Smart Meters - Ask me anything!

[Deleted User]

eleydad wrote: »

Hi,
Wonder if anyone could help. I had a smart meter installed sep2016. Dual fuel. In July 2017 the gas meter stopped sending readings to British Gas. I have had estimated bills since. I phoned BG and they have told me they are going to exchange the meter, but not get a reading, so the estimated bills will stay as is. Is this correct? Is there no way to get a reading?
Thanks
And I know I should of checked, but it only says it’s a estimated bill on page three and my direct debit was covering the bill. My usage has significantly dropped over the last two years.

The meter itself is faulty if you press and hold the red button and a reading does not come up on the screen after another press of the red button.
These meters have to be "woken up" to save the battery life .Its very rare for a new meter to be completely dead. I have found a few in the approx 8 years of reading smart gas meters for BG and the occupiers were unaware of their faulty meters

MeterMan

eleydad wrote: »

Thanks for the reply. The issue is there is no manual meter. It’s a white plastic box with no screen

I have never seen a meter fitted by BG which has no screen, infact, I have never seen a meter fitted which doesn't have a meter read displayed on it anywhere.

I feel you are looking at the wrong thing, could you please send a picture of what you're looking at, you should be looking at something like this http://www.smartofthehome.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/20130915-164145.jpg

eleydad

Thanks, yes I got it wrong, there is a screen, but no life in meter. Pressed and held red button. It’s a landis g370.

brewerdave

eleydad wrote: »

Thanks, yes I got it wrong, there is a screen, but no life in meter. Pressed and held red button. It’s a landis g370.

Battery is u/s - I thought that the supplier got a message when a smart meter battery was failing.

kev2009

Hi,

I have a question, if i may?

So i have a SMETS2 smart meter, i chose to have monthly readings. However, I cannot see them online, i have raised this with the CS and they have advised that because i only have monthly readings there is no other readings to go back to and this stops the online account showing what I have used in the last month etc. This sounds wrong to me as why provide the option of monthly readings if I can't see them online? defeats the purpose surely? Is this the same with all suppliers or does my current provider just have a issue and they don't want to acknowledge it? They want me to go to 30min readings but I don't want that, once a month is the readings I want, nothing more. My contract with them is up in approx 6 months so I will be looking around to see what deals are out there for a 12 month contract early next year so just wanted to see if this is normal across all providers or not.

Thanks

Kev

Gerry1

It would be 'ridiculous scaremongering' if I pondered whether this might be an attempt to nudge you towards 30-minute readings, thereby opening the door to Time of Use tariffs with 40p/kW at peak times...

kev2009

Gerry1 wrote: »

It would be 'ridiculous scaremongering' if I pondered whether this might be an attempt to nudge you towards 30-minute readings, thereby opening the door to Time of Use tariffs with 40p/kW at peak times...

Exactly, i don't want 30 mins readings as i don't want them to be able to say oh someone must be in between a & b but not between c & d etc... that i'm not keen on hence i want monthly usage as i feel that is sufficient that they know my usage over a whole month as yes i could have used it all in 1 day or ever day in that month.

I've just gone back to them as they have now said they take daily readings???? I didn't agree to that and only consented to monthly so i'm eagerly awaiting a response now.

Kev

Gerry1

And if I scaremongered a wee bit more, I'd wonder whether how granular the monthly reading is, e.g. is it just 'Current Meter Reading = 12345.6 kWh' or it it a cache of the whole month's 30-minute readings?

This isn't just theoretical. You may think you've only agreed to monthly readings, but npower will collect "A meter reading once a month, with daily readings when necessary". :eek:

kev2009

wow, i just had a reply from my provider (not npower) and they say they only collect monthly readings, not daily.

Kev

Carrot007

kev2009 wrote: »

wow, i just had a reply from my provider (not npower) and they say they only collect monthly readings, not daily.

Kev

All smart meters on the domestic market are read monthly.


What the data the yget depends on what you set it to.


Monthly. They get 1 read.
Daily. They get 28/29/30/31 reads depending.
HH. They get (28/29/30/31) * 48 reads depending.


There is no way anyone is going to read a domestic meter more than one a month. The data thet get is a different matter. This confuses people a lot.


Even half hourly commercial customers are read once a day (for 48 reads) at best.