Quote Originally Posted by Darrel Taylor View Post
There's gotta to be a reason somewhere.
Is this one of those things where the 'power factor' comes into play?
I've read that in large factories, plants, whatever, the use large electric induction motors, the rotors generate a back-current out of phase with the incoming current, and while that back-current doesn't try to 'spin the meter backwards', it is enough to trick the KWH meters into showing energy usage that is far below what the factory actually uses, even though the power company has still made a lot of heat in their generators and used a lot of fuel to spin them.
I don't remember what that whole theory is called, and I don't know if it applies with smaller motors. Seems to me that this sort of thing only applied to large, heavily loaded motors...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_factor <-there is it...
Can you load and unload the motors at the same time and see if the meter changes readings?