The errors that don't look like errors.
Swap two current phases, reverse a CT polarity, or cross a voltage connection, and the meter will still display entirely plausible voltages and currents. Active power, reactive power and power factor will all be wrong — and nothing on the bill will look odd enough to query. These are the faults that run for years.
Power information
| Red | White | Blue | Total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| P (W) | 491.29 | 117.57 | 108.14 | 717.00 |
| Q (var) | 253.90 | 275.23 | 182.35 | 711.48 |
| S (VA) | 553.02 | 299.29 | 212.00 | 1010.09 |
| PF | 0.89 Ind | 0.39 Ind | 0.51 Ind | 0.71 Ind |
Voltages and currents
| Red | White | Blue | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Voltage | 231.10 V | 234.00 V | 234.00 V |
| V-angle | 0.00° | 239.00° | 120.00° |
| Current | 2.39 A | 1.28 A | 0.91 A |
| I-angle | 332.67° | 172.13° | 60.67° |
3-Phase 4-Wire. Voltage and current are drawn to separate scales — voltage thin, current heavy.
Every reading comes with a picture of the installation.
MOL captures a phasor snapshot each time it reads a meter — the magnitude and angle of every voltage and current. Plotted, a correct installation has a shape an engineer recognises instantly, and a wrong one does not.
A reversed CT puts a current almost 180 degrees from where it belongs. A swapped phase pair rotates the sequence. Neither shows up in the energy register, which is exactly why they survive so long.
The snapshot is stored with the reading, so when a bill is challenged the evidence of how the meter was connected at the time still exists.
Meters record far more than consumption.
A modern meter keeps an event log — every cover opened, every phase lost, every clock adjustment, every attempt to interfere with it. On most installations nobody ever reads it, because reading it means visiting the meter.
MOL collects the log with the readings and raises what matters as it happens, rather than leaving it to be discovered during an investigation that has already started.
- Tamper
- Cover removal, terminal cover, magnetic interference, reverse energy where no generation exists.
- Supply
- Phase loss, phase failure, over- and under-voltage, voltage imbalance.
- Metering
- Clock drift and reset, programming change, demand reset, register rollover.
- Communications
- Failure to respond, repeated retries, a meter that has gone quiet entirely.
The meter tells you the power went, on the way down.
A last-gasp message uses the energy left in the meter's own supply to report that it is losing power. Enough meters reporting at once, and the topology model resolves it from "eleven customers are off" to the highest point in the network where the fault could be.
The crew is directed to a transformer rather than to the first caller's address. And it runs over the AMR network already installed for billing — no separate outage system, no additional field equipment.
Before the phone rings
Notification arrives from the meters, not from customers. On a large-power-user estate the first call often comes long after the trip.
Restoration is confirmed, not assumed
Meters report when supply returns, so a job closes on evidence rather than on the crew's word that it should be back.
It feeds the outage record
Start, extent and restoration are timestamped from the network itself — which is what interruption reporting needs and what a spreadsheet cannot supply.
Want to see this on your own data?
We will run it against a month of your readings and show you what comes out.
Talk to us