Smart meter pricing on non peak tariff

Pat38493

Hello - I recently changed my tariff to an EV tariff for charging an EV overnight.

All is fine except that I noticed on a couple of occasions, my (British Gas) smart meter box has "charged" me the full day time price for the overnight electricity used. 

Does this mean I will be charged wrongly on my bill or is it a glitch on the box probably?  Do I need to start writing down the KWH every morning to challenge it if needed?

Unhelpfully the pricing of the energy usage on the British Gas phone app and website is also wrong but in this case it's too low - seems to be still using pre-October prices.  I have already reported this to British Gas and they said it's a known issue.

I am a bit puzzled about how I can have confidence that British Gas are billing me correctly because I doubt they are going to provide me with a breakdown of all my daily non peak usage that I can check.

[Deleted User]

Smart meters have 4 registers. You need to check that your usage is being recorded on 2 registers. You will have to do this via the meter sub-menus. The index reading on the IHD is the sum of the 4 registers.

If you install the App BRIGHT it should show the tariffs that have been sent to your meter along with 30 minute usage ( if your meter is set up for this profile). You can then use this information to challenge any incorrect bills.

Keep_pedalling

How have you recently switched to a BG EV tariff they don’t seem to be offering them at the moment?

I have no idea how BG record your off peak rate but Octopus don’t use separate registers they use the data from the half hour meter readings and every bill has your usage for each half hourly slot during that month, so you can be pretty confident that you are being billed correctly. The in-house displays are not capable of showing the dual tariffs so you only see the peak rate (at least that is all my old SP SMETS 1 shows).

If you are not happy with the BG offering look at switching to Octopus.

Pat38493

Dolor said:

Smart meters have 4 registers. You need to check that your usage is being recorded on 2 registers. You will have to do this via the meter sub-menus. The index reading on the IHD is the sum of the 4 registers.

If you install the App BRIGHT it should show the tariffs that have been sent to your meter along with 30 minute usage ( if your meter is set up for this profile). You can then use this information to challenge any incorrect bills.

Thanks but looking at the Bright App, it says it only works with SMETS2 meters - mine is not.  

I have been all through the menus and I don't see anything that shows 4 registers but there are meter readings that are timed in the last 5 minutes (it only seems to show the most recent one).  There is also "paired" showing against the meter and the live usage is showing correctly.

The graphs that show daily usage by 2 hour intervals looks correct to me when I look at the KWh - it's just the price that's wrong.

On previous days it definitely used the lower price for the overnight usage as I recorded it on a spreadsheet and I would have noticed if it was not working as expected - seems odd that it would suddenly not do that just on one day.

Pat38493

Keep_pedalling said:

How have you recently switched to a BG EV tariff they don’t seem to be offering them at the moment?

I have no idea how BG record your off peak rate but Octopus don’t use separate registers they use the data from the half hour meter readings and every bill has your usage for each half hourly slot during that month, so you can be pretty confident that you are being billed correctly. The in-house displays are not capable of showing the dual tariffs so you only see the peak rate (at least that is all my old SP SMETS 1 shows).

If you are not happy with the BG offering look at switching to Octopus.

They started offering it to me a couple of weeks ago - it's a variable EV tariff with no tie in - I went to the "change tariff" screen on their web site and there is a box you can press that says "I have an EV".  I was then offered a choice of my existing tariff or an EV tariff with 12p off peak 43.12 peak and 48.688SC.  

I contacted BG to confirm with them that there is no tie in here and I can switch back and forth from this to the 35p tariff if I want to.

Obviously I have not had a bill since I switched tariff so I don't know whether BG provide any detailed breakdown.

I am thinking of switching to Octopus in future but at the moment the rates seems the same as they are capped - also I have to trust Octopus that they will fit a meter that works for them (they already confirmed to me that my current meter won't work with Octopus).  

The comments that the Octopus IHD only shows one price are a bit surprising as this is the whole point of Octopus isn't it?  Anyway I will sort that later next year.

Keep_pedalling

Pat38493 said:

Keep_pedalling said:

How have you recently switched to a BG EV tariff they don’t seem to be offering them at the moment?

I have no idea how BG record your off peak rate but Octopus don’t use separate registers they use the data from the half hour meter readings and every bill has your usage for each half hourly slot during that month, so you can be pretty confident that you are being billed correctly. The in-house displays are not capable of showing the dual tariffs so you only see the peak rate (at least that is all my old SP SMETS 1 shows).

If you are not happy with the BG offering look at switching to Octopus.

They started offering it to me a couple of weeks ago - it's a variable EV tariff with no tie in - I went to the "change tariff" screen on their web site and there is a box you can press that says "I have an EV".  I was then offered a choice of my existing tariff or an EV tariff with 12p off peak 43.12 peak and 48.688SC.  

Sounds like an offer for existing customers only then.

I contacted BG to confirm with them that there is no tie in here and I can switch back and forth from this to the 35p tariff if I want to.

Obviously I have not had a bill since I switched tariff so I don't know whether BG provide any detailed breakdown.

Do BG provide access to your usage on their website? With Octopus I can view my usage on line. Not in real time but I can see all the previous day’s usage.

I am thinking of switching to Octopus in future but at the moment the rates seems the same as they are capped - also I have to trust Octopus that they will fit a meter that works for them (they already confirmed to me that my current meter won't work with Octopus).  

The comments that the Octopus IHD only shows one price are a bit surprising as this is the whole point of Octopus isn't it?  Anyway I will sort that later next year.

