Electric Meter with a Missing Conductor

I would love your thoughts on this short video. The whole housing estate is wired the same with the outgoing neutral not coming for the electric meter but the service cutout. Have you ever come across this before?

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[percyprod]

I worked for supplier, and fairly common to do this, although would normally go into top of cut-out. The two neutrals in meter are connected to a block anyway, only one is needed fir meter to work.

[muzikman]

Nope never seen that. But I guess it doesn't matter as the meter uses the line conductor as its current reading reference only, and the Neutral is just purely a brass link for loop through in the meter anyway. I'm guessing not all meters are the same though and use both L&N for sensing tamper such as on smart meters. Interesting.

[berniewilson]

Only thing I would question is wether they had to cut any core to get the 25mm in a 16mm terminal…

[Marka-kb]

Lots of houses wired the same way especially on old council estates, the missing neutral on outgoing side of the meter goes directly into main incoming supply underneath neutral block.meter still works as it has a neutral from cutout as well just for the lcd display..loads in Ipswich uk

[w.o.o.d.y]

Not one of you guys has asked if there is a finger hole under the meter where the cable was previously fitted...

[Dipen]

I used to work for an energy supplier, it's not common but had come accross some. However, we ammended it. It got to go out from the meter to CCU

[sirsyedelectronics]

Unusual but can be done live current meter reads

[PeteyyPorker]

Come across this all the time, nothing wrong with it, although best practice is usually to return outgoing neutral to the meter

[erdevon]

Tncs means "Terra neautral combined seperate". The eart is via the neutral

[championkhamis]

The neutral supplying the meter is only supplying the coil of the meter, if DNO had supplied a DP isolater switch, it would have been wired differently. The polarity appears to be correct ( needs testing) . 3ph meters can be wired exactly the same way, with a small 6mm supplying the neutral terminal, again supplying the coil of the meter. (Worked for scot power for 39 years.)

[AndyK.]

Will save time when changing the meter

[radhoo]

My option I think it's ok . N becomes Pe that means protective earthed neutral (PEN)

[gamzmasta]

Physics days- The neutral in is to power the device, the live going through is measured live in, measured, then live out.

[markgordon]

it's perfectly acceptable for this arrangement.

[bramcoteelectrical]

Never seen that....but I did have a the TNCS link missing inside the cutout 🤣 but had the earth to the board once...the whole estate was like this from the 90s...

I found it when I went to do a Ze measurement and was scratching my head as had a G/Y single 16mm cable going to cutout
...but no reading lol👀👀👀🤓😈😋

[fatbelly]

where i live theres always a bypass on the meter..lol

[keirstitt]

A lot of meters have a measurement burden in both line and neutral to trigger a tamper flag if they aren't equal [apparently meter fraudsters are too lazy to bypass both].

I imagine the meter operator has had to ammend the default registers when they installed to ignore the neutral current measurement.

[terryoflinn]

I also think some of these meters have an integral dp isolator on the outgoing

[justme]

We have three phase power here even in domestic and the thick phase wires goes in and out of the meter but only a 2, 5mm² neutral for the meter

[Simon__Davies]

Meter needs the neutral to function so technically only needs 1 neutral wire. The neutral link is just a convenient place to take your tails from. The one wire does look wrong but is ok.