Multiple Meters in Box?

Fenris

Hi all,

I'm after some advice, so I hope someone can help! Sorry, long post follows.

Last year we moved into rented accommodation. We were aware that the house was not insulated (how many rentals are, eh?!) and we knew there was no gas supply, just electricity.

Long story short, we had a bill for over £630 last month, this was for about two and a half months worth of electricity. There's just us two adults here, no kids. We use an electric fire and 3 oil radiators to heat the rooms we use as this property has Night Storage Heaters which were coming in really expensive (irony, I know). So we thought that was a lot for a couple of months, but we paid it anyway.

We've just switched from Southern Electric (who provided us with the £630.00 bill!) to Scottish Power in December. We decided to pay by DD to get a cheaper rate. We were supposed to pay £55 per month, but we got a text message today saying they needed to change that amount due to information received. *Sigh*

This prompted me to take a closer look at the meter and do some testing. I noticed we have two meters in the box; there's an old mechanical meter with spinning disc (last checked in 1992 if the sticker's to be believed!) and a Multi Rate Unit for the Economy 7. We've been taking readings from the Multi Rate meter, which is what we were told to do by the rental company.

As a test, I switched off the electricity at the mains breaker and checked the meter. The old mechanical disc was still whizzing around. Of course, with the digital Multi Rate I can't see if it's moved or not, but I can say that over the course of an hour the day rate had gone up by 4 units.

Here's a picture of what's in the box (sorry, phone camera):



As you can [just about] see, there's the old mechanical meter, under which is the newer digital meter. To the left, that big block is a Heating Contactor Type 2Z which seems to be for the Night Storage Heaters we don't use. What everything else is, I just don't know.

So, my question is, is it normal to have two meters in one box? I remember way back when we lived in MK the electricity company came and changed that old mechanical meter for a digital one, but they actually took that old one away and left us with just the digital one. I've never seen both in situ before now.

I feel there's something wrong here and we're being overcharged. I did notice that the clock is wrong on the Multi Rate meter too; it's about 3 hours ahead.

If anyone can shed some light, or give any advice I'd be grateful as we're just stumped now!

Thanks in advance,
Fen.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Looking at the tails its certainly an E7 setup, no doubt on that. That does not however mean you are on an E7 tariff, many people have that setup but are on aggregated standard tariff's, so :

- what tariff are you on ?
- which provider are you with ?
- are yoiu all electric ?
- how do you heat your water ?

What does """Storage Heaters we don't use"" mean ?, does it mean you have them but don't use them, or you have no night time tariff water / & / or / heating supply ?

"""over the course of an hour the day rate had gone up by 4 units""", that would be normal. Your question is is the night unit counter going round ?. No need for fancy theories just read it today then tomorrow - has it changed ?

spiro

If you are on an E7 tariff and not using the NSH then you bill will be high because you pay a daytime (7am to midnight) premium to have cheaper overnight elec.

Scottish_Power

Hi Fenris if you e-mail your details to [EMAIL="onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com"]onlinecomplaints@scottishpower.com[/EMAIL] we can look into this for you. Thanks David

misterbarlow

have never seen that setup before personally..
cant see clearly as its a bit out of focus, but there are not two meters in that photo or they would be separately wired to the cutout and there are only one main set of ingoing and outgoing tails..
the meter feeds the isco blocks at the bottom, which feed your cons unit and also the supply to the contactor it all goes through the one meter..

But, it appears to be a combined meter or a meter with some sort of additional 'bolt on' unit..
so that square casing under the meter has an lcd display I assume??

you said it 'was' with SSE...
i know they have some tariffs with three registers, you get the regular day/night ala E7, plus the third register is another unit price again for the heating only, in your case any supply that goes thru the contactor...

Fenris

Hi all, thanks for all your replies!

In order:

@ Richie-from-the-Boro: Yup, it's definitely E7; that's what's on the Tenancy Agreement and the bills we've been getting.

We've just switched from Southern Electric's Standard Electricity (this was sold to my Mum at her old property as being the best for pensioners. I've been trying to get her to switch for a couple of years!). We're now on Scottish Power's Online Fixed Price Energy March 2014 Offer.

Yes, it's all electric. We're not connected to mains gas. Heck, we're not even connected to mains sewerage!

Water's heated via immersion. It goes on for about 1 or 2 hours, depending on the temperature during the night.