My IHD was originally supplied by Scottish Power several years prior to switching to Octopus, but frankly what I can view on line and via my bills is much more useful than anything I can get via the IHD.

Pat38493

Keep_pedalling said:

Pat38493 said:

Keep_pedalling said:

How have you recently switched to a BG EV tariff they don’t seem to be offering them at the moment?

I have no idea how BG record your off peak rate but Octopus don’t use separate registers they use the data from the half hour meter readings and every bill has your usage for each half hourly slot during that month, so you can be pretty confident that you are being billed correctly. The in-house displays are not capable of showing the dual tariffs so you only see the peak rate (at least that is all my old SP SMETS 1 shows).

If you are not happy with the BG offering look at switching to Octopus.

They started offering it to me a couple of weeks ago - it's a variable EV tariff with no tie in - I went to the "change tariff" screen on their web site and there is a box you can press that says "I have an EV".  I was then offered a choice of my existing tariff or an EV tariff with 12p off peak 43.12 peak and 48.688SC.  

Sounds like an offer for existing customers only then.

I contacted BG to confirm with them that there is no tie in here and I can switch back and forth from this to the 35p tariff if I want to.

Obviously I have not had a bill since I switched tariff so I don't know whether BG provide any detailed breakdown.

Do BG provide access to your usage on their website? With Octopus I can view my usage on line. Not in real time but I can see all the previous day’s usage.

I am thinking of switching to Octopus in future but at the moment the rates seems the same as they are capped - also I have to trust Octopus that they will fit a meter that works for them (they already confirmed to me that my current meter won't work with Octopus).  

The comments that the Octopus IHD only shows one price are a bit surprising as this is the whole point of Octopus isn't it?  Anyway I will sort that later next year.

My IHD was originally supplied by Scottish Power several years prior to switching to Octopus, but frankly what I can view on line and via my bills is much more useful than anything I can get via the IHD.

Tariff is variable as well so it will follow the cap I guess in some way.

BG do provide access to usage on their website which is updated usually with a 2-3 day delay.  However it doesn't provide any useful summary of peak vs off peak use so you would have to manually look at all the daily graphs to try to validate the bill if you wanted to.  The KWH usage on the BG website seems correct but the prices are wrong (still showing pre October prices applied to the KWh) - I raised this with BG already and they said it's a known issue that they are "looking into".  This is completely crazy in the current situation as anyone who is monitoring their usage via the app or website will think they are spending about 30% less than what they really are!

My IHD from British Gas is also pretty old, but at least it does seem to record the pricing peak vs off peak correctly, at least on some days, although not today for some reason.  It also provides the KWh usage to higher number of significant figures than the website.

[Deleted User]

Thanks but looking at the Bright App, it says it only works with SMETS2 meters - mine is not.  

Not correct. Bright will work with any SMETS meter that is connected to The DCC Network. Hildebrand uses its DCC-Approved Adapter software to 'pull' data from both SMETS2 and SMETS1 meters.

You can check whether your meter has been enrolled on and adopted by the DCC here:

https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk/

dunstonh

All is fine except that I noticed on a couple of occasions, my (British Gas) smart meter box has "charged" me the full day time price for the overnight electricity used.

The smart meter only measures the units (kWh).  It doesn't have any costs showing.    The in-house display as the only device that can have costs applied to it.   BG have known issues on the IHD when it comes to multiple registers.

Does this mean I will be charged wrongly on my bill or is it a glitch on the box probably?  Do I need to start writing down the KWH every morning to challenge it if needed?

You should check the unit pricing for the two registers each day to make sure.  Check the IHD and check the meter to see if they are aligned.   They probably are and its just the IHD that is playing up.

[Deleted User]

They probably are and its just the IHD that is playing up.

The IHD is just a display. For SMETS2, the usage and cost information for gas is taken from the gas proxy meter located in the communications hub. The gas proxy meter gets usage (and tariff information) via the Zigbee HAN once every 30 minutes. Electricity usage and cost information comes directly from the electricity meter.

For cost information to be correct, the supplier has to send the correct tariff information to both meters (the ESME and the GSME). Even then, gas cost information is incorrect as the gas proxy meter uses a fixed CV.

For billing purposes suppliers use either meter index readings or 30 minute usage data 'pulled' from the meter once a day. Clearly, for a two rate tariff the meter has to be capable, and set up, to record on 2 registers UNLESS 30 minute usage data is used. The daily meter data 'pull' returns both index readings and an XML file containing the 30 minute data. Octopus uses XML file data to produce bills for its EV tariffs.

All the IHDs that I have seen show a single index reading which is the total of all the registers used since the meter was first installed. For example, for electricity, my IHD shows 02334. The meter register matrix shows T01 1858.27; T02 486.39; T03 0 and T04 0. (note: there is no convention as to which register has to be used for peak/offpeak: my meter registers off-peak usage on the T01 register.)

Pat38493

Dolor said:

All the IHDs that I have seen show a single index reading which is the total of all the registers used since the meter was first installed. For example, for electricity, my IHD shows 02334. The meter register matrix shows T01 1858.27; T02 486.39; T03 0 and T04 0. (note: there is no convention as to which register has to be used for peak/offpeak: my meter registers off-peak usage on the T01 register.)

On my BG display box I have been through every setting in the menu and I cannot find anything that looks like T01 1858.27; T02 486.39; T03 0 and T04 0