meter swaps are doing several dozen a day ... hot.
No PPE, nothing. They just cut the seal, pop out the old one and pop
in the new one in shorts and a t shirt.

Except our rather large utility spends an extra 30 seconds and slips on
two bypass jumpers.

Nothing like that here. I walked with the guy as he did two neighbors
after doing my house. There is no internal bypass in any meter can I
have inspected (residential or commercial) I have also never seen
these jumpers you are talking about. Where do they connect?
The jaws are fairly well hidden by the meter.

Here is a reply I just made further up in this thread:

Sounds like you have what are called ring type meter bases. Our utility
(and I gather most others just by how common ringless bases are) has
required ringless meter bases for probably 30 years.

Here is a typical ringless meter base:

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?pro...{keyword}&kwd={keyword}&cm_mm c=shopping-_-googleads-_-pla-_-100346977&ci_gp*a=pla

or

http://preview.tinyurl.com/c4y3v8j

You can clearly see there is a tab on each lug. Designs differ but they
all have the same size tab. That way the lineman just pushes on two
jumpers before pulling the meter:

"The USJL-001 jumper lead set is a convenient and safe method to prevent
a customer outage in event of meter removal/changeout. Constructed from
#6 AWG highly flexible insulated copper the working ends are also
machined of solid copper for utmost performance. The working ends are
beveled to permit easy push on installation. Simply push the meter lead
end over the bypass horn and turn the knurled handle until the lead is
tightly secured in place. Turning the knurled handle the opposite
direction will loosen the lead for easy removal."

http://www.utilitysolutionsinc.com/u...29_Electric-Me...

http://preview.tinyurl.com/8x2mkdd- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I also note that the above clearly talks about this feature
only in the context of being used to avoid service
interruption during the meter removal. That makes
sense. You would think
if it was an important safety issue for meter removal
that they would say so. Also, with all the meter's out
there without this feature, we should be hearing about
serious accidents where the meter is just pulled. Have
any of those?