Mike, Both the above solutions are valid, and would serve you well. I had a similar, but opposite, problem. I left the key on (don't ask why or how!!), and ran the meter on a new machine up from 15 hours to 125 before I discovered it. Being a stickler for accurate records (and since it was my fault), I bought a new meter. To bring the hours back up to the correct value, I did as mownie first suggested....connected the new one to a DC source, after calculating how long to maintain the connection. My DC source was my battery charger, connected thru a timer. Worked like a charm. One caveat. My meter is a "Hobbs" type, with rotating disks displaying the numbers. These have a wide range of permissible voltage inputs to operate correctly. I have no idea whether this also applies to the LED or other electronic display units. It should be printed on the meter you have (the permissible voltage range, that is). Hal

Assuming you did your tests as described, it does appear reasonable to suspect that this could be related to the installation of the smart meter. Without getting into all the debate about smart meters, and only looking at the possible way the meter could affect something connected to your wiring, there are really just two possibilities. One, could be noise on the wiring caused by something like a poor connection in the meter base from oxidation on the socket contacts, which may just require it to be reseated. Do you have any flickering in your home lighting? Two, would be if, as weedmeister suggested, the power company is using PLC - power line carrier/communication - for the link. The are a number of communication options available that are being deployed often depending on geography, the number of meters, and the utility wiring infrastructure. The most common are RF wireless access point, RF relay network, RF mesh network. They all typically transmit in the 900-925MHz range and would not be a source of your problem. There is however PLC which is used in some areas. The data is modulated on an analog carrier between 10-500kHz over the power lines and could, although highly unusual, possibly be the cause of your problem. You said the problem does not occur on your UPS power but if is not an "always-on" UPS, the most it could be doing is using it's EMI filter to remove any interference. Your next step would probably be to call the utility company, but first you may wish to find out the type of communication method used by the smart meter to the utility in case it could be PLC related.

That's why the live and dead test is a good idea. (testing a known source of voltage) Except for the poor electrician I heard about that did a live, dead, and while walking back to the circuit to work on slipped the hold button in the 0 position, got 0 volts on the 277 volt hot wire and began to work on it. Got to watch out for that hold button too.

The neon tester works even if you are not grounded since you have significant capacitance to ground and you are charging and discharging. The current is so low that you cannot feel it, but a decent microamp meter can measure it. An electromagnetic field has two components. One is the electric field, the second is a magnetic field (in free space the fields are perpendicular to each other). The Maxwell equations describe how these two fields relate to each other but you need to write and evaluate the equations as vectors in 3-space. The Âpure examples are a capacitor has an electric field between the plates but no magnetic field, and an inductor that has a magnetic field but no capacitance. In reality the practical devices do have some small component of the other. The leads and plates of the capacitor have inductance that an AC signal is affected by, and the coils of an inductor have capacitance between the coils. The behavior in conductors is not the same as in free space since only a magnetic field can exist in a conductor. The electric field is around the conductor, but not within it. When you get down to painful details the field does penetrate slightly, and the concept of Âskin depth is used. At high frequencies the skin depth is significant. One trick to using it to advantage is copper (or even silver plated) center conductors in coaxial cable. The plating is made thick enough to reduce the AC impedance (and the resistive losses), while the steel core provides the strength required for stringing the cable. At 60 Hz the skin depth is not significant in good conductors, but another effect does show up. The current does not flow uniformly in the cross section of the conductor. If the two conductors in a circuit are side by side the current crowds nearer the other conductor of the circuit. This does cause problems at high current since the conductor does not dissipate power (losses) evenly. The insulation is stressed by both the higher temperature and the higher field since the electric field is also strongest between the conductors. The simplest way to think of the two fields is that as the electric field changes it produces a magnetic field, and then as the magnetic field changes it produces an electric field. The two fields reach maximum out of phase. When the electric field is not changing rapidly (top of a sine wave) the magnetic field is at a minimum (passing through zero amplitude). When the electric field is changing very rapidly (passing through zero amplitude) the magnetic field is at maximum.