Octopus Tracker

[Deleted User]

My impression from this and other threads I've perused, is that with gas, if there is even a single missing 30 minute slot in your gas usage for the month, your usage is spread over the entire month using the industry formula.

Where is this misinformation coming from? Here is my latest gas breakdown on Tracker. Octo-Aid shows 3 days when some data was missing. The meter still returns the midnight gas meter reading even if the daily XML file is incomplete.

Where is the monthly averaging that people are talking about?

masonic

Dolor said:

masonic said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Am I being really dense?  I'm really not understanding why a power cut should affect billing later in the month.  If they can't retrieve a particular day's data can't they try again? 
Or does it bork something in the half-hourly data for the period of the power cut instead of just coming back with 0 for the time you had no power?

If the meter itself is powered off, or in the process of powering up, it simply won't have the data, so this type of missing data cannot be manually retrieved.

Presumably a sudden loss of power would result in some HH consumption not being captured either side of the power loss, as well as any full HH periods of zero usage during the outage. That's why I was surprised to learn electricity meters aren't fitted with a battery backup.

Smart meters store 13 months’ worth of index readings and 30 minute usage data. This data isn’t lost during a power cut. If, say, a power cut occurred at 5am the meter would have the midnight index readings in store. If power came back 3 days later the meter would respond the following day with the index reading for midnight. Clearly, the meter will not be recording usage during the time that there is no Grid power. I really do not see what the issue is.

Suppose there was a powercut at 05:07:40 and the power came back on at 07:26:13. How much of the data between 05:00:00 and 05:07:40 would the meter have (i.e. how frequently does the meter write consumption data to non-volatile storage)? How much of the data between 07:26:13 and 07:30:00 (i.e. how long does it take for a freshly powered on meter to begin recording consumption)?

[Deleted User]

masonic said:

[Deleted User] said:

masonic said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Am I being really dense?  I'm really not understanding why a power cut should affect billing later in the month.  If they can't retrieve a particular day's data can't they try again? 
Or does it bork something in the half-hourly data for the period of the power cut instead of just coming back with 0 for the time you had no power?

If the meter itself is powered off, or in the process of powering up, it simply won't have the data, so this type of missing data cannot be manually retrieved.

Presumably a sudden loss of power would result in some HH consumption not being captured either side of the power loss, as well as any full HH periods of zero usage during the outage. That's why I was surprised to learn electricity meters aren't fitted with a battery backup.

Smart meters store 13 months’ worth of index readings and 30 minute usage data. This data isn’t lost during a power cut. If, say, a power cut occurred at 5am the meter would have the midnight index readings in store. If power came back 3 days later the meter would respond the following day with the index reading for midnight. Clearly, the meter will not be recording usage during the time that there is no Grid power. I really do not see what the issue is.

Suppose there was a powercut at 05:07:40 and the power came back on at 07:26:13. How much of the HH data between 05:00:00 and 05:07:40 would the meter have? How much of the data between 07:26:13 and 07:30:00?

And your point is? Data is stored in 48 daily blocks. I confess that I have absolutely no idea whether the blocks from 0500 through until 0730 would return some data or no data. It should not impact Tracker billing. Agile is a different issue. What it will do is stop automatic Kraken monthly billing.

vic_sf49

[Deleted User] said:

My impression from this and other threads I've perused, is that with gas, if there is even a single missing 30 minute slot in your gas usage for the month, your usage is spread over the entire month using the industry formula.

Where is this misinformation coming from? Here is my latest gas breakdown on Tracker. Octo-Aid shows 3 days when some data was missing. The meter still returns the midnight gas meter reading even if the daily XML file is incomplete.

Where is the monthly averaging that people are talking about?

I'd call it a slow increase, rather than averaging. 

2nd column from the right, increases slightly each day. 

masonic

Dolor said:

masonic said:

Dolor said:

masonic said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Am I being really dense?  I'm really not understanding why a power cut should affect billing later in the month.  If they can't retrieve a particular day's data can't they try again? 
Or does it bork something in the half-hourly data for the period of the power cut instead of just coming back with 0 for the time you had no power?

If the meter itself is powered off, or in the process of powering up, it simply won't have the data, so this type of missing data cannot be manually retrieved.

Presumably a sudden loss of power would result in some HH consumption not being captured either side of the power loss, as well as any full HH periods of zero usage during the outage. That's why I was surprised to learn electricity meters aren't fitted with a battery backup.

Smart meters store 13 months’ worth of index readings and 30 minute usage data. This data isn’t lost during a power cut. If, say, a power cut occurred at 5am the meter would have the midnight index readings in store. If power came back 3 days later the meter would respond the following day with the index reading for midnight. Clearly, the meter will not be recording usage during the time that there is no Grid power. I really do not see what the issue is.

Suppose there was a powercut at 05:07:40 and the power came back on at 07:26:13. How much of the HH data between 05:00:00 and 05:07:40 would the meter have? How much of the data between 07:26:13 and 07:30:00?

