Smart Gas Meter & Octopus Energy Woes

Dickie2shoes

I've been with Octopus Energy on one of their dual-fuel 'smart meter' tariffs for just over a year now. Impressively, they installed smart gas and electricity meters within a month. Everything was pretty good (apart from the In-house Display continually losing connection with the gas meter) until December 2021 when no gas consumption was billed. 

I contacted Octopus who started by claiming I had not sent them gas readings! When I pointed out I had a Smart Meter which sent automatic readings (every 15 minites I'm led to believe) they then claimed they had been usding the wrong readings and promptly started issuing credits (I've had about 10 now amounting to £100+). Further probing brought an admission that the Smart Meter had had an over-the-air firmware update which had wiped its registers!!! Apparently, this will not be sorted until after April 2022.

Has anyone had anything similar?

According to Octopus's support webpages, my Smart Meter is a G4 Metrix GWi electronic gas meter and the correct meter reading on the meter itself is obtained by selecting 'Reading 02'. Another problem is that 'Reading 02' is NOT the reading shown on the IHD (when it's working). Instead, the IHD displays 'Reading 01' which, to be honest, appears a more accurate reading of the gas consumption I would expect )based on past years bills from Tonik Energy).

The situation I'm in now is that my Direct Debit Dual-fuel account is £500 in credit just at the time of year when one would expect it to be in debit. I'm worried Octopus will wait until after the price cap is lifted and then try to claw back their mistake at the incorrect rate.

Any suggestions on how to get this farcical situation sorted in the next couple of weeks would be gratefully received. I'm on the verge of raising a formal complaint as I no longer trust the accuracy of the smart gas meter.

LouP42

Omg I’m in exactly the same position with my electricity. I’m in £600 credit but not had a bill in 6 months even although I’ve asked on 3 separate occasions by email 😬
Also , I can’t believe this price increase. I currently pay £120 a month for both and they just told me that in April I will be paying £375 a month!!! How is that even legal? How are people going to be able to feed themselves? It’s disgraceful 

[Deleted User]

Smart meters do not send readings every 15 minutes. For those on a 30 minute profile, the supplier pulls data once every 24 hours.

Meter manufacturers are responsible for updating meter firmware and for testing it on the DCC Network. Once the firmware has been approved, suppliers will then push it out to meters. Firmware is usually updated once every 3 months.

I am struggling to understand why you are having problems reading your gas meter. I have the GWi SMETS2 meter and it shows only one reading in cubic metres as the UK doesn’t yet have time-of-use gas tariffs. This reading is the same reading as shown on the IHD. Is it possible there is confusion over volume and kWh. The latter should NOT be passed to any supplier as they will do the correct billing conversion.

https://www.gwi-ltd.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/ENG09040-G4-SEI-V2-User-Reference-Guide.pdf

Are you sure that your meter isn’t working? Are you seeing data in My Account? Download the free App BRIGHT and see if your data and costs are showing in the various graphs:

Dickie2shoes

Dolor, it sounds from the tone of your post as if you may be in the Industry or connected to it. I'm a retired Chartered Engineer who worked with Schlumberger on a very early electronic meter so I know a little about the science and engineering behind these things too. I certainly know the difference between kWh and m3 (metres cubed) although age has evidently dulled my typing skills as I may have caused confusion in my original post. Apologies.

 I now realise that I typed "Reading 01 " in my original post when I should have typed "Reading 10". As you will know from the link you posted above, Line 10 in the manual scroll sequence is Consumption and that displays on the meter's LCD with units m3 (metres cubed) and it is that same reading which shows on my IHD. Line 02 (which your linked document shows as one of three identified as TOU etc) is also a consumption reading in m3 which is the same reading Octopus are now showing on my monthly bills and which is identified on their support page at //octopus.energy/blog/how-to-read-your-meter/.

My comment re 15-minute meter readings was simply based on Octopus's own description of one of their tariffs when I joined. I was skeptical too which is why I used the words "...I'm led to believe". Interestingly, that particular tariff appears no longer to be offered.

The installation manual in your link is interesting. I had found that too but, in my case, the meter has more than the 34 manual scroll line items although registers 01 to 34 do seem to agree with the list in yours (version date 4 May 2020).

I can find no evidence that the meter is NOT working but, as Octopus are claiming the latest firmware upgrade wiped all the readings (perhaps they meant THEIR readings!), I have lost confidence in its accuracy. If a major bug has got through the approval process then who knows what might have been affected. I would hope that there is a non-volatile register somewhere in the meter but stranger things have happened in this digital age.

Thanks for recommending Bright. I'll give it try.

Unfortunately my problems are exacerbated by Octopus's support staff who simply do not understand the science behind what they are telling customers which has led to some idiotic replies!

harrim99

I think I have had a similar issue with my GWI G4 smart gas meter.  Since December the automated feed to Octopus has started going wrong.  By manually recording my meter reading on their system I can see that the overnight feed from meter to October is actually dropping the leading 4th (thousands) digit in the reading.  So my meter and IHD correctly shows 1831 and I can manual record a reading on 1831 on the octopus system, but the following day the octopus system as been fed by my meter and shows 831 not 1831.  

