Smart meter billing errors - is this likely to be a widespread issue

m_tim_c

I'm responsible for a remote house (electricity only) that had a forced SMETS2 meter installed to cope with the RTS retirement.  After a couple of months, the steady bills, which were just for night storage heaters, leapt.

Much trouble later, and the supplier (EON) claimed that a power failure had 'broken' the meter so that its two tracking registers had flipped and the Daytime register was being used to measure/bill for Economy 7 consumption, and that it needed to be replaced. Looking at the 30 min readings, the discrepancy should (IMO) have been spotted in the billing process.

Ofgem tells me that its the suppliers responsibility to fix broken meters, although it's not clear about the scope of a meter (is it just the box, or the consumption to billing process).

I can see from the supplier's forum that others have seen similar behaviours.  Reading the SEC guidelines, I believe that such failure modes should be eliminated for these devices.

This raises in my mind the obligations on the supplier to spot, diagnose and fix faults like this. Given how challenging it would be in most circumstances for the consumer to even spot an error - especially with more complex billing patterns, it strikes me that this could be a very frequent issue that is particularly harmful to the vulnerable.

Is this something that Ofgem, or some other org, should be trying to bottom out and address?

dunstonh

Smart meter billing errors - is this likely to be a widespread issue

Assuming that what you were told is correct, ie.  a power failure transposed the readings, then that would not be widespread.  And it wouldnt matter if its smart or conventional as transposed readings can occur with both.

However, transposing registers is more common when you switch providers, but it has nothing to do with it being a smart meter

QrizB

dunstonh said:

Smart meter billing errors - is this likely to be a widespread issue

Assuming that what you were told is correct, ie.  a power failure transposed the readings, then that would not be widespread.

I'd go so far as to say it's almost unknown.

And if the meter is still smart (which seeing 30-minute readings online suggests it is) the supplier should be able to fix this remotely.

EssexHebridean

Readings being transposed as a result of "operator error" when inputting readings from old style meters however, was rife. We've had numerous threads here where it's happened - and indeed I had it happen to me when I was on E7 with two separate suppliers. 

Smart metering should reduce the instances of this occurring, I would have thought. 

Swipe

I was also a victim of nighttime usage erroneously being written to the day register when switching from EDF to E.On Next but I caught it on the very first day after my transfer when I checked my meter readings. It still took 2 weeks of phoning E.On Next daily until it was fixed.

Ectophile

The whole smart system looks like something designed by a committee.  It's needlessly over-complicated and very hard to get anything fixed when it goes wrong.

I suspect EON had the meter programmed the way they want it.  But then the power glitched and the meter reset back to it's defaults.

EON needs to get the meter reprogrammed over the air.  But they can't to that themselves.  Instead, they have to ask DCC, who are the people who run the smart meter netowrk.  Given how inept the electricity companies are, getting them to do that is a major exercise.

Ildhund

Ectophile said:

EON needs to get the meter reprogrammed over the air.  But they can't to that themselves.  Instead, they have to ask DCC, ...

Where do you get this from? There is a long list of commands and requests that network users can send to SMETS meters, so there's no need to involve DCC at all. UK Smart Meter messages and alerts .  

molerat

Ildhund said:

Ectophile said:

EON needs to get the meter reprogrammed over the air.  But they can't to that themselves.  Instead, they have to ask DCC, ...

Where do you get this from? There is a long list of commands and requests that network users can send to SMETS meters, so there's no need to involve DCC at all. UK Smart Meter messages and alerts .  

Which is where a lot of the problems lie, the incompetent idiots can change things !

Scot_39

m_tim_c said:

I'm responsible for a remote house (electricity only) that had a forced SMETS2 meter installed to cope with the RTS retirement.  After a couple of months, the steady bills, which were just for night storage heaters, leapt.

Much trouble later, and the supplier (EON) claimed that a power failure had 'broken' the meter so that its two tracking registers had flipped and the Daytime register was being used to measure/bill for Economy 7 consumption, and that it needed to be replaced. Looking at the 30 min readings, the discrepancy should (IMO) have been spotted in the billing process.

Ofgem tells me that its the suppliers responsibility to fix broken meters, although it's not clear about the scope of a meter (is it just the box, or the consumption to billing process).

I can see from the supplier's forum that others have seen similar behaviours.  Reading the SEC guidelines, I believe that such failure modes should be eliminated for these devices.

This raises in my mind the obligations on the supplier to spot, diagnose and fix faults like this. Given how challenging it would be in most circumstances for the consumer to even spot an error - especially with more complex billing patterns, it strikes me that this could be a very frequent issue that is particularly harmful to the vulnerable.

Is this something that Ofgem, or some other org, should be trying to bottom out and address?

Meters are I would expect designed to cope with power loss and retain their configurations.

It shouldn't really have normally caused this behaviour.

How long did the power go off for ?

As there are users here who live in rural areas - more likely to be off gas grid as a result - so maybe on twin rate meters - who suffer several power outages per year.

And cannot remember them reporting a similar register reversal ?

Scot_39

Ectophile said:

The whole smart system looks like something designed by a committee.  It's needlessly over-complicated and very hard to get anything fixed when it goes wrong.

I suspect EON had the meter programmed the way they want it.  But then the power glitched and the meter reset back to it's defaults.

EON needs to get the meter reprogrammed over the air.  But they can't to that themselves.  Instead, they have to ask DCC, who are the people who run the smart meter netowrk.  Given how inept the electricity companies are, getting them to do that is a major exercise.

Suppliers were given (or did they request - I cannot now remember) responsibility for a complex piece of electronics - with a high degree of software / parameter configuration flexibility.

Without it would seem either they in some cases - or the regulator Ofgem - apparently fully realising the skills gap that needed to be filled.

A meter used to come out of its box and do its set job - upto and including digital pre smart - that remained largely true.

Yet nearly 15 years later - after smets1 began at least low volume rollout c2011 - we still see customers fighting suppliers - to get their meters configured and operating properly.

The two long thread series - by PZ19 and Rose1001 - both involving EDF - are truly frightening - given the timescales since initial switch to smart - smets 1 and now even smets2.

In hindsight not only the rollout but IMO perhaps even the configuration / parameterization control itself - might well have been better handled by a central org - in the same ways comms for smets2 - and then upgraded smets1 - was handed to the DCC.

It might have made things like "Snug Octopus" trickier to set-up - care woud be needed to protect the commercial reward for such innovation - but to be honest - most large supplies havent been that quick to add such new flexible metering and billing schemes.

QrizB

Scot_39 said:

Ectophile said:

The whole smart system looks like something designed by a committee.  It's needlessly over-complicated and very hard to get anything fixed when it goes wrong.

I suspect EON had the meter programmed the way they want it.  But then the power glitched and the meter reset back to it's defaults.

EON needs to get the meter reprogrammed over the air.  But they can't to that themselves.  Instead, they have to ask DCC, who are the people who run the smart meter netowrk.  Given how inept the electricity companies are, getting them to do that is a major exercise.

Suppliers were given (or did they request - I cannot now remember) responsibility for a complex piece of electronics

The UK smart meter system was devised under a government that believed the Free Market would deliver a superior system, at lower cost to the consumer, than a government-led approach would.

So we've got dozens of different models of smart meter, all with their own quirks and a configuration control nightmare for the DCC, suppliers, installers and everyone else.

The oft-missed @Dolor would often compare this to the approach taken in eg. France, where there is a single reference design of domestic smart meter that is used everywhere.