Electricity bill 5x higher after smart meter installation

emv · 6 October 2015 at 3:58PM

No to the oven or any form of heating. The 'empty' property has 2 fridges turned on, many lights (including an emergency lighting system that I suspect may consume power all the time?). Do plug in monitors work on three phase supply, does anyone know?

Robin9 · 12 October 2015 at 8:29AM

emv - have you resolved this ?

emv · 12 October 2015 at 11:59PM

No, not really, I'm awaiting the arrival of a 3-phase energy monitor that we can use to see what's happening. We tried again switching off over the weekend, with our cottage switched off the usage was nil for 4 hours, then was 2kw/h & 3kw/h with guests in which seems more reasonable.

Littlebettyboop · 13 October 2015 at 12:13PM

If it's £150 a month for electric only, (and you have gas heating,) then that sounds phenomenally high imo. I have heard some tales of people saying that their bills went up when they had a smart meter installed, but it could be that the other one they had was faulty and was giving low readings (maybe...) But still £150 a month is dreadfully high for electric only, (if as I said, you have gas heating.) Especially if there is only 2 of you.

Also, my friend had her prepayment meter changed for a credit meter Spring 2014, (it was an electric meter; her home has no gas,) and she was paying about £85 a month (this was for heating, cooking, and all the electric appliances; as she has all electric and no gas.) It's a 2 bed flat and only she lives there.

So she had her DD set at £90 a month so she would end up with a bit of a credit, and six months later, she was £90 in arrears on the account! (Which suggested she was underpaying by about £15 a month..)

So she upped the DD to £120 a month, to account for the extra £15 a month and also to pay back what she owed. Six months later, (it was now March 2015, and she had gone through a winter,) the account was £109 in arrears!!! She was now underpaying (seemingly) by almost £20 a month!

So she then changed the DD to £140 a month! So she was paying £85 a month with her prepayment meter, and now she is paying £140. She says she curses the day she asked them to change it.

I am not sure why this happened; but it did.

She had a bill recently, and it was a only fiver in the red, so it looks like it's settled down a bit for now. But still, it's pretty shocking that she is paying £55 a month more now, than she was with the prepayment meter last year...

It could be that what she is paying now via the new credit meter IS correct, and the lower amount that she was paying via the prepayment meter was wrong, but still, she is still paying over a third more for her energy now. As she said, she wishes she had not had the meter swapped now.

emv · 13 October 2015 at 3:29PM

There are 9 of us living here, rather than two, we live in (but don't use all the rooms in) a 22 room cottage. We do have 5 fridges/freezers, washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, 2 electric cookers,1 electric oven & fluorescent 4-pin lights everywhere (e.g. 5 lights in our kitchen alone) so I wonder if that's the cause. The other building doesn't have much switched on other than (another) fridge but it does have a huge number of rooms so potentially leaving on 5% of the lights could use a non-negligible amount of power.

martinsurrey · 13 October 2015 at 4:10PM

Littlebettyboop wrote: »

Also, my friend had her prepayment meter changed for a credit meter Spring 2014, (it was an electric meter; her home has no gas,) and she was paying about £85 a month (this was for heating, cooking, and all the electric appliances; as she has all electric and no gas.) It's a 2 bed flat and only she lives there.

So she had her DD set at £90 a month so she would end up with a bit of a credit, and six months later, she was £90 in arrears on the account! (Which suggested she was underpaying by about £15 a month..)

So she upped the DD to £120 a month, to account for the extra £15 a month and also to pay back what she owed. Six months later, (it was now March 2015, and she had gone through a winter,) the account was £109 in arrears!!! She was now underpaying (seemingly) by almost £20 a month!

So she then changed the DD to £140 a month! So she was paying £85 a month with her prepayment meter, and now she is paying £140. She says she curses the day she asked them to change it.

I am not sure why this happened; but it did.

She had a bill recently, and it was a only fiver in the red, so it looks like it's settled down a bit for now. But still, it's pretty shocking that she is paying £55 a month more now, than she was with the prepayment meter last year...

It could be that what she is paying now via the new credit meter IS correct, and the lower amount that she was paying via the prepayment meter was wrong, but still, she is still paying over a third more for her energy now. As she said, she wishes she had not had the meter swapped now.

could it be that with the prepayment meter she could see what she was spending and cut her heating off earlier. Now that its all done behind the scenes she's using the heating for longer, meaning a higher bill.

matelodave · 13 October 2015 at 4:19PM

It's hard to compare what she's using now because before she only used what she paid for and couldn't use any more until she paid for it, now it's all being used before she gets the bill.

Without having records of her previous consumption & lifestyle and actually monitoring her current consumption in kwh and doing a comparison you'll never really know why she seems to be paying more, but I suspect it's as Martin above suggests, lack of control over usage.

Robin9 · 17 October 2015 at 1:41PM

emv – can we go back to your original post. ?

As an Electricity Supply Company engineer I came across a set up in the middle of the forest where there was a Saw Mill which had a large electricity supply – nearby were several workers cottages and outbuildings and most were wired back to this supply arrangement. Over the years other buildings were added but there supply was often tagged onto the nearest cable. Some cottages had been sold off and there were private sub-meters adjacent to the main supply.

Is this your set-up.?

When the developer got involved did he have new electricity mains and individual services and meters installed?

When your Smart meter was set up did it replace a private meter (with the electricity company providing a new supply position / meter box ) or one belonging to your supplier.?

If it was a private one then I suspect that it was old and inaccurately recording the consumption – your Smart meter is now recording the true consumption. What may be your real issue is exactly what the installation is beyond the meter – what has been tagged on over the years.

Multiple Smart meters on the same site will not inter with each other – their communication is unique

Electricity bill 5x higher after smart meter installation

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