Is a dodgy electricity meter costing me £100s?

cliffoa

Hi

First time post on here.

I live in 2 bed bungalow, just me most of year, I'm out at work all week so nobody is at home using electricity, plus I'm on Economy 7 storage heaters overnight. Yet my electricity bills seem really high. I'm paying around £150 DD a month at the moment, and that often leaves me with a shortfall when they calculate my bill every six months.

I decided to get one of those smartpower monitors you just plug into a socket, that let you measure the affect of switching various appliances on and off around the house. I plugged it in this saturday morning around 9am, and I noticed straightaway that my storage heaters were using a massive amount of electricity, still charging up. I always assumed they were supposed to heat up overnight using Economy 7 (from midnight to 7 or 8am) then switch off.

I then checked my main electricity board box outside my property. There was a digital meter in it and an analogue clock. The digitial meter flashing display indicated that I was using electricity at rate 1 (night - E7), even though it was then 9am. On checking the analogue clock, I saw the on/off tabs for the Economy 7 tariff were set correctly at 00.30 to 7.30, but the clock appeared to be running four hours behind actual time. It was showing as 5am, not 9am. So the clock appeared to be fooling the digital meter into thinking I was still on the night rate, when I was probably using electricity at the day rate. The digital meter display didn't change over to the day rate (2), until 11.30am, when the faulty analogue clock showed 7.30am, tripping the night rate 'off' tab.

Furthermore, when I checked the smartpower monitor, it clearly showed that my storage heaters, which are switched on all the time and should only heat up overnight using E7, were charging up all morning, right through until 11.30am. At night they don't start charging up until 4.30am (four hours later than they should).

Does anyone know if this sounds like a dodgy meter that is causing my high bills? I'm not entirely sure when the E7 charging hours are supposed to be exactly. I checked the NPower site (my provider), and it suggested that the Economy 7 times were often different, in different regions. I live in East Anglia. Also does anyone know who is responsible for the meter, is it Npower? On the meter it says it belongs to Eastern Electricity and nobody should tamper with it. But I don't think Eastern Electricity exist any more, according to wiki. So much for privatisation, what a confusing nightmare they've created. Oh for the days when we had an electricity board and you knew exactly who to call.

Anyhow I'd like to get it checked out but don't really know where to start. If I've been wrongly paying £100's more than I should over the last few years, would I be able to claim any of that back from whoever was responsible for the meter? Some chance, I suppose, everyone will deny responsibility, even the people who fitted the meter. But I need to find out.

Apologies for the long post. If anyone has any helpful advice, I'd really appreciate it.

I took a photo of the meter and tried to post it on here as a link but I got a message saying as I was a new user, I couldn't post links, for some reason. But I can message or email the link to the image, if anyone wants to see it.

Thanks.

espresso

cliffoa wrote: »

On checking the analogue clock, I saw the on/off tabs for the Economy 7 tariff were set correctly at 00.30 to 7.30, but the clock appeared to be running four hours behind actual time. It was showing as 5am, not 9am. So the clock appeared to be fooling the digital meter into thinking I was still on the night rate, when I was probably using electricity at the day rate. The digital meter display didn't change over to the day rate (2), until 11.30am, when the faulty analogue clock showed 7.30am, tripping the night rate 'off' tab.

I took a photo of the meter and tried to post it on here as a link but I got a message saying as I was a new user, I couldn't post links, for some reason. But I can message or email the link to the image, if anyone wants to see it.

You have said that your timeswitch is running four hours slow, so this needs to be corrected ASAP - speak to your supplier.

If you want to post a picture, simply omit the http://www. from the link to the hosting site and post the remainder of the link in your next post so that it can be found.

Wywth

How's the wrong time costing you money??? :huh:

You say the NSH don't start charging up until 4.30am - the time your low rate starts.
You claim they charge up right through til 11.30am. I'm not sure that's true as they should thermostatically cut out when they reach full load and it shouldn't take 7 hours for them to recharge (except possibly from fully cold). Anyway, that is when your low rate runs to anyway, as evidenced by the fact at 9.00am you were on low rate.

Make the most of it. Cheap rate electricity for your morning bath/shower, cheap rate electricity to cook your breakfast, cheap rate electricity for the dishes/laundry (assuming you get this done early enough), even cheap rate electricity to recharge your laptop/mobile if you do it in the morning.

Sounds like you could be quids in. :beer:

espresso

Wywth wrote: »

With a simple change, you could be saving money!

They may already be saving money due to the slow timeswitch which controls the metering.

Set the NSH to come on during the cheap rate period.

They are already coming on during the cheap rate period as stated in the original post.

Then with cheap rate until 11.30am every day, think how much you could also save with that morning bath/shower, cooking the breakfast, washing the dishes before 11.30am, washing the laundry before 11.30am, even recharging the laptop before 11.30am etc.

As already stated they are likely to already be saving money rather than paying £100's extra as they seem to think.

Simples :cool:

Really .....

withabix

You may well find that your bill goes UP when the clock is corrected.

You will currently be benefitting from your E7 heat lasting later into the evening (as they are storing heat later than they would otherwise be) and also some of your peak 'morning' electricity use is at cheap rate.

I would keep quiet about this!

The electricity supplier could back bill you for 12 months' difference in charge...

Swipe

Yep, I'd definitely keep schtum. You are in a great position getting cheap rate at peak times.

jalexa

cliffoa wrote: »

I decided to get one of those smartpower monitors you just plug into a socket, that let you measure the affect of switching various appliances on and off around the house. I plugged it in this saturday morning around 9am, and I noticed straightaway that my storage heaters were using a massive amount of electricity, still charging up. I always assumed they were supposed to heat up overnight using Economy 7 (from midnight to 7 or 8am) then switch off.

The meter/timeclock may or may not be right but the problem is your house wiring. The storage heaters should not be plugged into a socket. They need to be hard wired into a dedicated "restricted hours" circuit.

Pointless taking this further until you get that sorted.

espresso

jalexa wrote: »

The meter/timeclock may or may not be right but the problem is your house wiring. The storage heaters should not be plugged into a socket. They need to be hard wired into a dedicated "restricted hours" circuit.

Pointless taking this further until you get that sorted.

I believe that you have made an incorrect assumption there!

The OP means that they have fitted an energy monitor that has a mains powered display. there are many variants available e.g. here

jalexa

espresso wrote: »

I believe that you have made an incorrect assumption there!

I guess I should have paid more (any even:D) attention to "at night they don't start charging up until 4.30am (four hours later than they should)."

Happy to concede your correction.

[Deleted User]

The Analogue timer clock is out of synch with the correct time.You say yours is 4 hours out. from my observations, and I see them all day, there are not many of these old timer clocks which are anywhere near set at the correct time. In the old pre privatisation days we had to check that timeswitch was correct, and something would be done about it if it was nt. Nowadays, in my area ( S.Yorks and Lincs ) no one gives a hoot because it costs to put it right. The best thing is to just figure out the actual times of the switch over and work your heating around the skewed 7 hours

Terrylw1

If you tell your supplier, they will send out an engineer to resolve it.

Then they may decide to start re-estimate previous bills to make you pay more, if they work like that, or to credit you back.

The heating is working the same, just to different hours.

The question is whether you use elec on the off peak hrs at night, if so you would be losing out. If not, you are better off with this really.

At some point, a meter reader may report it which should trigger the supplier to correct it.

In terms of times, there are different E7 timings per region and even multiple variants in the same regions. If its a time switch meter, then can easily tell you but radio teleswitch are harder as there is no national document to detail these.