Gas meter must be wrong?

casualwalks

In light of the current energy crisis, I have been auditing my bills to look at usage, see where we can reduce, etc. What I've found is that my gas usage this year seems bizarrely low (around 4300  KWH) the previous 2 years usage was around 9000-9300 KWH per year for a very small 2 bedroom mid terrace house. We use our heating sparingly in the winter, and we had our house insulated with exterior cladding last summer, but I can't see how our usage more than halved. Our meter must be wrong. I've checked that we are being billed in the correct unit (meter is in imperial and the bill shows our usage is being recorded in imperial, so not being mistakenly billed in cubic meters, rather than cubic feet).

I will call the energy company tomorrow to report my concern. Will they be able to tell what our actual usage was? Or will there be no way to tell how much was missed from the meter reading? I have always given them 100% honest readings. I didn't notice that our usage was wrong because bills had gone up so much that discrepancies in each payment from previous years were hard to spot and to be honest, I didn't really know how much usage was "normal" until I started to do some research about bills and costs.

Does anyone have any experience of this?

 

TadleyBaggie

There is no other metering of your individual gas supply, your meter readings are all there are.

gazapc

When the house was clad did they provide any info on payback, increased efficiency calculations etc? Could perhaps tell you if 50% is plausible. 

It's a nice problem to have so I'd live with it. The chance of meters going wrong is very low.

Xbigman

Improved insulation and a mild winter could explain a 50% drop. Before you stir up a hornets nest by reporting a faulty meter I'd try a few test runs of the heating (in cooler weather obviously) to make sure its reading consistently. If it is then don't worry about it.


Darren

casualwalks

Thanks! Good shout about testing the boiler in cooler weather. Will do some testing before reporting. Very helpful advice, I just don't want to be hit with a huge retrospective bill when I (like everyone else) will be paying much higher bills from October onward.

MWT

Xbigman said:

Improved insulation and a mild winter could explain a 50% drop.

I agree, between those two the 50% drop is certainly possible, perhaps the better thing to do would be to compare summer use over the past couple of years and if that is fairly consistent then I would assume the meter is just fine....

ProDave

You add insulation to the house and are then surprised your heating bill goes down?

I would be outraged if it did not go down.  As others have said, don't do anything, just enjoy your now cheaper to heat house.

Zandoni

How old is the meter?

casualwalks

Zandoni said:

How old is the meter?

I'm guessing old, but not sure how old. Been in the house for 11 years and it was here before I arrived.

FreeBear

Been fitting new windows and insulating the loft & walls bit by bit over the last couple of years. My annual gas consumption last year was ~8200KWh. This year, I'm on track for 4500KWh - This was helped by the fact winter was very mild (along with a few other energy saving measures).

If your supplier decides to fit a smart meter for what ever reason, check your bills afterwards to make sure they are billing you in cubic metres. My old supplier swapped out an imperial meter for a new metric smart meter, but was still billing me in (100s)cubic feet.

casualwalks

FreeBear said:

Been fitting new windows and insulating the loft & walls bit by bit over the last couple of years. My annual gas consumption last year was ~8200KWh. This year, I'm on track for 4500KWh - This was helped by the fact winter was very mild (along with a few other energy saving measures).

That's helpful to know. We did quite a few repairs to the house over the past two years in addition to the insulation.  New roof, several windows and doors replaced. I've checked the previous years summers' readings and they are consistent with this summer, so looks like the insulation  was very successful! More than I thought it would be!