Independent electricity smart meter accuracy test?

Mobtr

Raxiel said:

Bendo said:

Veteransaver said:

p00hsticks said:

Robin9 said:

This forum has seen blocked pond pumps, lots of fish tanks, old  freezers, the fan heater in the bedroom.

Also an immersion heater in the hot water tank that no one is aware of......

True story, friend of mine had his immersion heater permanently switched on for the 10 or so years since he'd bought the property! 
Also an immersion on a timer overnight wouldn't be very easy to spot from the IHD.
OP can you get half hourly readings from your meter? Would be useful to see where any spikes are occuring

Doesn't pretty much every IHD have a half hourly breakdown? Even the landfill basic as anything ones that come with old SMETS 1 Secure meters do

The IHD I got with my Secure meter seven years ago doesn't go into that level of detail. It has usage now, total today, this week etc.

Of course the meter itself does, so I can still be billed on that basis.

You’ll be billed on what’s on the actual meter. The ihd is not part of any billing system, it’s just a little gadget to give an indication of what’s being used

EssexHebridean

Mobtr said:

Raxiel said:

Bendo said:

Veteransaver said:

p00hsticks said:

Robin9 said:

This forum has seen blocked pond pumps, lots of fish tanks, old  freezers, the fan heater in the bedroom.

Also an immersion heater in the hot water tank that no one is aware of......

True story, friend of mine had his immersion heater permanently switched on for the 10 or so years since he'd bought the property! 
Also an immersion on a timer overnight wouldn't be very easy to spot from the IHD.
OP can you get half hourly readings from your meter? Would be useful to see where any spikes are occuring

Doesn't pretty much every IHD have a half hourly breakdown? Even the landfill basic as anything ones that come with old SMETS 1 Secure meters do

The IHD I got with my Secure meter seven years ago doesn't go into that level of detail. It has usage now, total today, this week etc.

Of course the meter itself does, so I can still be billed on that basis.

You’ll be billed on what’s on the actual meter. The ihd is not part of any billing system, it’s just a little gadget to give an indication of what’s being used

The OP is clearly aware of how their billing works - they mention the IHD only because someone suggested that they could use that to pin down the finer detail.

OP - what about your supplier’s app or your online account? Can you see detailed half hourly use there? 

Scot_39

Bendo said:

Veteransaver said:

p00hsticks said:

Robin9 said:

This forum has seen blocked pond pumps, lots of fish tanks, old  freezers, the fan heater in the bedroom.

Also an immersion heater in the hot water tank that no one is aware of......

True story, friend of mine had his immersion heater permanently switched on for the 10 or so years since he'd bought the property! 
Also an immersion on a timer overnight wouldn't be very easy to spot from the IHD.
OP can you get half hourly readings from your meter? Would be useful to see where any spikes are occuring

Doesn't pretty much every IHD have a half hourly breakdown? Even the landfill basic as anything ones that come with old SMETS 1 Secure meters do

Theres nothing in the EOn user manual for mine giving access to that data via the IHD.

Do you have the key sequence ?

It doesn't even cope - as I believe not even the best Smets2 versions - with multirate tariff electric registers. I can only see the total of both peak and off peak consumption - have to go to meter and press a tiny numeric keypad to scroll through rate registers to get that way.

But simple algebra and a spreadsheet means I can get them from the totals and rates that are available from it so don't. (Even if those prices / rates are incorrect - that is what it now uses to work out daily weeklyy pricing etc - and they and even the calcs have been - at one stage excluding vat and standing charge - and for 3 monhts last year set to SC not DD rates).

Mobtr

EssexHebridean said:

Mobtr said:

Raxiel said:

Bendo said:

Veteransaver said:

p00hsticks said:

Robin9 said:

This forum has seen blocked pond pumps, lots of fish tanks, old  freezers, the fan heater in the bedroom.

Also an immersion heater in the hot water tank that no one is aware of......

True story, friend of mine had his immersion heater permanently switched on for the 10 or so years since he'd bought the property! 
Also an immersion on a timer overnight wouldn't be very easy to spot from the IHD.
OP can you get half hourly readings from your meter? Would be useful to see where any spikes are occuring

Doesn't pretty much every IHD have a half hourly breakdown? Even the landfill basic as anything ones that come with old SMETS 1 Secure meters do

The IHD I got with my Secure meter seven years ago doesn't go into that level of detail. It has usage now, total today, this week etc.

Of course the meter itself does, so I can still be billed on that basis.

You’ll be billed on what’s on the actual meter. The ihd is not part of any billing system, it’s just a little gadget to give an indication of what’s being used

The OP is clearly aware of how their billing works - they mention the IHD only because someone suggested that they could use that to pin down the finer detail.

OP - what about your supplier’s app or your online account? Can you see detailed half hourly use there? 

Sorry, misread, thought it said ‘can I’ rather than ‘I can’, must be my old eyes, I stand corrected 

yeezy_2

Thanks all for your responses. To answer the general questions, we live in a two bedroom flat with gas central heating. No immersion heater. There is an old water tank in the attic that's empty and not connected to anything. There is nothing using electricity outside the property. We have LED lighting. 

Our in-house display does not work so I'm not able to check our base load. When we first moved in and switched to British Gas our smart meter stopped sending them readings and our in-house display stopped working at the same time. We have a SMETS2 smart meter. I've contacted them about this multiple times and each time they have a different excuse for taking so long to fix them. I've raised a formal complaint and will escalate the complaint to Ombudsman if it is not resolved in eight weeks.

Admittedly we do have a server running 24/7 so I would expect us to be 'high users' but we have smart plugs in most of our rooms and everything in the office consumes about 15 kWh per day. Our washing machine/tumble dryer consumes on average 2.4 kWh per day. Our fridge and dishwasher are both integrated so I can't fit a smart plugs on these. 

