Octopus Smart Meter Fault - pre-testing with wattmeter, or straight to Meter Accuracy Test

RogueRecruit

I changed to a smart meter a couple of years ago after hearing about saving on bills by reducing at peak load times etc. I have always been in the "very low energy" use category in every house I've lived in, typically annual electricity useage of about 1200kWh, even when no gas heating. My traditional meter recorded my useage at this house as an average of about 3.2kWh per day. When I was switched to a smart meter, it started coming in much higher, on average since installation 5.6kWh per day. This despite my actual useage of devices going down since the smart meter installed (had been renovating house using wallpaper steamer, dehumidifier etc. when on the original meter).

I got scared off doing anything about it by stories of being charged a lot by energy companies for checking/replacing meters, tried to drop my useage even further but it was already so low in terms of actual devices, it's had no effect. I finally resolved to get in touch with Octopus. They sent a copy pasted response advising me to submit a reading manually and do a creep test, and they managed to find another £100 of energy they forgot to bill me for (yay!). I did the creep test which came back fine, and on persisting to ask what they would do to investigate this apparent 75% jump in recorded useage despite my actual useage decreasing, they've copied and pasted some more garbage (no I don't have a bloody immersion heater or hot tub!) including offering a Meter Accuracy Test, but saying that they'll charge me £80 if no fault is found and in their experience most meters are accurate.

I feel frustrated and anxious; to me there seems sufficient objective evidence of a fault to justify a test, and they should be responsible for the cost of this. But I have lost faith in the accuracy of their system, and am worried that a MAT may come back as no fault and I'll be even worse off if they charge me for it. I can see people sometimes checking their readings with wattmeters on single sockets and comparing against their main meters (with everything but one item switched off). Is it worth paying for one of these and spending time on it myself, or can I rely on a MAT to be correct? Has anyone experienced a meter accuracy test in a situation like this?

Thank you in advance for your responses :-)

Phones4Chris

Was your old meter a "clockwork" job? If so, it could well have been under-recording.
It does really sound like you should have been trying to look into all this ages ago.

Have you checked that your meter readings on the bills are the same as the actual meter, as I'd be surprised if there was any problem with the "system" as such, at Octopus 
You need to check the readings aren't estimates for some reason (they'll have an e or E against them if they are) and if so, you need to give them a meter reading to get an accurate updated bill.
Then you need to find out why Octopus aren't getting/using Smart Meter readings, it could be a simple comms issue.
Out of curiosity, does the meter reading given by the IHD compare with the reading on the actual meter?

Have you created and got an Octopus online account? Log into that to see what information that is giving you about usage. You can also do similar with the Octopus App on a Smart phone.

If all the meter readings tally etc. and it's not estimated billing, then you might want to consider buying a plug-in Energy Consumption Meter. Lidl were selling a Mebus one not too long ago, you may still find one or two in your local store, they were about £6.99 iirc. measuring range 0.3W to 3.120kW. (I certainly wouldn't waste money buying a more expensive one £10-20 or more).
A simple check would be to switch everything off and check the power usage of say your kettle and compare it to the power usage on your IHD.

Another thing worth bearing in mind, is your fridge/freezer. If it/they're getting a bit old they can become more inefficient and consume more power being on for longer to maintain the temperature. With nothing else on, check what your IHD says your fridge/freezer is using.

Robin9

 With such small figures it can be difficult to detect what energy is being used and when. The plug in type of meter can help but if you any appliances that are hardwired to a fused spur can be challenging.  A 100w bulb in the loft/under the stairs is 2.4 kW a day - or heater in the greenhouse - or a new fish tank.

I would be looking at the older appliances as Chris suggests-  fridges/freezers. Read that meter at several times a day and then repeat with the fridge/freezer switched off.

Reed_Richards

It's more likely that an old meter would be inaccurate than that a new one would.  You can buy devices that would enable you to monitor your energy usage or you could get an electrician to fit a secondary meter but the cost of doing either might not be far off the £80 you would have to pay to get Octopus to perform a check.  

