Crossed meter or not?

baglessupright

When I turn the power off at the mains, all the power goes off but, as I said in my original post, when I left the power off overnight for 7 hours and 20 mins, the meter still increased by 7 units during that time.

molerat

That last one is the timer for the E7 meter.

So you are saying that the meter that is in the flat and pictured above, serial ending 687, was not increasing when you were doing your loading test and that meter was increasing when everything in the flat was turned off at the consumer unit ?

And that serial number is the meter you are being billed for ?

Is this an old converted building or purpose built flat ?

QrizB

baglessupright said:

Hi Gerry1, Thanks for the welcome. Just looked at the Meter Sanity Test but the meter is inside my flat.

The "sanity" bits of the test are just as applicable to a meter inside your flat.

baglessupright said:

Forgot to add: When I was asked to do a 'kettle boil test', which I was told was to check for a crossed meter, there was no increase at all on the meter during the duration of the test and for at least 5 mins afterwards.

Tht's a little bit suspicious, agreed, but exactly what you see will depend on the meter. Was the little red light flashing away like billy-oh?

Robin9 said:

Can we have a photo of your meter and surrounding equipment please ?   Just wondering if there are two consumer units/switches.

Yes, a photo might be worth a thousand forum posts.
Edit:

Can we have a photo taken from further away, please, showing the whole arrangement of gubbins?

Something like this:

baglessupright

molerat said:

That last one is the timer for the E7 meter.

So you are saying that the meter that is in the flat and pictured above, serial ending 687, was not increasing when you were doing your loading test and that meter was increasing when everything in the flat was turned off at the consumer unit ?

And that serial number is the meter you are being billed for ?

Is this an old converted building or purpose built flat ?

687 - Yes, yes and yes.

It's a purpose-built flat.

baglessupright

This is the best I can do for the whole arrangement...

QrizB

baglessupright said:

This is the best I can do for the whole arrangement...

That's plenty good enough, thank you!

From your incoming DNO cut-out (the black Bakelite n=main fuse, bottom-left) you have two pairs of meter tails. I think the arrangement is:

• The first pair, red and black, feed your L&G peak-rate meter. Two grey cables (slighylt different shades from each other) then connect to your regular fuse box and supply your flat.
  
• The second pair, grey, connect to your E7 meter. One thick grey neutral comes out of the E7 meter and goes back to your E7 fuse box (bottom-left, white) while another grey (live) goes to the timeswitch. The switched grey (live) from the timeswitch then feeds the E7 fuse box. A pair of red-and-black cables go back from the E7 meter to power the timeswitch.

I would agree that, if the fuse box in your meter cupboard controls the circuits in your flat, the chances of a crossed meter are essentially nil.

It is however possible that your meter is faulty (the L&G one). If it increased by 7 units with everything off, a meter fault should be considered.

Your £100 meter check should resolve this. I would expect them to fit a second meter after your current one, and compare readings over a period of days.weeks.

Do you own or rent? This might be a good time to get a smart meter. You'll lose your legacy metering but, as you aren't using it anyway, this shouldn't be a hardship.

baglessupright said:

Forgot to add: When I was asked to do a 'kettle boil test', which I was told was to check for a crossed meter, there was no increase at all on the meter during the duration of the test and for at least 5 mins afterwards.

Can you try the boil test again? This time, look for the flashing red light on the front of your meter. It should flash every second or two when your kettle is on. It should stop flashing so quickly (maybe every ten to twenty seconds) when your kettle turns off.

baglessupright

I don't know if this is significant but, back in July, which is about when all this kicked off, I plugged in my sandwich maker and it tripped the circuit breaker. I went to reset it and noticed a flashing red light on the meter. That might have been there all along but I'd never noticed it before so I looked closer. I noticed that the digital display on the meter had disappeared - it was just blank. I went to get a pad and pen to write down the date and time - just in case - and when I got back, the digital display had reappeared. I've mentioned this to my electrician and to the call handlers at Eon but no-one seems to think it's important.

QrizB

baglessupright said:

I don't know if this is significant but, back in July, which is about when all this kicked off, I plugged in my sandwich maker and it tripped the circuit breaker. I went to reset it and noticed a flashing red light on the meter. That might have been there all along but I'd never noticed it before so I looked closer. I noticed that the digital display on the meter had disappeared - it was just blank. I went to get a pad and pen to write down the date and time - just in case - and when I got back, the digital display had reappeared. I've mentioned this to my electrician and to the call handlers at Eon but no-one seems to think it's important.

It suggests to me that your meter is on its last legs.

Again, the meter check should help.

Chris_b2z

Your meter is famous. It hit the headlines in Ireland about 7 years ago -

https://www.thesun.ie/news/333159/dodgy-meters-hiked-hundreds-of-irish-homes-electricity-bills/

Reed_Richards

Until recently I had a meter much like yours but no indication that is was a dodgy one, those were only a minority.  My meter used to alternate between the energy consumption reading and the word rEd (meaning reverse energy detected - because I had solar panels that sometimes exported electricity).  So I think that a meter that is briefly blank probably isn't any cause for concern, one that is blank for 30 seconds or more probably is. 

I can't see exactly how the wires run from your meter to your Consumer Unit (fuse box); is it possible some of your supply goes elsewhere to some other part of the building?  That would explain how the meter reading managed to increase whilst you had everything in the flat turned off. And that in turn could explain why your electricity usage shot up.  But if it were a true reading of energy being used somewhere else then testing the accuracy of your meter would not help.