At Electro Industries, we understand that not everyone is an expert electrician, and that’s OK — with our products, you don’t have to be. We manufacture the world’s best power monitoring equipment so that even beginners can take full advantage of our meters.

Still, it wouldn’t hurt you to be familiar with at least some of the most basic terms you will come across in your endeavors. That is why we created this short glossary of must-know power monitoring and electrical terms.

  • Amp: Short for “ampere”, an Amp is a unit used to measure the rate of flow of an electric current.
  • Consumption: The amount of energy being used by a household or business over any given time period. Generally measured in kWh.
  • Frequency: The rate at which AC current changes directions. Measured in hertz (cycles per second).
  • kWh: Short for kilowatt hour, this is used to measure energy consumption by utility providers. Using 1000 watts for 1 hour constitutes 1 kWh.
  • Load: The amount of electrical power needed to run connected equipment.
  • Peak Demand: Used to refer to the period of highest electrical demand in a given time period. This could be an hour of the day, an entire day during the billing cycle, etc.
  • Power Meters: Also referred to as electric meters, power monitoring systems, or power management equipment, these meters are designed to help businesses and utilities monitor and track their power consumption.
  • Submetering: The process of using a system of interconnected power meters to track real-time energy consumption from specific points in your power system. While power meters provide you with the big picture, submeters help break down information to smaller points. Submetering is commonly used by property managers to track tenant’s power usage, and by factories to monitor the demand from different machines.
  • Voltage: The difference of electrical potential between two points in a circuit. In plumbing terms, voltage is comparable to water pressure.
  • Watt: The measure of power. One watt is the rate at which work is done when one amp of current flows through an electrical potential difference of one volt.

Electro Industries/GaugeTech has been manufacturing high-quality energy meters, submeters, and power quality analyzers since 1975. For 40 years, organizations around the world have trusted us with their power monitoring needs. We have installed hundreds of thousands of our meters across the globe for some of the world’s biggest utility companies, militaries, and government agencies. Visit our website for more information or speak with one of our trained associates by calling 866-928-7908.