Smart meters not so smart! Or is it me who is not smart?

knightstyle

So we moved in 9 weeks ago and I looked up how to get a meter reading from the meters. Simple it seems, looking on line, just press 9 on the keyboard.
Ever since i have been asking Octopus why the electric reading on the meter is different from readings on my bills.
After much to-ing and fro-ing it seems I must press 6 on the electric and 9 on the gas meter!  Even though we are not on economy7 the not so smart meter thinks we are!
Why don't they come with simple instructions?

[Deleted User]

If you ‘Google’ meter identification (eg, L and G E470) with user manual, you will undoubtedly find the information that you need. I have a Kaifa M120 elelectricity meter and I wanted to check my Grid voltage: a simple search told me what to do to get the information that I was seeking.

https://octopus.energy/blog/how-to-read-your-meter/

MeterMan

So you want to bad mouth a smart meter because you manually read it incorrectly?

knightstyle

There have been many stories about people with and without smart meters not checking meter readings so I have for a long time checked actual meter readings against my bill readings.
The instructions online said to press 9 to get the Kwh and that is what I was doing.
The instructions are not clear by the way...
Press 6 - Displays tariff name, standing charge per day, active rate register(s) along with the consumption and cost per unit recorded in each rate register.
Press 9 - Displays total import and export register values.
So I took that to mean press 9 to get reading, same as the almost identical gas meter.

[Deleted User]

knightstyle said:

There have been many stories about people with and without smart meters not checking meter readings so I have for a long time checked actual meter readings against my bill readings.
The instructions online said to press 9 to get the Kwh and that is what I was doing.
The instructions are not clear by the way...
Press 6 - Displays tariff name, standing charge per day, active rate register(s) along with the consumption and cost per unit recorded in each rate register.
Press 9 - Displays total import and export register values.
So I took that to mean press 9 to get reading, same as the almost identical gas meter.

I have no idea what make of smart meters or IHD you have but my actual meter readings (with the exception of export) can be seen on the IHD. My Kaifa electricity meter doesn't require any button passes as the display just cycles through the import and export readings. My GWi G4 gas meter is not button dependent. A press of any button just illuminates the display which shows the meter reading.

Things though can get complicated. In the future, all suppliers will have to use 30 minute usage data for billing (as Octopus presently does for its Agile and Go tariffs). This is required for industry payment settlement as the wholesale price of gas and electricity varies throughout the day. When I switched to Octopus nearly 3 years ago, their Go tariff was similar to an E7 tariff with R1 (peak) and R2 (offpeak) readings. When they switched to bills based on 30 minute consumption, they switched to all usage being added to a single register: the R1. The total index and R2 readings disappeared from the meter but the IHD continued to show the index total (R1 PLUS R2). For a while, Octopus didn't bother putting index readings on their Go and Agile accounts. In truth, this doesn't matter as there are numerous 3rd party ways of checking an Octopus smart meter bill which does not require meter readings.

Ectophile

MeterMan said:

So you want to bad mouth a smart meter because you manually read it incorrectly?

Because somebody came up with a stupid lazy design where you have to press a random numbered button on a keypad, which bears no connection with what you want to do.

Chino

[Deleted User] said:

I have a Kaifa M120 elelectricity meter and I wanted to check my Grid voltage: a simple search told me what to do to get the information that I was seeking.

The very fact that people need to go online to figure out how to read their meter because the instructions are too complicated to print on the meter - coupled with the fact that instructions are even needed - demonstrates yet again that that this whole smart meter charade is the product of idiots and simpletons.

knightstyle

As above, instructions are too complicated for us mere mortals. this is from page 6 of many pages about the meter.

Not clear to me that 6 gives the reading!

1 - Displays cost of consumption and units used on the current day and previous day
2 - Displays cost of consumption in the current week and previous week
3 - Displays cost of consumption in the current month and previous month
4 - Displays historical data comprising monthly units consumed and cost of consumption
5 - Displays ‘Not Used’
6 - Displays tariff name, standing charge per day, active rate register(s) along with the consumption and cost per unit recorded in each rate register
7 - Displays ‘Not Used’
8 - Displays ‘Not Used’
9 - Displays total import and export register values (will provide a total reading after IMP KWH)
0 - Performs display check and then displays date, time, load and CO2 data of the current hour and current day, yesterday, last week and last month (will show 'COMMISSION' instead if meter needs to be comissioned)

A - Used for prepayment customers - Switches the display to UTRN(vend) entry mode; serves as backspace key during UTRN(vend) entry; enables Emergency Credit when made available; initiates supply reconnection from ‘READY' state. (Activates vend mode/Used to start reconnection process.)
B - Activates auto scroll display from sleep mode; used to scroll back through a display sequence; initiates UTRN(vend) authentication process; mutes alarm; used to confirm supply reconnection from ‘READY’ state.

Verdigris

knightstyle said:

So we moved in 9 weeks ago and I looked up how to get a meter reading from the meters. Simple it seems, looking on line, just press 9 on the keyboard.
Ever since i have been asking Octopus why the electric reading on the meter is different from readings on my bills.
After much to-ing and fro-ing it seems I must press 6 on the electric and 9 on the gas meter!  Even though we are not on economy7 the not so smart meter thinks we are!
Why don't they come with simple instructions?

Hello knightstyle. You are not unsmart. The Liberty Secure series of smart meters are the bete noir of meter readers. I'm the vast majority of cases pressing 9 on either the gas or electric meter will bring you the correct reading, albeit for about 5 milliseconds, so if you're not ready you have to wait for it to go through the whole display cycle and try again. The gas reading (5 digits) comes after the display shows "Vol m3". The fun comes with electric meter. As I said above, if it is single rate the (7 digit) reading appears after you press 9 and "Imp kWh" is displayed. So far so good. For multi-rate meters, which could be a simple Economy 7 type set-up, or a TOU (time of use) tariff like Agile, you usually press 6 and then the nightmare begins! The first problem is the very short time the readings are displayed (and being 7 digits makes that worse) and the second is that different suppliers program the meters in different ways, so you never know what prefix message comes before which reading.

It sounds as if Octopus are receiving readings OK, so my advice is to have their readings written down whilst you study the display cycle. Eventually you should be able to identify which figure is which. Another little tip is to count the noughts and then read the figures. Because the display cycles so fast, and the readings are 7 digits plus, usually 2 decimals, if you see say 3 zeros at the beginning you know you have to note the next 4 digits, and so on.

I used to read meters for a living and it was rare to be able to read a multi-rate Secure meter first time. At least you have the advantage that once you've got the hang of it you know what you're looking for. For a professional meter reader you never knew what was going to come up, because we read for many suppliers with differently programmed meters, so you nearly always had to do a dry run first.

Good luck!

[Deleted User]

An excellent post; however, just to clarify that the Agile and Go tariffs only record a single index reading even though they are time-of-use tariffs. For Agile, the tariff set in the meter is an equivalent/average tariff. Billing for both Agile and Go is carried out using half hour usage data not meter index readings. 

Verdigris

[Deleted User] said:

An excellent post; however, just to clarify that the Agile and Go tariffs only record a single index reading even though they are time-of-use tariffs. For Agile, the tariff set in the meter is an equivalent/average tariff. Billing for both Agile and Go is carried out using half hour usage data not meter index readings. 

Thanks for the clarification on TOU, Dolor. To be honest I was guessing as I didn't get may Octopus jobs in the area I worked in so the chance of getting a meter with a TOU tariff was vanishingly small.