Impossible electricity usage

deathshadow1701

My electricity bill has been very high ever since I moved into the property so I decided to investigate today.

I turned every single circuit breaker off and checked the meter. The display has stopped working recently but the light is flashing extremely fast - 56 flashes in 10 seconds and 1000 flashes is 1kWh. Unless I'm miscalculating, wouldn't that mean I'm supposedly using about 20 kW with all breakers off?

My energy monitor (not meter) displays that about 1.8kW is being used with all breakers off except for the sockets, and all sockets off except for the energy monitor. Although I'm not sure how much to trust a cheap energy monitor with an inductive clamp and old batteries.

I have solar panels and this has made me wonder if the electricity meter is wrongly charging me full rate for the energy I'm feeding into the grid, which apparently does happen sometimes. Or maybe the meter is faulty?

Can anyone help work out what is going on???

Many thanks

Robin9

You say the Smart meter display has failed -  what readings (usually page 2) are shown on your bills and what letter follows them A C E or Smart 

deathshadow1701

It's not a smart meter and they're just using estimated readings. The app never wanted to accept my meter readings so I've never given them an actual reading. I have got pictures of the readings on my old phone which I'll have to dig out.

BarelySentientAI

Well if it's estimated readings based on a broken meter without a display so they can never be verified - why does what you are actually using make any difference at this point?

born_again

deathshadow1701 said:

It's not a smart meter and they're just using estimated readings. The app never wanted to accept my meter readings so I've never given them an actual reading. I have got pictures of the readings on my old phone which I'll have to dig out.

Who is "They"
While the app may not take your readings, have you not tried ringing them up to submit them?
How long have you lived in the property?

deathshadow1701

BarelySentientAI said:

Well if it's estimated readings based on a broken meter without a display so they can never be verified - why does what you are actually using make any difference at this point?

The estimated usage is rather high (nearly £200/month for a 4-bed with 2-3 people. Heating and shower run on gas, no electric heaters or any high-power devices except for oven/hob), presumably based on the previous residents and quite possibly based on charging a lot for giving them electricity.

Can they not read the EEPROM chip to get the reading, assuming it's the display that's failed, not the whole unit?

deathshadow1701

born_again said:

deathshadow1701 said:

It's not a smart meter and they're just using estimated readings. The app never wanted to accept my meter readings so I've never given them an actual reading. I have got pictures of the readings on my old phone which I'll have to dig out.

Who is "They"
While the app may not take your readings, have you not tried ringing them up to submit them?
How long have you lived in the property?

EDF. And no, I keep meaning to but I'm the king of procrastination. It's been about 4 years. I'm aware that I'm my own worst enemy and an idiot for that! But I'd finally like to get it sorted, a smart meter fitted and maybe switch to Octopus.

Spoonie_Turtle

Question for context, have you ever given them a reading?  Do you have a reading from when you moved in?

If you're being billed purely on estimates then currently what the meter is recording has no relevance - unless the solar panels were already installed before you moved in?

Obviously either way you need to get it sorted, but having the full facts of the situation will make it easier for the more knowledgeable members to help you untangle the mess and work out where to start with getting it sorted.

deathshadow1701

Spoonie_Turtle said:

Question for context, have you ever given them a reading?  Do you have a reading from when you moved in?

If you're being billed purely on estimates then currently what the meter is recording has no relevance - unless the solar panels were already installed before you moved in?

Obviously either way you need to get it sorted, but having the full facts of the situation will make it easier for the more knowledgeable members to help you untangle the mess and work out where to start with getting it sorted.

I think I gave them a reading when I moved in, I have a photo of the reading somewhere (probably 2 phones ago now). But everything since then has been estimated.

Yeah, the solar panels were already installed before I moved in.

I need to dig out my old phones and go through the meter readings I've taken photos/videos of. I'm thinking of putting the figures into a spreadsheet, plotting them on a graph and see if I can figure out if the usage in summer is significantly higher than it should be.

Like I said, I'm my own worst enemy and an idiot for leaving it this long! My most recent bill kicked me into gear though - they suddenly doubled my bill from nearly £200 to over £400 !!! It turned out that they'd decided "let's just add £2000+ worth of extra gas charges" for no apparent reason. I've now submitted a correct gas reading (which the app accepted for a change) which is far below their suddenly increased estimate, so my bill should drop down again (hopefully)! And I'll keep on top of it from now on.

What would you advise? Thanks

Spoonie_Turtle

I can't really advise as I'm not experienced or knowledgable (sorry) but it might be useful to a) do the experiment at different times of day, and b) see if the flash rate changes when you turn things back on.  And keep video evidence, just in case.

I don't know much about solar panels but I find it hard to imagine they could be generating ~20kW to fully explain it, even if they were wired in wrong.

Qyburn

As a quick test try shutting down the solar panels, switching off the consumer unit main switch (or isolator if you have one) and see if the meter continues to flash.