Faulty electricity meter???

Jostevens11

Hi, hope you can offer some advice. I appear to be in a battle with my electricity company regarding a fast meter. In home display reading normal consumption but meter way too high. In a 6 hour period my meter recorded 600kwh. Small terraced house all appliances newish. Run the companies test, no energy coming through when all electric off. Also completed kettle test, meter showed increase of 7 kWh on two boils (both within 1 minute) I use a water boiler so only heats one cup at a time. It’s been over a month with no joy from energy company to resolve. They also advised me to get an electrician to do a test on the meter, no one will touch it. Is this possibly a faulty meter. Since 3/10/21 my meter is showing an increase of 16452kwh (yes your reading this right) and it’s stressing me out. In home display showing 174kwh for the same period. HELP.

Verdigris

Are you reading the meter correctly? Ignore decimal places. (the decimal point on some meters is nearly invisible)

Jostevens11

Yes, I have been reading meters for years ignoring the .?

Verdigris

For two boils of a kettle I'd expect a reading more like 700 Wh.

I worked as a meter reader for a number of years and there were some models of meter that could be set up with 0, 1 or 2 decimal places. The decimal place was often only 1 pixel and could easily be missed.

QrizB

Can you post a photo of the meter?

bagand96

There was a post recently where someone's smart meter had started showing a reading with a decimal point when it never had before. Suspected faulty software upgrade. Could it be this?

The IHD gets it's data from the meter, so if the IHD is correct then usually the meter will be? Are you sure a "." hasn't appeared in your display? Can be very hard to see as stated above. Or maybe the display is faulty?  What do the readings that the supplier are taking say? 

tim_p

Verdigris said:

For two boils of a kettle I'd expect a reading more like 700 Wh.

I worked as a meter reader for a number of years and there were some models of meter that could be set up with 0, 1 or 2 decimal places. The decimal place was often only 1 pixel and could easily be missed.

Don’t think the OP has an actual kettle, mentions a water boiler, so could explain the discrepancy. 

Jostevens11

Hi, the first photo is yesterday. The one below is at 3/10/21

Verdigris

The IHD figure sounds about right at roughly 8 units a day.

Those meters were normally set up for 5 digits plus decimal(s), IIRC. There appears to be 3 decimals on the second photo, or is that a speck of dirt? It certainly doesn't look right.

Try cycling the display to show RI (rate I) see if it agrees with the Total Import.

QrizB

Yes, it's the three decimal point problem again. There have been a couple other posters with the same issue.

The readings are 402.536 and 559.553, a consumption of 157.017kWh over 22 days or roughly 7.1kWh/day.

QrizB

The search fundtion on this forum is horrible but here are two similar threads:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6302428/massive-electric-usage

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6300482/electricity-smart-meter-upgrade

Both seem to have the same problem, with the smart meter resetting to zero and adding three decimal points to the display.