Have you ever been surprised with an electricity bill that was much higher than your average bill even though you maintained the same routine? If electric rates did not increase, it's possible that this bill is a result of human error.

In order to measure your electric consumption, energy suppliers regularly send out men and women to manually read the electricity meter. These readers are usually great at their jobs, but sometimes, like all humans, they can make mistakes. The bad thing for you, though, is that if you do not know how to read the electricity meter, you will have to take the electric supplier’s word that the reading was taken correctly. Fortunately, it is easy to read the electric meter yourself to calculate your monthly bill.

In the UK, electricity meters are either digital or dial based. Digital meters come in single rate meters that have one line to read, and two rate meters that have two lines.

A single rate meter is the easiest meter to read, as all you have to do is to write down all the numbers, ignoring the last. Some people receive electricity that costs different rates -- one rate for off-peak and one for normal.

Dual meters have two rows which reflect the low and the high rate. They will be labelled "low" and "normal." For these meters, record both sets of numbers, remembering to write down which number is which.

Reading dial meters are a little more complicated. On a dial meter, there are five dials that have numbers ranging from zero to nine. Some dials will turn clockwise and other will turn counter clockwise. The dials will be numbered in order from the way the hands move. In order to take an electricity meter reading from a dial meter, record the number that each had has just passed.

For example, if the hand has passed the 4, but is very close to the 5, the reading is still a 4. Continue in this manner for all the dials. In the event that a hand is directly on top of a number, look at the dial to the immediate right of the dial you are trying to read. If that dial reads 9, subtract one from the dial on the left. For example, if the hand on the left dial is on top of the 3 and the dial to the immediate right of it is on 9, the reading for the left dial would be 2.

Now that you have recorded all of the numbers, you can calculate how much electricity you have used for your current billing cycle. Simply look at your old bill and subtract that reading from the one you just made on the electric meter. This will give you the total kilowatt hours that you have consumed in the last month. If you know the electricity rate, you can multiply that by the kilowatt hours to calculate your bill.

Taking an electricity meter reading yourself is a handy piece of knowledge to have. Not only can you catch potential mistakes that are made by your electric company, but you can also know what your bill should be before it comes in the post.