The meter reading I took in on the 20th February was 27586 and the reading I took on 27th March was 28590. I could understand if we used 20 kWh per day but I can't fathom how we can be using 30 kWh per day if about half of that must be accounted for by the the fridge, dishwasher, TV and other small electricals?

Something else that strikes me as a bit odd is that when we moved into this property and the smart meter was working the first electricity meter reading submitted was 04734. This was in November 2021. When our smart meter stopped sending readings directly to BG instead of providing the readings myself our bills were based on estimated readings. In hindsight I was not clued up about these things and should have provided readings myself. Unfortunately between November 21 and May 23 we were being billed based on estimated readings. In May 2023 I took a meter reading myself and it was 20166. This was flagged by BG as being much higher than our last reading and this is when I started to question whether our smart meter was accurate. I do have an old bill on my account that says the meter reading in September 2022 was 05719. I think I must have provided this over the phone as I don't have any photos of the meter from this date. If that was an accurate reading then our meter suddenly jumped by 15,000 kWh in six months.

Apologies for the essay but I've tried to give as much context as possible in the hope that someone might have some advice on what to do next. My logic is that if the smart meter is taken away and proved to be faulty then we have probably been overpaying for quite some time and it's worth pursuing if we can get that money back. My understanding is that if they take the old smart meter away they can check it for historical meter readings and we might find that it has malfunctioned. I know that faulty smart meters are uncommon but I just don't see how these readings can be accurate.

cannugec5

yeezy_2 said:

Thanks all for your responses. To answer the general questions, we live in a two bedroom flat with gas central heating. No immersion heater. There is an old water tank in the attic that's empty and not connected to anything. There is nothing using electricity outside the property. We have LED lighting. 

Our in-house display does not work so I'm not able to check our base load. When we first moved in and switched to British Gas our smart meter stopped sending them readings and our in-house display stopped working at the same time. We have a SMETS2 smart meter. I've contacted them about this multiple times and each time they have a different excuse for taking so long to fix them. I've raised a formal complaint and will escalate the complaint to Ombudsman if it is not resolved in eight weeks.

Admittedly we do have a server running 24/7 so I would expect us to be 'high users' but we have smart plugs in most of our rooms and everything in the office consumes about 15 kWh per day. Our washing machine/tumble dryer consumes on average 2.4 kWh per day. Our fridge and dishwasher are both integrated so I can't fit a smart plugs on these. 

The meter reading I took in on the 20th February was 27586 and the reading I took on 27th March was 28590. I could understand if we used 20 kWh per day but I can't fathom how we can be using 30 kWh per day if about half of that must be accounted for by the the fridge, dishwasher, TV and other small electricals?

Something else that strikes me as a bit odd is that when we moved into this property and the smart meter was working the first electricity meter reading submitted was 04734. This was in November 2021. When our smart meter stopped sending readings directly to BG instead of providing the readings myself our bills were based on estimated readings. In hindsight I was not clued up about these things and should have provided readings myself. Unfortunately between November 21 and May 23 we were being billed based on estimated readings. In May 2023 I took a meter reading myself and it was 20166. This was flagged by BG as being much higher than our last reading and this is when I started to question whether our smart meter was accurate. I do have an old bill on my account that says the meter reading in September 2022 was 05719. I think I must have provided this over the phone as I don't have any photos of the meter from this date. If that was an accurate reading then our meter suddenly jumped by 15,000 kWh in six months.

Apologies for the essay but I've tried to give as much context as possible in the hope that someone might have some advice on what to do next. My logic is that if the smart meter is taken away and proved to be faulty then we have probably been overpaying for quite some time and it's worth pursuing if we can get that money back. My understanding is that if they take the old smart meter away they can check it for historical meter readings and we might find that it has malfunctioned. I know that faulty smart meters are uncommon but I just don't see how these readings can be accurate.

According to your readings you only used approx 1000kwh in 10 months. 

Therefore it is unsurprising that your subsequent bills ( presumably correcting an error) were  playing catch up. 

My guess is that the reading you submitted by phone was either incorrect or misheard. 

From the figures you give you have approximately 29 months of use that averages out very roughly to 27 kWh. 

If you do the precise maths including actually dates and number of days in total it might come down.

markin

8k per year over 3 years, with 5k being the server sounds about correct, So an incorrect reading given seems the most likely error.

Is the also 1 or 2 people working from home, hot drinks and food?

EssexHebridean

If you're using the WM daily, does that also mean you're running the dishwasher daily as well? That could add a fair chunk to the use. 

onomatopoeia99

yeezy_2 said:

Admittedly we do have a server running 24/7 so I would expect us to be 'high users' but we have smart plugs in most of our rooms and everything in the office consumes about 15 kWh per day. Our washing machine/tumble dryer consumes on average 2.4 kWh per day. Our fridge and dishwasher are both integrated so I can't fit a smart plugs on these. 

The meter reading I took in on the 20th February was 27586 and the reading I took on 27th March was 28590. I could understand if we used 20 kWh per day but I can't fathom how we can be using 30 kWh per day if about half of that must be accounted for by the the fridge, dishwasher, TV and other small electricals?

I have a rackmount server running 24/7 and a low power backup server, and my "base load" which includes those, network switches, routers, overhead for the UPS, fridge freezer and central heating is around 14kWh per day. That excludes running desktop computers, telly, amplifier, sky box, cooker, kettle, fridge freezer etc.  

I don't find 30kWh per day extraordinary  given your office demand which is substantially higher than mine.  A bit high, but not extraordinary.