electromechanical energy meters vrs electronic meters

This topic has been discussed before so doing a search may be worthwhile.

Your assertion..
'i know that for functionality and flexibility,the electronic is superior'
Is somewhat flawed... A high impedance digital meter will show 'flaoting' or 'leakage' voltages . E.g the Neutral line in a residential property (UK 240v) can easilly show 90v which can be very confusing...this would probably be perfactly safe to touch as it wouldn't supply any appreciable current...that is to say it effectively something like the 240v through several megohms of leakage path.

Del

The advantages of the elctronic, or rather digital, meter are many. The electromechanical meter works on the principle of eddy currents as they turn a disk at the fundamental frequency (50 or 60 hz), as such, harmonic currents aren't recorded accurately with these meters. A typical residential installation runs many hours with no one home and all those small electronic loads running in the background...

The digital meter (as oppossed to the first generation electronic meters) use Analog to Digital processors. You can meter active energy and reactive energy. Power factor metering is not just a bee in the bonnet of the utility. It is a useful tool.

The electromachnical meter is (usually) a piece precision mechanics, where as the solid state electronic meter is, well, solid state; as such, the durabitlity issue is quite the opposite. You did not mention size, which is often important. digital meters with revenue certification are available is packaging many time smaller than the smallest elechromechanical meter. Further agravating the problem of durability is the fact that an electromechanical meter requires some digital output to be read by your interface. This output is often an optical reader mounted under the disk reading a black mark painted onto the disk. The process of disassembling this meter to affix a reader, reasemble then install the meter often leads to loss of accuracy. I have seen many meters with the optic reader askew, reading nothing but shadows.

Further more, receiving the pulses, filtering the mistaken pulses, counting the pulses, storing and communicating this data is a discipline onto itself.

From a meter that started out as a calibrated class meter, you have added two new levels of calibration and accuracy. The reader and the pulse collecting mechanism. Your class 2 meter is no longer class 2. in any case you have to recalibrate and certificate the meter.

I have seen many, many electromechanical meters installed incorrectly, reading 1/3 the energy for years. Most digital meters will warn on incorrect connection.

electromechanical meters can be tricky to read and multilpy the reading- and hey- what is the value of the red digit on the far right? and the horizontal lines next to it?

electromachanical meters are easily tampered with; digital meters far less.

The short answer to your question is: No, there is no redeeming quality to an electromechanical meter. It was designed to quantify kilowat hours using the technology available 100 years ago. The electrical grid, consumption and world economy has come far in that time.

electromech can read output voltage on motor speed controllers while most electronic VOM (volt ohm meter)'s have problems accurately reading motor speed controllers output which is mostly PWM (pulse width modulation) and will blow the input protection on fluke meters known exceptions graphical multimeters and scope meters anyway why would you want to interface?? thinking in parallel sort of like watching VHS on a CRT and digital TV at the same time

I understood the question to be referring to kwh meters for an AMR (automatic meter reading) system. electromechanical kwh hour meters do not read output voltage, they spin a disk as a function of the power used. I beleive you are reffering to an electromechanical volt meter using a coil energized by the circuit being checked.