How, specifically, does an electric meter measure wattage?

This is for a college project. We are supposed to figure out a way to power a load without the meter registering it :confused:
Some students were thinking you could draw a really small amount that maybe wouldn't register. Another idea was to suck up a huge amount faster than the sampling rate and dissapate that slowly to power the load. Another idea was the 1:1 transformer but that I guess wouldn't work. Any ideas? The school allocated the funds for us to build it.