Electricity meter running backwards

mystic_trev

We have recently had extensive work on our home including the house being rewired. Electrician said our meter, an old Weston analogue? Was running backwards. We have solar panels that were installed 10 years ago. We moved in 8 years ago completely unaware of the situation until being told by our electrician. Who should we contact to rectify this?

greyteam1959

You were completely unaware that your meter was running backwards for 8 years ??
So your electricity bills have been minus bills for eight years.
Did you not think that this was strange ??

Robin9

Have you been reading the meter or have all your bills for 8 years been estimates ?

QrizB

mystic_trev said:

We have recently had extensive work on our home including the house being rewired. Electrician said our meter, an old Weston analogue? Was running backwards. We have solar panels that were installed 10 years ago. We moved in 8 years ago completely unaware of the situation until being told by our electrician. Who should we contact to rectify this?

The body to contact is your electricity supplier. Do it promptly.

mystic_trev

greyteam1959 said:

You were completely unaware that your meter was running backwards for 8 years ??
So your electricity bills have been minus bills for eight years.
Did you not think that this was strange ??

No we’ve never had minus bills.

mystic_trev

Robin9 said:

Have you been reading the meter or have all your bills for 8 years been estimates ?

We’ve had some meter readings and provided some ourselves.

MWT

greyteam1959 said:

You were completely unaware that your meter was running backwards for 8 years ??
So your electricity bills have been minus bills for eight years.
Did you not think that this was strange ??

It will be running backwards when there is energy being exported due to the solar panels.

It results in net metering and it would be considered fraudulent to knowingly allow that to go on without reporting it to the energy supplier.

I'm sure the OP will be making the notification now they are aware of it.

mystic_trev

MWT said:

greyteam1959 said:

You were completely unaware that your meter was running backwards for 8 years ??
So your electricity bills have been minus bills for eight years.
Did you not think that this was strange ??

It will be running backwards when there is energy being exported due to the solar panels.

It results in net metering and it would be considered fraudulent to knowingly allow that to go on without reporting it to the energy supplier.

I'm sure the OP will be making the notification now they are aware of it.

Yes. I’m feeling somewhat embarrassed for not realising what was happening earlier. I do wonder if the previous owner knew? Unfortunately he passed away three years ago.

SAC2334

I used to find quite a few meters running backwards on hot days when I was reading meters . That was the time It could be spotted when occupant not using much energy themselves . They were all houses with solar panels and always with old analogue meters like Sangamo Weston with a rotating barrel with no backstop like other old analogues had .
Suppliers could easily check this when the solar panels were installed to see if occupier had a suitable meter and switch it to a digital meter  . They obviously could nt be bothered and also took no notice when I reported it to them and the occupier because three months later I would visit again and the meter was still running backwards .
I think that most occupiers would not automatically spot it and just  think that there extremely low electric bills were due to the solar panels . 
Theres a Youtube vid with 11,000 views of a meter running backwards 

lohr500

Related to this, did you get any certification papers for the solar panels when you bought the house? 
Hopefully an MCS certificate.

If you did, you should consider signing up to an export tariff and then you will get paid for any surplus electricity going back to the grid.

I think Octopus will let you export without an MCS certificate but I recall some mention a one-off fee of £250 and you may need to provide other info to be accepted. If you aren't generating a lot of surplus then the £250 fee might wipe out any income from the export payments.

littleteapot

A few years ago I had a wealthy and verystingy colleague who had solar panels fitted to his house. He often talked about how his old analogue meter 'ran backwards' during sunny weather. He proudly described it his 'Piggy bank meter', and how smart he was to control his energy usage such that he never had 'suspicious' readings which would prompt the supplier to demand a meter replacement. He retired a couple of years ago but I'm sure he's still a smart-meter dodger as he would need to buy a lot of batteries at great expense to get such a large 'storage' capacity!