Another example of why you can not trust a Digital volt meter and should have a Solenoid tester if you trouble shoot electrical circuits

 I never trust Digital Meters when it comes to working on live 120 and up AC  Alternating Current  Electrical Circuits .

I especially despise  Auto Ranging Digital Meters like Fluke 113

I like Digital Meters with Fixed scales like my Triplett  780B. so let me tell you why.

I recently had to call power company to a customer site after the B phase of their 120-/208 3 phase service was out .

I verified it with a digital meter and then double verified it with a Knopp Solenoid Tester meter.  This meter has a small coil which energizes and pulls up a marker flag or indicator this way you know you actually have Real electrical Power and not getting a Phantom Reading. can do both AC and DC  at 120  to 600 volts

Various Solenoid testers are available new and used from  Klein who made the famous Wiggy  , Ideal and others 

I have an older Knopp tester my dad gave me when he retired from the mill and bought a new Cat III  protected tester couple years ago .

at Stanton Electric Supply in Wilkinsburg Pa. 

Now I knew that phase was dead so power company trouble shooter shows up with his Fluke 113 meter goes up in bucket says No must be your problem  . so I had to put on PPE and open up the 1200 amp outside load center .

He starts testing and its then after checking a couple more times he was reading his meter wrong when he was getting strange readings on his 113 meter .

 

what he was reading on his meter was not 120 or 114 he was reading Point .120 point 114 which means the phase was dead.

when i put my knopp on and verified it he was pretty embarrased. 

So no harm no foul. 

He went back up and found where copper and alunimum wire on phase near transformer had gone bad and in 15 minute we had B phase working.

When he saw me pull out the solenoid tester he said your and old school electrician yes I am and my dad taught me the value of these solenoid tester too many times digital meters can throw you off.  

This is why you see old school electricians like myself carry the solenoid testers in industrial settings with 230 and 480 industrial services. So you do not get a false reading the cost around a Hundred dollars but solve troubleshooting issues because you know the power is there or not.