Meter Base (Meter Socket)
The enclosure the utility's electric meter plugs into, mounted on the outside of your home. The box is yours to maintain; the meter inside belongs to the utility.
The meter base holds heavy spring-loaded jaws that grip the meter's blades, carrying the home's entire load through four connections, every hour, for decades. When those jaws corrode or lose tension they heat, and a hot meter base is a genuinely dangerous condition: melted bases are a recurring cause of house fires and main-breaker mysteries (flickering whole-house power, a burning smell outside, a warm meter face).
Replacement is choreographed with the utility, since the meter must be pulled and the service disconnected: your electrician swaps the base, the utility re-seats and re-seals the meter. Rust, water intrusion at the bottom of the box, and bases rated below the service size are the usual reasons it enters a quote.
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- Service Drop & Service Lateral : The two ways utility power reaches a home: a service drop swings overhead from the pole to the weatherhead; a service lateral runs underground to the meter.
- Service Size (100 / 150 / 200 / 400 Amp) : The total amperage your home can draw from the utility, read off the main breaker.
- Disconnect (Emergency Disconnect) : A switch that cuts all power to a building or a piece of equipment.