FreeBear

There are various types of energy meters that you can buy. Some are designed to be mounted inside a consumer unit, others clip a sensor over one of the cables between the smart meter and consumer unit - Some of these latter types are battery operated and can only measure current so won't give a true reading of actual energy consumption. The better ones need to be wired in to the mains (via a fused plug ?) and can give a reasonably accurate reading.

I use a couple of Peacefair PZEM-016 devices to monitor my consumption - These are connected to a dedicated computer that is constantly taking readings so that I can plot usage. Probably not suitable for the OP. However, Peacefair also do modules with a built-in display. Most models will display voltage, current, power consumption, and also a running total of kWh. Claimed accuracy is +/- 1% which is good enough to check that the smart meter is accurate. And for ~£20, cheap enough.

Swipe

I can confirm that my old mechanical electricity meter ran about 20% slower than my current smart meter. Comes as a bit of a surprise when you are a high usage household with 8 storage heaters. I now only run 3-4 of them.

RogueRecruit

Thanks for all the comments. To clarify, it is not just this house, my useage has about been the same in every house or flat I rented, so it's possible they were all running drastically slower than my smart meter but seems less likely. The old meter had a digital display, so I assume not a "clockwork job"?

Octopus are getting the smart readings, they just had an error of one month missed bill which they found when I raised my concern about the meter. The transmitted readings and what the device says are the same, none are estimates.

I have also compared useage with my brother who is similarly careful with energy, but he works from home so would naturally have higher actual useage than me; his readings are similar to my old ones and nothing like the new ones.

I have no old appliances as this is my first owned home and so I bought A++ appliances when I moved in (all under 5 years). Also none of the appliances are different between the old meter and the new. There are no electric heaters and the attic bulb is definitely not on, but thanks for the suggestions, worth a check.

Seems like the best option is to try a cheaper energy monitor and see what I come up with. Thanks for all the suggestions!

EssexHebridean

Could be worth an ask on freecycle to see if anyone has an old Owl energy monitor going spare they might want rid of. Those are a clip on type - there are other makes too, as well as unbranded ones that were given away by various energy suppliers many years ago. 

MattMattMattUK

If you have done a creep test that is one thing eliminated, the next is to turn everything in the house off at the wall (not off at the consumer unit) and then see if the meter still rises, the third thing is to turn everything off, then run something with a known load for long enough to see if that draw is recorded correctly, a fan heater or single bar electric heater is ideal for that. If the test with everything turned off at the wall shows power still increasing then there is something running you do not know about, if the known load is higher than expected then you have an answer, if neither of those show anything then you just have higher usage than you thought. 

Comparing your usage to other people's or previous properties can be a bit of a red herring, 1-2kWh difference a day can easily be accounted for by a whole bunch of things and as others have said the old disc meters are known for running slow as they age so the increase pre/post new meter could be perfectly reasonable. 

Phones4Chris

@RogueRecruit As I mentioned in my first reply "A simple check would be to switch everything off and check the power usage of say your kettle and compare it to the power usage on your IHD."
That's an easy first check that won't cost you anything. It'll at least shows that the meter is correctly recognising the load but doesn't of course prove that the kWh usage is incrementing correctly, but that would be an unusual fault.
Once that's done then do the check suggested using an electric fan heater.

Gerry1

Phones4Chris said:

@RogueRecruit As I mentioned in my first reply "A simple check would be to switch everything off and check the power usage of say your kettle and compare it to the power usage on your IHD."
That's an easy first check that won't cost you anything. It'll at least shows that the meter is correctly recognising the load but doesn't of course prove that the kWh usage is incrementing correctly, but that would be an unusual fault.
Once that's done then do the check suggested using an electric fan heater.

Not everyone has an IHD, but the red metrology light on the meter on the wall is your friend.  (Or even the spinning disc !)
Just do the Meter Sanity Test.