Energy Spreadsheets - being organised?

brewerdave

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

Because all the snagging hasn't been done yet and even if they do work a lot of the cheaper suppliers still can't use them !!!

The_Green_Hornet

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

Even with a smart meter I wouldn't trust some suppliers to get their billing right.

Zellah

JustAnotherSaver said:

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

From what i have read, smart meters are not immune to error.

And going out on the 1st of the month to check and then enter meter readings isn't that difficult for me. As a backup, i have a reminder alarm set in my phone to do it. It's never bailed me out though.

Most of the negative publicity around smart meters is mainly related to older smets1 meters without any firmware upgrade done, the main issue being that they go into dumb mode if you change suppliers. Smets2 meters have more or less fixed this, there are now far far less complaints about smets2 not working properly after changing suppliers. I had smets2 meters installed by E.ON in 2019, moved to EDF earlier this year and absolutely no issues at all.

Zellah

brewerdave said:

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

Because all the snagging hasn't been done yet and even if they do work a lot of the cheaper suppliers still can't use them !!!

The 'big 6' offer very competitive smart meter only tariffs if going through uswitch or MSE CEC, i'm paying 2.05p kWh for gas with EDF with a daily standing charge of around 20p. Despite living in one of the more costly areas for energy (North Scotland).  

brewerdave

Zellah said:

brewerdave said:

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

Because all the snagging hasn't been done yet and even if they do work a lot of the cheaper suppliers still can't use them !!!

The 'big 6' offer very competitive smart meter only tariffs if going through uswitch or MSE CEC, i'm paying 2.05p kWh for gas with EDF with a daily standing charge of around 20p. Despite living in one of the more costly areas for energy (North Scotland).  

In my region ,EDF don't even appear on the 1st page of results - also ,I'm not aware that you can filter searches on either CEC or USwitch by "smart meter only" tariffs ??
Just used CA price comparison tool and nothing in my region ,comes near my current fixed gas tariff from Gulf .

JustAnotherSaver

Zellah said:

Most of the negative publicity around smart meters is mainly related to older smets1 meters without any firmware upgrade done, the main issue being that they go into dumb mode if you change suppliers. Smets2 meters have more or less fixed this, there are now far far less complaints about smets2 not working properly after changing suppliers. I had smets2 meters installed by E.ON in 2019, moved to EDF earlier this year and absolutely no issues at all.

What does a smart meter get me?

I'll hold my hands up and admit i've not read too much in to them, just that they're not immune to fault which made me think well what's the point then.

Aside from submitting my readings automatically, what will it get me? Because taking a meter reading is not a difficult task.

Zellah

JustAnotherSaver said:

Zellah said:

Most of the negative publicity around smart meters is mainly related to older smets1 meters without any firmware upgrade done, the main issue being that they go into dumb mode if you change suppliers. Smets2 meters have more or less fixed this, there are now far far less complaints about smets2 not working properly after changing suppliers. I had smets2 meters installed by E.ON in 2019, moved to EDF earlier this year and absolutely no issues at all.

What does a smart meter get me?

I'll hold my hands up and admit i've not read too much in to them, just that they're not immune to fault which made me think well what's the point then.

Aside from submitting my readings automatically, what will it get me? Because taking a meter reading is not a difficult task.

You’ll get the cheapest tariffs with the big 6 providers. That alone is a very good reason to get smart meters fitted, even if you’ve got no intention to use stuff like the IHD. 

Zellah

brewerdave said:

Zellah said:

brewerdave said:

Zellah said:

JustAnotherSaver said:

At some point within the last month or two when i was trying to wade through the mud that is Tonik Energy, some of you were talking about how you keep tabs of your energy consumption with the use of spreadsheets and others went on to say that they know to the penny what their bill should be as all the formulas are locked in place, they simply just enter their readings.

Would any of you care to share what your spreadsheet looks like, what formulas you use & where?

Not really a big Excel user so it'd be helpful to see what someone else is doing and how it works so that I don't find myself in a situation like I have with Tonik again. Maybe the thread will help others too to become more organised & sure about their billing?

Why not get smart meters fitted (ideally smets2) and let them do all the hard work for you?

Because all the snagging hasn't been done yet and even if they do work a lot of the cheaper suppliers still can't use them !!!

The 'big 6' offer very competitive smart meter only tariffs if going through uswitch or MSE CEC, i'm paying 2.05p kWh for gas with EDF with a daily standing charge of around 20p. Despite living in one of the more costly areas for energy (North Scotland).  

In my region ,EDF don't even appear on the 1st page of results - also ,I'm not aware that you can filter searches on either CEC or USwitch by "smart meter only" tariffs ??
Just used CA price comparison tool and nothing in my region ,comes near my current fixed gas tariff from Gulf .

Yeah I don’t think there is any way to display/filter smart meter only tariffs on uswitch or CEC, but the cheapest tariffs from the big 6 providers will almost certainly be smart meter only tariffs. Also tariffs change every month so worth checking regularly on uswitch or CEC the latest deals. 

[Deleted User]

I know that most of the tariffs from the big 6 (and many others) state 'By choosing this tariff you agree to a smart meter installation, where eligible'.  The implication here is that if you don't have a smart currently installed (I don't) then somehow the best deals are hidden.  My reading of the smart meter tariffs is that I would get the same unit rate as someone who already has a smart meter with the only difference being that I would need to book a smart meter fitting (sometime after taking up the tariff) i.e their cheap deals may state smart meter required or agree to get them fitted. But I am happy to be corrected if my understanding is incorrect.
 

victor2

Switched to EDF 18 months ago, with my dumb smart (SMETS1) meter and agreed to have them fit a smart meter at their convenience. Nothing so far, have switched to another "smart meter" tariff within EDF and am in no hurry for the smart meter, which will hopefully be SMETS2 by the time I do eventually get one.

Fortunately, my meters are in the garage and easy for me to read. When my smart meter was smart (2 suppliers before EDF), the IHD was handy for reading the meters, but the novelty of seeing how much energy you're using at any point in time soon wore off, especially as the gas usage is just an instantaneous figure updated only once every 30 minutes, so pretty useless. BG (who installed the meters) disabled the IHD when I left them, and used the actual smart meter reading for my final bill, rather than the adjusted figure that the "independent" body that reviews such readings decided it should be. That took some sorting out, but is another story...