Faulty smart meter

earrings

My gas smart meter seems to be registering gas usage I can't possibly have used eg on days when I was away from home. No heating on, no one else in the house. Shell have offered to send the meter away for testing, but if it proves not to be faulty they will charge me £168!
Has anyone else had a meter sent for testing and what was the outcome?  TIA

TheElectricCow

There’s a simple enough test you can do yourself to get a good indication - turn your gas supply off at the shut off point and see if the meter continues to measure any usage.

If it does you know there is a fault and should go ahead with the test offer. If not more careful observation of the usage and your appliances will be needed. While faulty meters are a possibility it’s quite rare that tested meters are found to be outside the accepted tolerance levels.

It would be more likely that the gas has been used somewhere e.g. if it was particularly cold boiler frost protection could have kicked in or a small leakage in the pipework somewhere is also a possibility to consider.

Gerry1

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6452074/gas-meter-still-increasing-whilst-gas-isolated-siemens-landis-gyr-e6s/

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6456233/british-gas-gas-leak-behind-gas-fire-i-advise-you-to-keep-old-bills-and-take-photos-of-meter/

Mobtr

earrings said:

My gas smart meter seems to be registering gas usage I can't possibly have used eg on days when I was away from home. No heating on, no one else in the house. Shell have offered to send the meter away for testing, but if it proves not to be faulty they will charge me £168!
Has anyone else had a meter sent for testing and what was the outcome?  TIA

When you say it is registering gas usage when you’re away, how do you know, and how much is registering. If you are just looking at the display unit, is it not just the daily standing charge you’re seeing? 

Chris_b2z

TheElectricCow said:

While faulty meters are a possibility it’s quite rare that tested meters are found to be outside the accepted tolerance levels.

I agree that meters have been mechanically over-engineered and thoroughly tested. Therefore, unlikely to give false readings.

However, smart meters have two components - hardware and software. How confident are you that the software is reliable?

FreeBear

TheElectricCow said: It would be more likely that the gas has been used somewhere e.g. if it was particularly cold boiler frost protection could have kicked in or a small leakage in the pipework somewhere is also a possibility to consider.

Some combi boilers have an internal water tank that gets heated up on a regular basis so that you don't have to wait an age for DHW to come out of the tap. Even although my boiler doesn't have this internal tank, it will still fire up periodically to keep the internals hot ready for "on demand" DHW. I can disable this "feature" by enabling Eco mode.

A system/heat-only boiler may fire up to run a Legionella kill cycle even although it really isn't necessary.

So plenty of areas to look at before condemning the as faulty. Turning the gas off at the meter will certainly rule out any appliances and point towards a faulty meter if the readings are still increasing.