WARNING SOLAR PANELS & some Siemens S2AS-100/ Siemens S1AS-100 Meters

furndire

I don't know how you stand with that one Hobo - Once its confirmed the meter is faulty, its got to be worth having a go at all of the companies to get a rebate. Maybe worth asking OffWat - is that the name of the electricity ombudsman.

furndire

John,
Hobo was in the same boat as us - trying to cut down his electricity useage - & it was when he had the solar panels put in he could prove the meter was faulty - I still wonder how many more faulty meters there are, as its really difficult to tell if your meter is clocking up more than it should especially if they allow 10% either way.

jkpaul

Wow am I glad I found this thread?!

We had a 4kW SOlar PV array fitted in Nov 2011 and things seemed OK. Of course I'd hoped for higher generation figures (UK weather!), faster FiT payments (E.ON!) and a more significant saving in my electricity usage, but I was happy enough.

After the really sunny week at the end of March I started to suspect something was wrong with our generation / electricity meters as whenever we had a bumper week of generation, although we were not able to make the maximum possible usage of the generated power, we would still have a bumper week for purchased electricity too.

So last weekend I was trawling this board to see where the best place was to post my question ("Why when we have a very sunny week does my imported electricity usage increase?") when I found this thread about the very same problem I checked our import meter and found it was indeed a Siemens S2AS too.

Since then I've been working on getting the best resolution to this problem. Sadly this has been made more difficult since after our PV installation & FiT registration with E.ON in November we've moved our dual-fuel to Ovo Energy in Feb 2012. The FiT has stayed with E.ON (I didn't want to do anything which risked the payments taking even longer) and therefore Ovo have little or nothing to do with our PV generation.

I decided that as the Nov - Feb period was not a particularly long or fruitful one for generation, I wouldn't go back to E.ON to claim back what I've been overcharged. I started by speaking to Ovo (who of course had no idea of the issue) and they've now said that they will investigate and probably replace the meter (at a £30 charge to me!) and try to interrogate it and find out what my export figures are and therefore how much they've overcharged me.

Now I had no idea they'd want to charge me to replace the meter (naive!) but if that's the case then I think I'll have to chase E.ON as they were aware when we bought the Solar PV system & had it installed. They were informed and all the necessary paperwork was approved. At no point did they raise the potential issue with the Siemens S2AS (though I'm sure someone there will have known by last year) and they then proceeded to overcharge me as per Ovo ever since.

I've also informed the installation company (again, clueless about the issue) and they've said that yes they surveyed & passed everything, they cannot legally touch the import meter and it is E.ON's responsibility to ensure it is fit for purpose and functioning properly. They've offered to speak to E.ON for us so we'll see where that gets us.

Honestly, I'm not looking for compensation, other than a refund for what is probably an overcharge of perhaps 5-10 units per day, £15-30/month for the period from mid-Nov to today (at the very least from mid-Feb to today).

I'm not sure the best way to get this but I'm worried that each party will blame the other, that I'll get stung to have the meter changed and they'll claim they cannot refund me.

Any help or advice is very welcome!
Paul

furndire

Insist they put a check meter in, so one meter will run side by side for a few weeks. (One of my worries was they they would just take the meter away, & replace it straight away with another one - my proof would have been out of the window if they had).
They will say you have to pay - its to stop everyone wanting their meters' checked.
This will show them that the meter is faulty.
It should then be straightforward. They can work out what % you are being overcharged - It also means that your meter was faulty BEFORE your panels were put in, so you will be due to compensation - we got £3000 back as we had not switched for 6 years & I had complained many times that my bills were high. They just do not believe meters can be faulty, or it is such a small number as to not matter!!!
If you have any problems, give them the email of this thread as well.

Our meter was put in when we built our house - so was probably faulty right from then.
Point them in the way of this thread if you get arguments. I had been made to feel stupid because it just couldn't happen - very patronising man put the check meter in - but he got put in his place by me for being so.

