British Gas Evolve, Smart Meter stopped working.

Harleydee

Hi, My partner was with Evolve energy but has recently had her account moved to British Gas following the apparent demise of Evolve. Since the move her smart meter has stopped working, it keeps flashing "Waiting for current data" I went online to British Gas and after waiting from  the 346  position in the queue I was told. “We have modified our system in such a way that if there are any major issues with the smart meter then our back-end team will automatically get to know and remotely solve the issue" I informed them that it has not worked for over a month and needed to know how much  her new central heating system was costing to run. I was told to refer to her online account for daily usage at which I pointed out they were not getting daily usage meter readings hence she had been getting estimated bills. It’s like that old rime "there’s a hole in my bucket" I  asked for a transcript of the chat as the conversation continued in the same evasive way for some time but I was logged out by them, luckily I had been taking screen shots of the conversation to refer back to. Has anyone else had similar problems?

la531983

Do you mean the actual meter, or the little electronic device she plugs in?

If the latter, that isnt the smart meter.

frugalmacdugal

Hi,

are you talking about the actual smart meter or the IHD, In House Display?

Are you able to get readings from the actual smart meter?

Harleydee

"The smart meter" which ever that is, her plugin device only shows "Waiting for current data" and her online account only shows estimates untill we manually pass them readings.

Gerry1

The smart meter is on the wall.  You should be able to get accurate bills by taking and sending manual readings.

Harleydee

yes, we can get readings by looking at the wall meters but these are not being passed to the plug-in unit or online account by the system, consequently my partner can not monitor her daily energy usage in monetary terms.

la531983

Harleydee said:

yes, we can get readings by looking at the wall meters but these are not being passed to the plug-in unit or online account by the system, consequently my partner can not monitor her daily energy usage in monetary terms.

My smart meter has within the menus the last seven days recorded usage in kwH, which I can just multiply by the unit rate and then add the standing charge on. 

frugalmacdugal

Hi,

Harleydee said:

yes, we can get readings by looking at the wall meters but these are not being passed to the plug-in unit or online account by the system, consequently my partner can not monitor her daily energy usage in monetary terms.

take regular readings, daily if you wish, at least once a month, send to supplier, and set up a wee spreadsheet to keep track of usage and cost.

yeezy_2

The same thing happened to us when we moved into our property and switched to BG from Scottish Power. The smart meter was already installed and automatically sending meter readings to Scottish Power but when we switched it stopped working. The BG engineers who came to look at our smart meter said it's like a phone without a SIM card. It doesn't send the readings to BG or the in-house display. I think it's been almost a year since I first reported the issue and they just say the team is already working on this and it's taking longer than expected. They said they expected it to be fixed by mid-2023.
I've just downloaded the Bright app to try and monitor our usage through my phone. It says it takes 24 hours to get the app up and running so I'll be able to see if it's working tomorrow.

QrizB

yeezy_2 said:

The BG engineers who came to look at our smart meter said it's like a phone without a SIM card.

That means it's an old SMETS1 meter. Most of those are being enrolled into the new Comms system, and the ones that can't be enrolled will be replaced.