Smart Meter: £430, Bill: £690 <- Discrepancy OK?

danny424242

Hi, Does anyone know how close a smart meter should be to the amount we are billed? I swear I remember advertising along the lines of how smart meters help you take control and how you can use them to budget and plan etc. We had it installed when we moved in at the end of 2021, so its not a very old unit. I've seen some posts on forums about how they are only an 'estimate' and how the can be a few pounds out... not sure if the people posting were just trying to sound clever or if they really knew the rules or anything. Our bill for the month being 150% of what we are shown on the meter sounds crazy. And yep - it really is just the elec consumption for our tiny bungalow, it leaks air and has no insulation, but 750k is all we could afford to borrow so had to get a pretty tiny and rundown bungalow in Devon, so we always knew the heating bills would be massive with such a poor-man's property. And frankly, if the meter had been showing £20 a day, we may still have run the heating the same amount, but at least we would have known. How are you supposed to plan if they differ that much. We have checked and that is just the consumption - no pending bills or caught up amounts from previous months or anything. Any advice very welcome!!

ariarnia

Hello. that does sound like a nasty shock. maybe we can try and figure out whats happening. 

by smart meter i think you mean the in home display (a little plug in hand held thing)? 

thats just a little screen that takes the meter readings and times it by the set tarrif to give you some 'instant' data. if the rate on the display is set wrong then the number that it shows will be wrong. unfortuanly that's down to your supplier doing a software update when things change. 

but even then. if your electric bill is £20 a day. that's something like 60kwh 

that's a huge amount... 

can you show us a picture of your bill with your personal details scrubbed out and can you tell us if you all electric for heating and do you have a hot water tank things like that?

molerat

The big problem is that someone has to update the systems with the correct unit & SC rates and that doesn't always happen.  Gas is never totally correct as they use a fixed CV where it actually varies daily.  There is nothing stopping you working it out with a spreadsheet or many on here use the various apps available and I am sure someone will be along and describe how they work with respect to pricing.

pochase

Welcome to the forum.

Are you talking about a smart meter or do you mean the IHD?

The bill is based on the KWh reported by the smart meter, not on what the IHD shows. Are you sure that the IHD has been updated with the new unit rates?

Does the KWh on the IHD match the smart meter?

[Deleted User]

To be clear, smart meters reside in your meter boxes. The In House Display which I suspect you are referring to is just a display. All billing is based on the index readings that your supplier ‘pulls’ from your meters. 

Why is the IHD showing an incorrect cost? The IHD will only display accurate cost information if your supplier has sent the correct tariff information to your meters. You can check this on your IHD. Sadly, not all suppliers do update tariff information and the application of the EPG in different ways has made the problem worse.

MikeJXE

If you mean the 2 inch square screen in the kitchen take no notice, mines unplugged and on top of the fridge freezer. Access your account on suppliers website and it should give you an accurate reading/cost for every half hour

Please when you ask questions regarding energy quote kWh used  not costs then you will get better answers 

danny424242

MikeJXE said:

Please when you ask questions regarding energy quote kWh used  not costs then you will get better answers 

Hi, my question related to the cost not matching up, the total energy used does match up. The answers I got were all great, and clearly explained the issue - the supplier has not updated our IHD/meter with the correct rate. I don't quite understand how that is allowed. Surely some software somewhere does it, not a person - these companies have millions of customers don't they, they'd have to employ half the country just to keep things up to date if it relied on a human to do some data entry somewhere. Clearly the data is going from the meter->supplier, so whatever communications they use is working, so why aren't they sending the rate back the other way? I'll take it up with them.

As for the first very kind person with the detailed answer, ararnia, I'm afraid 60kWk is just what our house uses for heating. But don't worry, the total cost isn't of concern, it was just the discrepancy. Our mortgage is 2k a month and will be 4k a month when we remortgage in a few months - the 'energy crisis' is absolutely nothing compared to the interest bomb that is about to go off for us at least.

The bungalow has 'cavity wall insulation', or at least when we bought it that's what the EPC said, it doesn't though, it had some fluff squirted in at some point which is now in a rotten pile at the bottom foot of each wall (I've been drilling a lot of holes to find out), there are air leaks everywhere etc. Our latest quote for oil (oil fired boiler) was £1.80 per litre, which at four refils a year (what we used in the first year) is £7200 for the heating alone, so we are using electric heaters, which is only costing us about half of that so far, because with electric fans we can heat just the rooms we are using, like my son's at night and the living room in the evenings, the rest of the bungalow not at all.

ariarnia

danny424242 said:

MikeJXE said:

Please when you ask questions regarding energy quote kWh used  not costs then you will get better answers 

Hi, my question related to the cost not matching up, the total energy used does match up. The answers I got were all great, and clearly explained the issue - the supplier has not updated our IHD/meter with the correct rate. I don't quite understand how that is allowed. Surely some software somewhere does it, not a person - these companies have millions of customers don't they, they'd have to employ half the country just to keep things up to date if it relied on a human to do some data entry somewhere. Clearly the data is going from the meter->supplier, so whatever communications they use is working, so why aren't they sending the rate back the other way? I'll take it up with them.

As for the first very kind person with the detailed answer, ararnia, I'm afraid 60kWk is just what our house uses for heating. But don't worry, the total cost isn't of concern, it was just the discrepancy. Our mortgage is 2k a month and will be 4k a month when we remortgage in a few months - the 'energy crisis' is absolutely nothing compared to the interest bomb that is about to go off for us at least.

The bungalow has 'cavity wall insulation', or at least when we bought it that's what the EPC said, it doesn't though, it had some fluff squirted in at some point which is now in a rotten pile at the bottom foot of each wall (I've been drilling a lot of holes to find out), there are air leaks everywhere etc. Our latest quote for oil (oil fired boiler) was £1.80 per litre, which at four refils a year (what we used in the first year) is £7200 for the heating alone, so we are using electric heaters, which is only costing us about half of that so far, because with electric fans we can heat just the rooms we are using, like my son's at night and the living room in the evenings, the rest of the bungalow not at all.

glad it was helpful

when you're ready to think about insulation and other options for heating (like air source maybe) then the forum here and the diy part are really good at talking about options at differnt cost levels and suggesting options you might never of even heard of or thought might work for you

[Deleted User]

The gas meter and your IHD connect to the communications hub via a Home Area Network (secure Zigbee). The communications hub connects to the smart meter network via a Wide Area Network.

You can see what your supplier is seeing if you download the free App BRIGHT. Hildebrand the owner of BRIGHT pulls data from your meters via the Wide Area Network.

cannugec5

 Our latest quote for oil (oil fired boiler) was £1.80 per litre, which at four refils a year (what we used in the first year) is £7200 for the heating alone, 

Wow!
We are in rural Scotland. ( Where it gets a bit cold) . 

Our recent oil delivery was 89p per litre, and 10p per litre LESS than our last delivery in May. 
Four fills a year is a lot ( unless you have a teensy tank) ours holds 1200 litres and we fill it twice a year ( without running it to empty!) 

Chrysalis

Dont use your IHD to monitor costs, they seem to commonly not have the correct unit rates.