Smart Meters - Ask me anything!

Zebedee4

Rubidium wrote: »

You are confusing a time switch with an internal contactor switched output, which is required to control a separate circuit for night storage heating/hot water.

As this meter controlled your E7 circuit when eon was your supplier but now does not with Bristol Energy, Bristol Energy are not sending the correct control signals to the meter.

Bristol Energy cannot wash their hand of this, so raise a complaint and escalate as necessary until resolved.

Yep, I know this now after contacting the manufacturers of the components in the meter box. Bristol Energy have now sent the correct time signal and all is good. It only took hours on the phone to resolve

SDMc

Hi

I moved into a house a couple of years ago and there were prepayment meters installed as it had previously been rented out. I actually thought it would be a good idea to keep them and changed to Ovo for a cheaper deal. We have since had smart meters fitted but now that I am aware of what we are paying per KWH I have been telephoning around trying to get a better deal with a pay monthly plan. It would appear that the smart meters are not as smart as people are making out as these would have to be changed first. Ovo do not have the facility to do credit checks to enable me to change with them. It appears that there are many hurdles being put in my way to keep me trapped into paying a higher rate for my energy at the moment. Does anybody have any suggestions please?
TIA

MeterMan

Find a better deal, Change supplier if necessary, Ovo will put their meters into credit mode and the new supplier will decide if they need changing.

System

I m now seeing quite a few Secure Liberty meters (ex Ovo and Utilita )around nowadays used in credit meter mode for BG, EDF and Scot Power but I m sure they are not compatible for these companies in prepayment meter mode and would need to exchanged. EDF and Scot Power , in my area at least, don t seem to have kicked off smart roll out yet so I m not sure which meter make/model they have chosen

brianposter

Just come across this thread and maybe you could solve a problem for which I have been unable to find an answer elsewhere. We are in Spain.

We have a smart meter installed, and the electricity supplier is kind enough to provide an hourly analysis of electricity consumption on their website. The hourly consumption figures (kwh) appear to reflect what we use, but the daily total (also kwh) on which we are billed, appears to be an entirely different (much higher) figure.

Can you explain how this could happen ?

Raxiel

brianposter wrote: »

Just come across this thread and maybe you could solve a problem for which I have been unable to find an answer elsewhere. We are in Spain.

We have a smart meter installed, and the electricity supplier is kind enough to provide an hourly analysis of electricity consumption on their website. The hourly consumption figures (kwh) appear to reflect what we use, but the daily total (also kwh) on which we are billed, appears to be an entirely different (much higher) figure.

Can you explain how this could happen ?

Just a guess, but, rounding errors?
Do the hourly totals read fractions of kWh? Billing is always rounded down, but the fractions could add up. 24 hours at say 1 unit an hour adds up to 24 but if they were rounded down from 1.9 the total would be 45. (Same if they display 0.1 but its actually 0.19)

System

brianposter wrote: »

Just come across this thread and maybe you could solve a problem for which I have been unable to find an answer elsewhere. We are in Spain.

We have a smart meter installed, and the electricity supplier is kind enough to provide an hourly analysis of electricity consumption on their website. The hourly consumption figures (kwh) appear to reflect what we use, but the daily total (also kwh) on which we are billed, appears to be an entirely different (much higher) figure.

Can you explain how this could happen ?

Thinking back to my schoolboy Physics of 50 years ago, I think that what you are experiencing is what is known as the Power Factor. It's a fact that people who use clamps on wiring to see total usage get a totally different reading to what is shown on the meter. Some energy monitors - such as Smappee - address this issue. As I recall, errors creep in when low power items such as chargers are in use. I may be wrong but it gives you something to investigate.

Power Factor - the ratio of the actual electrical power dissipated by an AC circuit to the product of the r.m.s. values of current and voltage. The difference between the two is caused by reactance in the circuit and represents power that does no useful work.

Sterlingtimes

I have the benefit of seeing the clamp-on readings via my Wattson metering, and the real readings from Ovo. The Ovo method is clearly more accurate and shows the benefit of smart metering with full web-based statistics for electricity and gas.

Ovo is the top picture where I can place the cursor over any point on the graph and see time and reading.


.


There are differences in measurement between the two graphs.

brianposter

Thanks for the replies.

The supposed daily consumption is about ten times what the hourly figures indicate it should be, so it could be rounding errors if they were rounding 0.1 kwh up to 1 kwh. The problem does seem to be associated with a relatively low consumption (<2kwh/day) so it is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

The problem would then be to know where the rounding is happening.

The size of the discrepancy seems to rule out anything to do with power factors.

reeac

Hengus wrote: »

Thinking back to my schoolboy Physics of 50 years ago, I think that what you are experiencing is what is known as the Power Factor. It's a fact that people who use clamps on wiring to see total usage get a totally different reading to what is shown on the meter. Some energy monitors - such as Smappee - address this issue. As I recall, errors creep in when low power items such as chargers are in use. I may be wrong but it gives you something to investigate.

Power Factor - the ratio of the actual electrical power dissipated by an AC circuit to the product of the r.m.s. values of current and voltage. The difference between the two is caused by reactance in the circuit and represents power that does no useful work.

Power factor only becomes a big effect if the electrical load is primarily reactive ....usually inductive. That usually means electric motors and transformers so in the domestic scenario that's fridges, freezers, washing machines, chargers etc. My guess is that most household demand is resistive such as cooking, water heating and lighting. I do wonder about inductive hobs however.