How to Read Your Meter

Reading your meter is an easy way to verify and keep record of your monthly electricity usage. It can also serve as a way to monitor energy saving efforts. Our goal at Bluebonnet Electric Cooperative is to give our members greater control over their home energy and to provide them with the tools and information needed to keep electric bills down.

Here’s how you do it:

• Your meter will have either four or five dials. Some dial hands turn clockwise, some counterclockwise. Dial one must make a full revolution before dial two can move one space.
• Read the dials from right to left. Write down your readings right to left as well.
• Starting with dial one, record the number that the hand has just passed—not the number it is approaching.
• Move to dial two, and so on, until you have recorded all the dial readings.
• On the dials above, the reading is 83475.
• If you read the meter a month later and the new reading is 84675, subtract the old reading from the new reading—the difference is 1200. This is the number of kilowatt-hours (kWh) you used between the two readings.