Stick with it - you will feel like you are banging your head against a brick wall, but will end up getting sorted - it'll take a while.

Not that it particularly matters, but who installed your panels? It would be interesting to know if it is a company who should have spotted this.

John_Pierpoint

:wave:

I took the plunge in February and installed PC panels. My modern import meter simply turned its flashing red light to constant red when passing the electric backwards and displayed "red" as an extra reading in its scrolling liquid crystal display.
However Economy 7 clock may have found the backwards electricity too much to manage because it died about a fortnight later.

So now at no expense to myself, my current electricity supplier came and replaced meter and clock with a big version that is electronic, and must be linked in to MI5, because it knows to the second when it is 01:00 & 08:00 BST. (I used to get an extra 15 minutes out of the old mechanical clock:mad:).

jkpaul if your electricity supplier knows its meters [They won't because they were not the DNO that originally installed them] then they could work out how to interrogate your Siemens and get it to tell them how much electricity has been exported as well as how much has been imported.

But it will be much more fun seeing what they actually do, make sure you let us know how you get on.

Do you use electricity for heating, hot water and cooking ? If not it should be so obvious what is happening when the sun comes out - especially if you have an easily accessible inverter and/or a desk top gizmo to show your current generation. [Out comes the sun -> Siemens apparent consumption shoots up.]

You could become addicted and start posting results and commentary on the weather:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3853851

jkpaul

Thanks Furndire .... but I'm not sure that's the case for us.

I know that the Solar PV installation has meant that the meter is over-egging our energy import figures, however although it's possible the meter has been wrong for years (and it would be very nice to find that out) I don't know that that's the case.

Sadly they've told me the price list, which I understand is to dissuade frivolous claims, but I'd rather not pay £79 for a check meter or £89 for an accuracy test (nor £30 for a replacement meter to be honest).

I've not been too worried about them taking the S2AS out to replace & test it - I hope they can get the true figures off it ... perhaps I'm too trusting & naive. I have some cover though as every week since just before the PV installation I've been taking mobile phone photos of all the energy meters (in / out / gas) so I can show exactly what it has been reading since October.

Our panels were installed by a small, local company in Yorkshire, Eclipse. They've been helpful from day 1 so I wasn't surprised they were again today, although they didn't know about this issue they've offered to help, so we'll see!

jkpaul

We use gas for heating, water & cooking.

There's a chart showing my electricity import (red) and PV generation (green). Sadly as a new user I can't include a link (!) but if you look for me on https://www.Flickr.com as jkpaul it's the last photo, called jkpaul solar pv electricity.

As you can see, no matter how sunny the week, the import always nudges ahead! We've gone from an average use/day of 15 units to over 20 in sunny weeks!

I hope this works!

furndire

They can tell if they install a meter along side your meter. Originally I was convinced it was the panels that were causing the problem, but they decided it wasn't - because of the check meter. As I said, go the check meter route -you don't pay if the meter is proven to be faulty.
Companies should be honest, but after the performance I had trying to get mine sorted it would be quite easy to blame you if you have not got the evidence. As you can tell - I got to the stage where I was quite paranoid about this lot - people got fed up of me talking about solar panels.
The information is supposedly in the meter, but when I said this to the man who put the check meter in hadn't a clue - after as a mere older woman I don't know anything!!!.

Funnily enough we were supposed to be using about 17 units a day for years & no matter what we did could not get it lower - I had even bought new appliances - thought I had wasted my money as still didn't use less.

As your installers are only a small company they probably have not come across this before either - good to know that they will back you if needs be.

jkpaul

Sorry, I also meant to say:

Yes thankfully our Inverter is very accessible (back porch) so it's extremely addictive to keep checking current & cumulative generation figures.

And of course, I'll let you know what happens!

jkpaul

Yes, but my concern is that £79 (potential) cost ... possibly up to half of what I'm convinced I've overpaid and am due to be refunded.

If it turns out my meter is NOT inaccurate, then it's a costly double-check of something I'm not sure is wrong!