This resulted in a massive credit in Feb when reading appeared to go from 900 (Dec) to 300 (actually 1300) in Feb.  So Octopus saw this as a correction/adjustment from 900 to 300 and gave me a credit for 600 m3.

I am still working with Octopus to get this fixed and am manually recording the readings each month.

So if Octopus says that a GWI G4 meter had an isolated reset to zero in December, this wa snot the case for me - I am seeing daily issues with the meter underreporting my usage.

Mark.

IHD reading of 1810 - 25 May
Account reading of 823 - 1 June

monolith55

I recently received a £858 gas bill out of the blue in the middle of summer, equalling more than my entire year's gas bills so far. 

The reason was stated as a GWi smart meter firmware error that apparently affected many more customers with the same meter brand. No apology from Octopus until I filed a complaint. 

It is unbelievable that Ofgem and Octopus find it acceptable to land customers with an £800 bill for gas they believed to have paid for in full in the middle of a cost of living crisis. I wonder if there is a huge scandal brewing if this faulty smart meters have resulted in significant billing errors for a large amount of customers also for other energy providers. 

[Deleted User]

monolith55 said:

I recently received a £858 gas bill out of the blue in the middle of summer, equalling more than my entire year's gas bills so far. 

The reason was stated as a GWi smart meter firmware error that apparently affected many more customers with the same meter brand. No apology from Octopus until I filed a complaint. 

It is unbelievable that Ofgem and Octopus find it acceptable to land customers with an £800 bill for gas they believed to have paid for in full in the middle of a cost of living crisis. I wonder if there is a huge scandal brewing if this faulty smart meters have resulted in significant billing errors for a large amount of customers also for other energy providers. 

What has it got to with Ofgem? Meters do go wrong and this is why there is a long-established testing procedure (which goes back decades before smart meters were even thought about). The £800 charge was enough to alert to you to the fact that there is an issue, and based on my 4 years with Octopus they will ensure that you are not left out of pocket. 

Suppliers are not responsible for firmware updates. Meter manufacturers design; build and certify their own meters on the DCC Network. They are also responsible for building; testing and certifying meter firmware updates.

[Deleted User]

@harrim99

There is no automated feed as such. Once a day, Octopus initiates a meter data pull. The meter responds with index readings and 30 minute usage data in a XML file. To achieve this data pull, all suppliers have to use secure Adapter software. Octopus chooses to outsource this function to a third-party, TMA/CGI. The Adapter is the link between Kraken (Octopus’ billing platform) and your meter.

Meter firmware updates are a manufacturer’s responsibility. In the case of a meter firmware update with some Kaifa meters last year, the issue took 7 months to resolve. Fortunately, each meter holds 13 month’s worth of import data.

From a supplier’s point of view, it has no levers to pull and many of these issues only impact a percentage of the meters installed. I have a GWi4 gas meter and looking at my latest statement, there are no issues. My gas meter is on firmware oC1AFooCo.

For those of us on time-of-use tariffs, data loss is a frequent issue. The loss of just one of the 48 daily data segments will result in an a failure of automatic billing. The supplier can initiate a manual data pull to attempt to recover this data.

monolith55

Yes the £800 charge in July was obviously enough to alert me - it doubled my gas bills for the year overnight as mentioned above.  

GWi gas meters issues have been raised as a high priority defect with the DCC who were testing throughout May 2022 and recently implemented a fix. As a monopoly company DCC operates under the Smart Meter Communications Licence and is responsible for linking smart meters in homes and small businesses with energy suppliers, network operators and energy service companies. The DDC is regulated by Ofgem who are aware of the issues. 

But I am not GWi's or DCC's customer. I haven't chosen their products or services at any point. I have a contract with a Octopus. It would have been nice to have my energy company proactively spot discrepancies, alert me, and try to resolve issues, rather than to drop me with an automated £800 bill out of the blue, without an explanation, and for me to get in touch with them and not receive an apology until I file a complaint. It's not a great look in the middle of a cost of living crisis where energy companies are making record profits and Ofgem is already under a lot of pressure. 

Alnat1

Did you not notice that you weren't being billed for gas during that period the bill covers? Or if only small amounts were billed, did you not consider that you were using more gas than that?

monolith55

Alnat1 said:

Did you not notice that you weren't being billed for gas during that period the bill covers? Or if only small amounts were billed, did you not consider that you were using more gas than that?

No, I assumed that the increased DD requested by Octopus would cover my charges and in combination with increased gas and electricity prices was under the illusion that I was being billed correctly as my account was never much in credit. I did not critically evaluate each individual bill to try to second-guess my smart meter readings on the IHD. The idea of smart meters with IHDs and apps is to make life easier and allow better access to energy data, not to provide misinformation and confusion.