Thanks for posting that Hickory Nut.
It is good to hear that you received excellent support and service from your insurance company.
I'm hoping that all the details of your fire made it to the desk of your area Fire Marshall, and ideally to somebody senior in Electrical certification testing (probably UL down your way).
You may have had a one in a billion event, only time will tell how many of these come up elsewhere.
Old analog meters were geared, mostly metal - simple, tough, and not much to burn. As more "smarts" (ie. electronics) have been packed into newer meters, their performance and failure modes in extreme situations has changed.
(Simple rule in engineering - As complexity goes up, reliability goes down. If anybody has trouble sleeping at night, lookup "Performing MTBF Calculations").
Between the power surges and the EMI from being that close to major arcs, I can easily see an electronic meter being off by 30%, or more.
Even w/o a fire, there can be significant $ impacts to a meter problem. This discussion has been a good reminder to keep an eye or your meter/bill and for the general public to call their utility and/or a licensed contractor if they have any doubts or concerns.
I'm going to cross-link the page with Hickory's initial post, over to Safety.
Rgds, D.
