Massive increase in electricity bills out of nowhere

riblem

I was told thought the phone with octopus that they changed the meter and carried over the readings towards the new smart meter.  I have only been here for a year and around 11 months, with the previous bills being smooth sailing.  bsms1147 said:

If the physical meter didn’t change, when was the last actual meter reading before the smart readings (which we assume are accurate)? Can only see Estimates, so it is possible that you are catching up with several years or underpayments.

The thing is they changed the meter without me knowing and since I'm a newbie at this I was not able to get a meter reading from the previous meter. 

bsms1147

If they carried the readings over you’ll have to take their word for it that the closing reading of the old meter was used as the opening reading of the new meter. If the current readings match up with the smart readings that are being sent, then the issues likely stem from the estimates that were being used up until the meter was changed. Do you have any actual readings from the old meter?

riblem

I wasn't aware of the importance of keeping meter readings the previous year since there was no issue with the electricty and the bills so I can't provide any accurate readings.  is this a big problem?

theoretica

The reading on the 23rd that is labelled opening reading looks much more like a closing reading on the old meter.  Has the right number of digits for that!  So it looks like part of the issue is they swapped the low closing reading on the old meter with a higher opening reading on the new one and are charging you twice for the non-existent electricity use between these.

But the rate the smart meter is going up and the bill without the change over seems high too.  Do they have the decimal point in the right place?  I think you need access to the meter to check what it is actually reading.

riblem

I have personally looked at the readings around 2 weeks ago and they were at about the 45000ish mark so the meter is displaying correctly but I understand the closing reading and new reading have a huge gap and that's what might be causing the problem.  Octopus also provide daily readings and I did a small experiment yesterday turning all things off at the mains for 30 minutes except for the fridge, 4 led ceiling lights and the wifi router this is as they show readings in sections of 30 minutes.  It went down a bit to around 0.08kwh for that session, however when I went to bed and did the same thing it showed an average of 0.32kwh for 5 hours when only the wifi and fridge were on.  I don't understand the increase as I didn't even turn the 4 ceiling lights on. 

daveyjp

riblem said:

This is the heater, just to confirm is it a storage heater?

No.  Its an electric panel heater.  No heat storage capabilities whatsoever.

theoretica

So between September (estimate 7846) and November (the misnamed opening reading 8136) you used 290 kwh - in line with previous usage.  Then move to the smart meter 36280.7 to July 44501.2 - they say this shows usage of 8220.5 kwh which is not in line with previous use.  Either this meter is recording several properties' use, or it is in the wrong units (822.05 would be more what you expect) or it is just having a random breakdown. 

In any case if they had taken the meter change into account the bill should only(!) read around £1400 so there are two errors going on, at least.

theoretica

riblem said:

I have personally looked at the readings around 2 weeks ago and they were at about the 45000ish mark so the meter is displaying correctly but I understand the closing reading and new reading have a huge gap and that's what might be causing the problem.  Octopus also provide daily readings and I did a small experiment yesterday turning all things off at the mains for 30 minutes except for the fridge, 4 led ceiling lights and the wifi router this is as they show readings in sections of 30 minutes.  It went down a bit to around 0.08kwh for that session, however when I went to bed and did the same thing it showed an average of 0.32kwh for 5 hours when only the wifi and fridge were on.  I don't understand the increase as I didn't even turn the 4 ceiling lights on. 

Did the meter say what units?  Your fridge won't have a constant electricity use - it turns itself on and off with the thermostat.

theoretica

I would turn absolutely everything off for a couple of hours - the fridge will survive.  Just to confirm the reading goes totally to zero.

Talldave

You do need to confirm that the meter you're paying for is the one connected to your flat - does the serial number match?  When you do another test, switch a kettle on and check the rate of the flashing light, just to make sure it's your meter.

How is your water heated, is there an immersion keeping a tank of water boiling hot 24/7?  Are you sure the underfloor heating is off?

The consumption does seem high for summer months, even with an all electric flat.  But your opening post that said you use 1200kWh a year is totally unrealistic - where are the bills showing actual meter readings to back that up? 

An all electric flat without storage heaters running on E7 is a route to bankruptcy.  That said, there are multiple errors on those bills with erroneous readings that are causing all the stupidly large figures.  You need to know what the previous meter was showing before it was removed.