{
  "id": "meters:dirty-electricity-meter",
  "collection": "meters",
  "slug": "dirty-electricity-meter",
  "name": "Dirty-electricity (line harmonics) meter",
  "summary": "Plugs into a socket and reports high-frequency harmonic content riding on the mains, the quantity used to judge dimmers, LED drivers, inverters and switch-mode supplies.",
  "status": "verified",
  "lastVerified": "2026-08-12",
  "data": {
    "aliases": [
      "Graham-Stetzer meter",
      "line noise meter",
      "microsurge meter"
    ],
    "measures": [
      "electric-field-strength"
    ],
    "bandCovered": {
      "minHz": 2000,
      "maxHz": 1000000,
      "label": "conducted harmonics, roughly 2 kHz – 1 MHz"
    },
    "priceBandUsd": [
      80,
      400
    ],
    "detects": [
      "Harmonic content injected by phase-cutting dimmers and cheap switch-mode supplies",
      "Relative before/after effect of removing a suspected device",
      "Power-line-communication carriers used by some solar optimisers and smart appliances"
    ],
    "cannotDetect": [
      "Radiated fields — this is a conducted measurement at the socket",
      "Which device is responsible, without switching devices off one at a time",
      "Anything expressible in a recognised SI exposure unit: the common 'GS units' scale is proprietary and not an exposure metric"
    ],
    "buyingCriteria": [
      "A stated frequency window rather than an arbitrary index",
      "Readout that can be compared over time and between circuits",
      "Ideally an oscilloscope line adapter for anyone who needs the actual waveform"
    ],
    "related": [
      "emitters:dimmer-switch",
      "emitters:led-lighting"
    ]
  },
  "sources": [
    {
      "id": "sbm-2024",
      "title": "Building Biology Evaluation Guidelines for Sleeping Areas (SBM-2024)",
      "publisher": "Institut für Baubiologie + Nachhaltigkeit (IBN)",
      "url": "https://buildingbiology.com/site/downloads/SBM-2024_EVALUATION_GUIDELINES_EN.pdf",
      "year": 2024,
      "kind": "ngo",
      "retrieved": "2026-08-12"
    }
  ],
  "links": {
    "self": "https://emfbase.com/api/meters/dirty-electricity-meter",
    "html": "https://emfbase.com/meters/dirty-electricity-meter",
    "markdown": "https://emfbase.com/meters/dirty-electricity-meter.md",
    "collection": "https://emfbase.com/api/meters"
  }
}