Crossed electricity Meter

tbads

[Deleted User] said:

Be wary of the term crossed meter. When a property is built it is normally allocated a plot number along with a MPAN for electricity and MPRN for gas. As meters are installed, they are linked to the MPAN/MPRN. It follows that the most likely scenario is that the plot number has been allocated to an incorrect postal address. This happened on my small development. My MPAN/MPRN were installed in plot 6 which became No 6 on the two databases. Plot 14 was registered as my address (ie, No 14) et seq.

What needs to happen is that the databases need to be changed to your address. Doing this will impact your neighbours. Whatever you do DO NOT delink the meter serial numbers from the MPAN/MPRNs. 

On a small development of 14 houses, it took SP nearly 6 months to sort out the problem.

Thank you for you reply, apologies it took me so long to come back to you, I’m new to the forum. I’ve done a fair amount of research and am pretty sure we have crossed metres.

I did a load test and the metre change by 1 unit despite having pretty much every appliance on in my house for 20 minutes. 

tbads

QrizB said:

If you have access to the meter you think is yours, you can take readings and compare them to the billed values - you may have done this already, if so what did you discover?

You can also do a couple of tests:

• First, look at the meter. There's likely to be a flashing red LED labelled "1000/kWh" or similar.
  
• Blackout test. Switch everything off that you possibly can, including the fridge/freezer. Look at the LED for a couple of minutes. It should hve stopped flashing.
• Load test. Switch your kettle, toaster or electric oven on. The LED should start flashing furiously (for a kettle, one flash every 1 or 2 seconds).

If the meter behaves as described, you're probably looking at the correct meter. If not, the meter you're looking at isn't yours.

Thank you for your reply, apologies it took me so long to come back to you I’m new to the forum. 

I live in a house and I did a load test at the request of EON my provider and despite having every appliance turned on for 20 minutes the metre didn’t move 1 unit. I also don’t have access to the metre which is our, although your MPAN is registered to. 4 bed, 4 reception room house down the road. As far as UK power networks are concerned our MPAN was cut off in 2014!

ToomanyPies

I'm confused.

Is the meter serial number on your bill the same as the one on your meter?

Do you have a smart meter or are you providing meter readings yourself? If you have been providing readings do they match up with the ones on your bills?

The load test is quite unrelated to the MPAN issue. There is no way that your consumption will be recorded on a meter up the road. On the other hand your load test should have been recorded on the meter in your property. Is your meter located within your property and not together with the one for next door?

Gerry1

tbads said:

QrizB said:

If you have access to the meter you think is yours, you can take readings and compare them to the billed values - you may have done this already, if so what did you discover?

You can also do a couple of tests:

• First, look at the meter. There's likely to be a flashing red LED labelled "1000/kWh" or similar.
  
• Blackout test. Switch everything off that you possibly can, including the fridge/freezer. Look at the LED for a couple of minutes. It should hve stopped flashing.
• Load test. Switch your kettle, toaster or electric oven on. The LED should start flashing furiously (for a kettle, one flash every 1 or 2 seconds).

If the meter behaves as described, you're probably looking at the correct meter. If not, the meter you're looking at isn't yours.

I live in a house and I did a load test at the request of EON my provider and despite having every appliance turned on for 20 minutes the metre didn’t move 1 unit.

That's not the way to do it.

If the meter only displays only whole kWhs (no decimal point) then it may well not move if you are not using a total of 3kW for the entire time.  Many appliances are less than 1kW; the only high users are likely to be heating devices (kettle, iron, tumble dryer etc) and their thermostats will probably soon cut out.

As @QrizB stated, watch the flashing light or the spinning disk, because that gives an instantaneous result.  You can also see an immediate effect if you then switch everything off.  At least that sanity test will largely rule out a faulty meter so you then have to deal only with the accounting aspects.

stewie_griffin

The first thing you need to do is establish which meters supply your home. This should be fairly straightforward since you live in a semi and not a flat. Are there meters located outside your front door or down the side of your house. If so it's highly likely these are the meters which supply your home. Do the serial numbers on these meters match the ones on your bills. If not take photos of your meters and send these to your supplier along with a complaint email. Don't worry about things like MPANs at the moment.

If the serial numbers do match then compare the current readings with the ones on your last bill. If they seem to follow on then the chances are that your bills are correct although you need to check things like was the correct reading used to open your account.

[Deleted User]

stewie_griffin said:

The first thing you need to do is establish which meters supply your home. This should be fairly straightforward since you live in a semi and not a flat. Are there meters located outside your front door or down the side of your house. If so it's highly likely these are the meters which supply your home. Do the serial numbers on these meters match the ones on your bills. If not take photos of your meters and send these to your supplier along with a complaint email. Don't worry about things like MPANs at the moment.

If the serial numbers do match then compare the current readings with the ones on your last bill. If they seem to follow on then the chances are that your bills are correct although you need to check things like was the correct reading used to open your account.

The correct way to deal with this is to pass photographs of the meter serial numbers to the supplier. They can determine the correct MPAN and MPRN for the property. Meters come ago but the MPAN and MPRN never change as they linked to the property when first built.  Get the supplier to change the property address on the MPAN and MPRN databases. The meter serial numbers will then remain linked to the correct MPAN and MPRN. The process will also alert the other supplier that there is a database issue.

For clarity, it is not the meters that are crossed: it is the incorrect address listing of the MPAN/MPRNs on the two databases. This happens as new properties are built. Plot 6 (No 14) is registered as No 6. 

Carrot007

[Deleted User] said:

The correct way to deal with this is to pass photographs of the meter serial numbers to the supplier. They can determine the correct MPAN and MPRN for the property. Meters come ago but the MPAN and MPRN never change as they linked to the property when first built.  Get the supplier to change the property address on the MPAN and MPRN databases. The meter serial numbers will then remain linked to the correct MPAN and MPRN. The process will also alert the other supplier that there is a database issue.

In theory. Of course the builder probably terminated the house MPAN etc along with the temporary supply and the may require goign through the new connection (without any of the actual work) process.

Happens more than you think! As once multiple suppliers come into play if it probably easier than movign mpans between suppliers and trying to sort it out that way There is nothing special about a particular mpan that links it to the building other than the address to it is only OCD trygin to match them up as the builder intended (they really did not care, they caused the mess by not caring!).