We have storage heaters, we don't use them. We tried using them when we first moved in, but couldn't get them to work properly. They weren't storing enough energy during the night so were only just giving out a trickle of heat during the day. By about 6pm they were stone cold. Looks like they were installed when the house was built sometime in the 80's and have never been updated. Useless things. So we turned them all off at their wall switches and don't use them.

Yes, the night counter moves, but not by much. Like I say, the clock's wrong so I don't know when it's even starting the night rate.

@ spiro: I see what you're saying, but as above, the storage heaters don't work and the clock's wrong anyway, so...

@ Scottishpower: Thanks, have sent an e-mail with a link to this thread.

@ Misterbarlow: I've never seen it before either and I've rented a few houses over the years! There again, I'm not an electrical engineer, which leads me on to...

...Sorry, your first paragraph is Greek to me!

Yes, it's an LCD display. If it helps at all I wrote this down from the sticker on it: Multi Rate Unit NU062 and there's a serial number but not sure that'll help. There's a sticker on the front that says S/2 Rate. The mechanical part with the whirling Dervish disc is an S75E and the big block on the left of that is a Heating Contactor Type 2Z. I'm afraid none of that makes much sense to me and my friend Google didn't help much!

As far as I know we've only ever been billed for a Day and Night rate supply. Can't find anything on the bills for a third rate.

Richie-from-the-Boro

"""Water's heated via immersion"""

- it should be a PartL compliant direct feed cylinder
- this should come on automatically for about 7 hours per night
- the cylinder should have 2 heating elements top and bottom of the tank
- the bottom one comes on and off automatically during the night
- the top one, is a manually switched immersion should never be needed on an E7 tariff

"""We have storage heaters, we don't use them"""

- replace or refurb them and continue to use cheaper electricity on the E7 tariff
- or continue to use whatever you are using now at more than twice the price of electricity on E7

Or change your E7 tariff for a standard day rate tariff. Essentially you are on a supplier tariff for night stored cheap heat and night stored cheap hot water and are using neither.

Think carefully before changing tariff, which is indeed a good tariff for AP's who tend to be immobile / cold / home all day [ish]. I assume your problems are poor insulation and under or not performing night-storage radiators. If they are cold by teatime its because (1) you did not store sufficient heat or (2) you left the dampers open, or you simply do no know how to use them effectively.

Sufficient heat may mean putting an extra night-storage heater in, or merely replacing small for large or broken for new.

How do you heat the dwelling ? - Got more questions - ask !

Fenris

Hi again,

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I did say I'm in Rented Accommodation; I can't change anything!

That said, I do appreciate your advice.

I don't know how the immersion works. There are two switches in the airing cupboard and we were told that both were to be switched on when we wanted the water heating and that's what we do.

[Deleted User]

I have only ever seen that sort of set up before when I went to work in East Anglia region once. The main meter will be the total, with the added digital meter recording day and night. Its not uncommon to see 2 seperate meters, or even 3 or 4 in a box, always for flats and social housing.

Richie-from-the-Boro

Fenris wrote: »

Hi again,

Please don't take this the wrong way,.

- I won't .. it was my fault I missed it in #1
- that's going to be twice the UK average bill

Lets leave the crazy meters and crazy immersion for now, the first thing to do is get an affordable kind of heating. Get your AP registered as vulnerable with SP - ask for and write to the rep on this site and read and action this also. Your landlord is of course responsible for heating, one way or the other its going to have to be fixed.

For an E7 tariff to begin to be economic you need to use about 30% at night. Turning off your night store heaters merely means you pay more than you need to. An online account, paid via direct debit, with you supplying the readings is the cheapest way to get any tariff and that is true of E7. SP is about the cheapest E7 tariff in the UK. Their current E7 prices are around 12p day and 5p night with a daily charge of 20p plus depending on where in the UK you live.

For the moment the best you can do with a bad job is switch on the living room [most time spent] night store heater, turn the input to highest and the output to completely closed, and close that door when you go to bed - do not open the output the next day - just leave it the way I said. Doing this will transfer some of your heatng costs to cheaper night units meaning you will use less of the expensive day units the day following.

Ask for David the scottishpower company representative in a thread below this one and ask him for the cheapest possible standard E7 tariff with maximum discounts.
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Cyber735 & sacsquacco - more than a bodge job !