Octopus Tracker

Telegraph_Sam

"Reasonable checks would involve having knowledge of your usage .." which is where my meter readings come in. I have to have something basic to go on, and to believe, and to check, and as you say faith comes into it somewhere. Two sides of the same coin perhaps, it's just a matter of the easiest way to measure what it says without a lot of homework.

Qyburn

masonic said:

Agile bills definitely do not relate to the meter readings, only consumption data. But index readings are generated from the same consumption data. 

Not sure the second sentence is correct. When we've had missing data due to power cuts, the total consumption as given by index readings was greater than the total of available half hourly consumption figures. 

In addition I've had occasional bills where the total of daily figures comes out 0.1 or so higher than would suggested by index readings.

masonic

Qyburn said:

masonic said:

Agile bills definitely do not relate to the meter readings, only consumption data. But index readings are generated from the same consumption data. 

Not sure the second sentence is correct. When we've had missing data due to power cuts, the total consumption as given by index readings was greater than the total of available half hourly consumption figures. 

In addition I've had occasional bills where the total of daily figures comes out 0.1 or so higher than would suggested by index readings.

I don't think either of those examples is evidence that the meter is independently tracking the energy consumption that is used for the respective half hourly and index registers. When there is a power cut, my understanding is that partial half-hour registers may be voided, whereas that cannot be done for the index reading as all unbilled usage up to the cut would be discarded. I haven't experienced a power cut since my smart meter was installed 3 years ago, so don't have direct experience of this. The second example is probably due to rounding. For billing, smart readings are rounded to 1dp, manual readings are rounded to a whole number, whereas consumption is to 3dp (taking the floor in each case I believe, not rounding up). So one would expect a discrepancy of up to 0.1 for bills generated based only on smart readings, or up to 1 kWh for bills generated based on only manual readings. Also, on bills you will find the daily consumption figures do not exactly match the daily consumption figure reported by the meter, because these are scaled according to the index readings provided (which are rounded, and one or both may be manual). The situation is different on tariffs such as Agile and Go, where index readings are not used.

Different meters may have different measurement hardware, but I think it very unlikely that there would be two independent metrology subsystems within the meter taking different measurements of voltage and current flowing through the meter. So the underlying consumption data would be calculated once and then the result used to increment the respective HH and index registers.

Telegraph_Sam

So does that mean that the meter is redundant, at least for Agile users??? 
The meter readings would seem to be the first port of call if one has reason to query consumption data in general and following power cuts in particular.

masonic

Telegraph_Sam said:

So does that mean that the meter is redundant, at least for Agile users??? 
The meter readings would seem to be the first port of call if one has reason to query consumption data in general and following power cuts in particular.

No, the meter isn't redundant as it is responsible for generating the half hourly readings. In the event of a failure in that system or the communications, all smart tariff contracts have a clause enabling Octopus to revert to billing using index readings on the Flexible Octopus tariff. Monthly smart readings are taken even when on Agile, even though they are not used and just provide this failsafe. They are accessible through the app (no longer the website).

Telegraph_Sam

It's not clear to me if in the normal course of events meter readings can be used as a cross check (or first line of defence) on consumption. If not then it does indeed look like taking what is charged as act of faith as you said.

Bendo

I'm pretty sure Octopus will sum the half hourly indexes to ensure they match the index reads for each given day. It's an obvious basic step and what I'd do if I was implementing it.

Either way, you are overthinking it far too much. The occasional look at Octopus compare ot Octopus watch will show you where you are and if things are working as intended.

Qyburn

Bendo said:

I'm pretty sure Octopus will sum the half hourly indexes to ensure they match the index reads for each given day. It's an obvious basic step and what I'd do if I was implementing it.

If they do this for Tracker billing they wouldn't have to average the whole month if the totals didn't match up. In fact if they had daily index readings then that's all they need, no need to look at the H/H consumption figures at all. 

masonic

Qyburn said:

Bendo said:

I'm pretty sure Octopus will sum the half hourly indexes to ensure they match the index reads for each given day. It's an obvious basic step and what I'd do if I was implementing it.

If they do this for Tracker billing they wouldn't have to average the whole month if the totals didn't match up. In fact if they had daily index readings then that's all they need, no need to look at the H/H consumption figures at all. 

They only take a smart reading once per month. They don't have access to daily index readings unless you supply them manually. For tracker billing, they use the difference between the final index reading from the last bill to each index reading in the current bill to calculate consumption, then the half hour readings are scaled to this and used for the breakdown (if available). So if you give a manual index read part way through the day, the whole billing period is scaled to accommodate this. The number of kWh you are billed is always based on index readings for Tracker (unless you've come from a tariff like Agile and they've forgotten to adjust this, as was the case for a while with me).

Doc_N

What am I missing here? My Tracker billing shows, for each day, actual consumption from the smart meter and the cost per kWh as a multiplier. Seems very simple.