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Should i have my meter checked ?
6 Answers
I live in a 3 bed, mid terrace house which is smallish. There's me and my wife there, my 13 year old daughter and we also have a Japanese student. My oven's electric, we have 2 big tvs, i have a largish tropical fish tank, we have a washing machine and dishwasher and apart from that, not really anything else worth mentioning that a normal family of 4 doesn't have.
ALL the lights are energy efficient and i even use LED's in the bathroom which run at about 4watts each
Heating and the hob is gas.
About 5...maybe a few more, years ago, they fitted new digital meters in all the houses round here. My bills have been horendous and im paying £150 a month for electric and £77 a month for gas.
People laugh at me when i tell them this. I am with British gas but in the process of moving to Scottish power as ive been told i can save up to 22%.
But could my meter be out ? what's the score about getting it checked ? Can someone independant of one of the main companies check it or do i have to ask someone like EON or EDF.
Do you think it's worth it ? am i paying a lot ?
Thanks
HM
ALL the lights are energy efficient and i even use LED's in the bathroom which run at about 4watts each
Heating and the hob is gas.
About 5...maybe a few more, years ago, they fitted new digital meters in all the houses round here. My bills have been horendous and im paying £150 a month for electric and £77 a month for gas.
People laugh at me when i tell them this. I am with British gas but in the process of moving to Scottish power as ive been told i can save up to 22%.
But could my meter be out ? what's the score about getting it checked ? Can someone independant of one of the main companies check it or do i have to ask someone like EON or EDF.
Do you think it's worth it ? am i paying a lot ?
Thanks
HM
Answers
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At £5 per day, works out at around 30kWh per day electricity consumption (based on typical units costs) – or over 1kWh every hour (24 hrs a day), which seems high given your situation. Given these costs, I would invest in one of the meters that monitors your total household electricity usage and compare the figures. Typically such units cost around £30.
http://www.maplin.co....y-saving-meter-225407
or £50 if you buy it from Maplin.
http://www.maplin.co....y-saving-meter-225407
or £50 if you buy it from Maplin.
You need to actually take a reading of the meter and then read again after a set time , say a week. Then you will know how many units of electricity you are using. Without knowing that we would just be guessing . The heating will have an electric pump to pump water to the radiators so that uses electricity as well. You could try turning off everything for a short time and seeing if the meter still goes up.
Another thought , have you got a 2 rate meter where the night rate is cheaper ? I have heard of them being set incorredtly so that you do not get the cheap rate. Anyway the first step is to find out how much the meter says you are using, read it now and then again same time tomorrow then you will know how many units you are being billed for.
In the short term, do as Hymie suggests.
The other thing to do is to check roughly how many units per year you were using before the meter was changed versus now. Do not assess it on the cost of bills - the price per unit has shifted so much over the last 5 years - you need to relate it to units used.
I will now tell you a little story related to smart electricity meters which I resolved last summer. I was working for a client who had a commercial electricity contract and one of the properties had a smart meter fitted 3 yeasr ago. Since then, the electricity usage shot up by a factor of about 10 for no apparent reason. All attempts to discuss the situation with the supplier fell on deaf ears ('these meters don't go wrong') - made worse because the client changed commercial supplier in the midst of the problem. Finally, last summer, after we commissioned an independent electrical contractor to test the system with a data logger (an industrial version of what Hymie is suggesting) the meter company agreed to fit a check meter for a month and, guess what, the original meter was shown to be clocking at 10x the true rate.
The problem was in the original meter set-up - it had been set to clock at the wrong rate.
It is my understanding that these new smart meters are quite accurate at what they do, but they have to be set-up right. So don't try saying that a smart meter is 15% wrong - an error will be a multiple. But if it is say 200%, 400% or even as in my case 1000% wrong, you are probably onto something. BM
The other thing to do is to check roughly how many units per year you were using before the meter was changed versus now. Do not assess it on the cost of bills - the price per unit has shifted so much over the last 5 years - you need to relate it to units used.
I will now tell you a little story related to smart electricity meters which I resolved last summer. I was working for a client who had a commercial electricity contract and one of the properties had a smart meter fitted 3 yeasr ago. Since then, the electricity usage shot up by a factor of about 10 for no apparent reason. All attempts to discuss the situation with the supplier fell on deaf ears ('these meters don't go wrong') - made worse because the client changed commercial supplier in the midst of the problem. Finally, last summer, after we commissioned an independent electrical contractor to test the system with a data logger (an industrial version of what Hymie is suggesting) the meter company agreed to fit a check meter for a month and, guess what, the original meter was shown to be clocking at 10x the true rate.
The problem was in the original meter set-up - it had been set to clock at the wrong rate.
It is my understanding that these new smart meters are quite accurate at what they do, but they have to be set-up right. So don't try saying that a smart meter is 15% wrong - an error will be a multiple. But if it is say 200%, 400% or even as in my case 1000% wrong, you are probably onto something. BM
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