An interesting idea , but is it legal ??

Cknocker

I think the key to this ploy is to not be greedy, if you added say 30% onto your normal consumption, I doubt anyone would notice - if you added 1000%, I'm pretty sure someone would!

That said, I'm not sure the suppliers are that hot on picking such things up, as an example over a 3 year period my electric meter never moved, the supplier never noticed - I carried on paying my monthly DD, the credit balance kept going up until I started asking question about why the supplier was owing me so much money!

Cknocker

You may not be able to store AC into a battery - but you can feed DC from a battery into an inverter to get AC!

rogerblack

Cknocker wrote: »

You may not be able to store AC into a battery - but you can feed DC from a battery into an inverter to get AC!

And charge a battery from AC.

It's not technically hard to store electricity - just expensive.

[Deleted User]

Go ahead and try it OP, there will be no "they" watching what you are using or getting suspicious about suddenly using two or three units. Just an anonymous computer programme which doe snt know or care what your future use will be. Heres a prime example I came accross this morning. I was reading an old style electric dial meter with the 10,000 dial was on a border of 4/5. I read it correctly as a 4 . The occupier came out and told me he had read it earlier as a 5 and Brit gas had just billed him an extra 10,000 units for this quarter and tried to raise his direct debit vastly to cover the huge increase. No one watches what people use at all, just computers with no sense.

insanegloss

sacsquacco wrote: »

The occupier came out and told me he had read it earlier as a 5 and Brit gas had just billed him an extra 10,000 units for this quarter and tried to raise his direct debit vastly to cover the huge increase. No one watches what people use at all, just computers with no sense.

That's not true, things like that are held and flagged for manual intervention, usually kept but ignored and estimate produced in its place. That's really only the case when it comes from normal cyclic reads, though there isn't much stopping a customer ringing in a read and insisting its correct and having the trouble described above.

[Deleted User]

I am afraid it is completely true , the suppliers do not watch or monitor anyones consumption, if you suddenly stop consuming energy, or start using vastly more than usuall, the auto billing processes just continue. How else do you think the vast number of amateur and professional cannabis farms get away with it. They are more likely to be discovered by the police than the hopeless suppliers

Cardew

sacsquacco wrote: »

How else do you think the vast number of amateur and professional cannabis farms get away with it.

They bypass the meter!

insanegloss

Cardew wrote: »

They bypass the meter!

Absolutely, I've seen enough cases of that. A major cause of house fires, anyway I digress. I can honestly sayt that meter reads are checked during automatic processing at supplier level, they have an expected range of values for a meter read, based on previous consumption history. I can hand on heart say this, as at BG it's fairly straightforward (if you know what your doing) to find that expected range. If a read falls out that range, it's flagged for manual intervention, be it by an agent or back office processing teams.

Cknocker

Yes they bypass the meter - but they don't get found out because the electricity supplier suddenly noticed that they are no longer using electricity! They normally get found out by the police, with one of the favourites being by use of thermal imaging cameras on helicopters.

undaunted

Sagwala wrote: »

Thanks Cardew, I might add that I completely agree with your posting and am not that naive as to actually think it is an achievable proposition.

Interesting idea though. I am sure some 'ballsy' chancer is trying it and getting away with it somewhere.

Either that, or they have just rerouted the wiring to take their supply of the streetlight, whilst they grow copious amounts of 'horticultural medication' in the attic.

Thanks for your thoughts

Whilst I too agree with Cardew - and suspect a Judge would too if you were caught - just to play devils advocate is it really so unachievable? IE If you give a reading nobody calls around and checks it. As long as you don't let them read the meter before it passes the reading you gave who would ever know / be able to prove it? :money: