Recently I dug out an old meter I got last year (somebody who probably took it out of an old farm house gave it to me, along with the original meter base board) and tried to hook it up. The schematics were blurred and not too helpful, so I decided there wasn't much that could go wrong with a single phase meter and went along. Worst case it wouldn't spin at all because I wired it backwards (meters are supposed to lock if wired backwards as far as I know). There was a set of 4 wires (2 red 2.5mm2 and 2 black 1.5mm2) in one set of terminals and just single black 1.5 in the other. Load side double-tapped? Maybe. Take the trailing socket off an extension cord for a feeder, and a few pieces of wire with an old ungrounded socket for the load. Load itself was a class II work light with a 60W incandescent bulb.

Plug in... wipe dust off the glass... look closely... meter spins backwards! No locking mechanism inside...

So I reversed the connections, and it worked!

Now the technical data (as on the name plate):
Kilowattstunden
Wechselstromzähler
Form AB2a*
220 Volt 5(10) Amp. 50 Per./s
1600 Ankerumdr. je Kilowattstunde (i.e. rev/kWh)
DANUBIA A.G. WIEN

I guess it's from the early 1950s. On the board there were clearly two Diazed DII elements, you can see the light spots in the wood, I guess hot and neutral or two hots. A 10A single phase service... try to imagine that!





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[This message has been edited by pauluk (edited 08-10-2006).]

This thread has been moved to the Photos Submitted For Discussion Forum.

Great, Thanks for shareing that meter with us. Good to see that there are more meter collectors out there.

European meters, single phase are usually marked with M and L on the terminals.

In The Netherlands and Germany it is M L M L at the terminals taken fron left to right.
where M is Mains in, L is Load out for the phase.
then,
M for the Neutral in, L for Neutral out.

When taking the cover of it is easy to see that the Neutral connections are a solid link between the M and L terminals.
The current coil is connected between the M and L terminations on the left hand side.

The Britisch standard for 1Ø meters is usually Phase in, Neutral, Neutral, Phase Out.

Quite often the potential link is visible which feeds the potential coil of the meter and can be opened for testing in a large batch of meters via a phantom load.

Meters are built with and without a reverse running stop which prevents the disc from going backwards. It usually comprises of a starwheel and a gravity vane which rides over the cogs with minimal friction to the meter.

I thought you might like the pictures.

The link is visible, though I didn't know its meaning. Probably the order is just as you described.

At the Elektronikforum I was told German meters were all built with reverse running lock for ages, so that surprised me.

The register has only 4 digits... so it can only run up to 9999.99 kWh.
Right now it reads around 2300.

That's the order I've always known, and as you say, the terminations for the potential coil can often be seen quite easily.

On dual-tariff meters there's an extra smaller terminal squeezed in for the selector solenoid, often between the load-side phase and neutral.