And your point is? Data is stored in 48 daily blocks. I confess that I have absolutely no idea whether the blocks from 0500 through until 0730 would return some data or no data. It should not impact Tracker billing. Agile is a different issue. What it will do is stop automatic Kraken monthly billing.

I was responding to someone asking about half-hourly data loss and my point is that the data for the affected HH periods would be irrecoverable, and while the middle periods could just be treated as zero usage, there may have been usage in the two HH periods straddling the power cut that would not be accounted for. As such, it may be reasonable to take the approach that the period could not be billed using HH data.

[Deleted User]

vic_sf49 said:

Dolor said:

My impression from this and other threads I've perused, is that with gas, if there is even a single missing 30 minute slot in your gas usage for the month, your usage is spread over the entire month using the industry formula.

Where is this misinformation coming from? Here is my latest gas breakdown on Tracker. Octo-Aid shows 3 days when some data was missing. The meter still returns the midnight gas meter reading even if the daily XML file is incomplete.

Where is the monthly averaging that people are talking about?

I'd call it a slow increase, rather than averaging. 

2nd column from the right, increases slightly each day. 

I would put that down to the simple fact that the water entering my hot water cylinder is getting progressively colder as we approach Winter. Colder water requires more heat to reach the set temperature. 

I should add that on the 3 days when there was missing usage data a single day had a 1 hr gap, and the other two days lost just 30 minutes. 

QrizB

[Deleted User] said:

I would put that down to the simple fact that the water entering my hot water cylinder is getting progressively colder as we approach Winter. Colder water requires more heat to reach the set temperature. 

You.should check that billed daily usage against the daily smart metered consumption data on your Octopus account, or on Bright.

I would be surprised if it matches.

Spoonie_Turtle

Dolor said:

vic_sf49 said:

Dolor said:

My impression from this and other threads I've perused, is that with gas, if there is even a single missing 30 minute slot in your gas usage for the month, your usage is spread over the entire month using the industry formula.

Where is this misinformation coming from? Here is my latest gas breakdown on Tracker. Octo-Aid shows 3 days when some data was missing. The meter still returns the midnight gas meter reading even if the daily XML file is incomplete.

Where is the monthly averaging that people are talking about?

I'd call it a slow increase, rather than averaging. 

2nd column from the right, increases slightly each day. 

I would put that down to the simple fact that the water entering my hot water cylinder is getting progressively colder as we approach Winter. Colder water requires more heat to reach the set temperature. 

The only question needed to settle this: does the kWh data on your bill match your actual usage data?
Edit: oops, cross-posted.

[Deleted User]

QrizB said:

[Deleted User] said:

I would put that down to the simple fact that the water entering my hot water cylinder is getting progressively colder as we approach Winter. Colder water requires more heat to reach the set temperature. 

You.should check that billed daily usage against the daily smart metered consumption data on your Octopus account, or on Bright.

I would be surprised if it matches.

Spot check of Bright against the above show almost the same kWh figures. Clearly, they will rarely match because of fixed versus actual CVs.

Pat38493

[Deleted User] said:

masonic said:

[Deleted User] said:

masonic said:

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Am I being really dense?  I'm really not understanding why a power cut should affect billing later in the month.  If they can't retrieve a particular day's data can't they try again? 
Or does it bork something in the half-hourly data for the period of the power cut instead of just coming back with 0 for the time you had no power?

If the meter itself is powered off, or in the process of powering up, it simply won't have the data, so this type of missing data cannot be manually retrieved.

Presumably a sudden loss of power would result in some HH consumption not being captured either side of the power loss, as well as any full HH periods of zero usage during the outage. That's why I was surprised to learn electricity meters aren't fitted with a battery backup.

Smart meters store 13 months’ worth of index readings and 30 minute usage data. This data isn’t lost during a power cut. If, say, a power cut occurred at 5am the meter would have the midnight index readings in store. If power came back 3 days later the meter would respond the following day with the index reading for midnight. Clearly, the meter will not be recording usage during the time that there is no Grid power. I really do not see what the issue is.

Suppose there was a powercut at 05:07:40 and the power came back on at 07:26:13. How much of the HH data between 05:00:00 and 05:07:40 would the meter have? How much of the data between 07:26:13 and 07:30:00?

And your point is? Data is stored in 48 daily blocks. I confess that I have absolutely no idea whether the blocks from 0500 through until 0730 would return some data or no data. It should not impact Tracker billing. Agile is a different issue. What it will do is stop automatic Kraken monthly billing.

But Dolor we have seen screenshots posted here in the past where it was clear that for some people, their tracker was billed using that exact same data that their smart meter XML was sending, and for others, the usage was spread across the month using the "industry formula" as if they didn't have a smart meter.

It's also written in the tracker T&C that if any data is missing they will bill you using an "industry formula".

Even when they do this, you still get a page of info showing the amount allocated to each day - it just doesn't match with the actual smart meter readings available - it tends to change smoothly over the month according to whether it should be getter colder or warmer.

I have seen this last month on my gas bill where there was a week I had been away and used zero gas, but Tracker spread my usage of the month across that week even though I have a smart meter.  (presumably because I have slots missing in the data download for my gas meter).