[Andy65]

Hi,

Apologies if this has been asked before but as with most Forums the search facility hasn't proved fruitful.

Firstly, I had my Smart Meters installed on Wednesday (I'd resisted it as long as I could because I don't believe the suggested benefits are worth the billions of expenditure), I can see the usage of both fuels on my IHD so that is working fine. If I log in to my online account it says neither fuel has received a reading although the Gas shows all 9's as per the initial install.
I thought the whole idea was that smart meters sent readings daily or even more frequently?

How long am I expected to wait before any readings appear on my account, is there a time lag?
Also, I assumed that being 'Smart' meters that I would be able to see my meter readings on my IHD but I don't seem to be able to find them.

My second question is related to the above. I asked the installer how do I read the electricity meters - I'm on Economy 7 so I'm used to taking both readings every month. The installer send it was too complicated to cycle through to get the second reading and so wouldn't show me. Is there a way of taking both readings?

I've been reading my meters for years, entering them into an Excel sheet which totals the cost etc every month. As far as I see the fitting of Smart Meters could be taking away some of the basic functionality that I have been accessing.

Thanks in advance for any help or guidance.

[theunknowntech]

Howdy! You've reached theunknowntech, forum volunteer and mysterious wizard.

Apparently, if you have an S2 L+G E470, it's completely unintuitive but here's how you can do that. Hold down the B button for five seconds, let go and immediately press the A button. This should do the trick. In some cases though, you may still need to hold B when you press A.

If that doesn't work for you, please post photos of your meter and I'll grab the details you're after.

I think full Smart functionality should activate within six weeks by the way. It takes that long to commission the meters. But perhaps I can also get Beki to check the read schedules.

[Andy65]

Thanks for that theunknowntech, I'll check the meter type tomorrow and give it a try. I don't think that I've had or seen anything that suggests it can take up to 6 weeks, you'd think that they would make that clear.

[theunknowntech]

No worries. It's a complicated matter when it comes to the commissioning process. I only know about the six week thing because my friend Blastoise186 told me. And he only knows about it because one of his friends Transparent told him. And no idea where Transparent got it from... Probably buried in some massive guide book I suppose. XD

Anyway, glad I could help. I'm monitoring this thread now, so if you reply again I'll be alerted.

[Andy65]

It worked no problem theunknowntech (I never had any doubts 😉), but if a Mod reads this perhaps they can arrange for the 'How to read your meter' advice shown in customers accounts to be updated. I never noticed it before but it does say for two rate Smart Electric Meters to press the Blue button to see the Night reading, which clearly isn't right as there isn't a Blue button for a start, not on mine anyway.

Thanks again.

[theunknowntech]

There are Smart Meters with blue buttons on them, but definitely not ones from L+G. There's only two meter brands that I know would have this, which are Secure and Aclara.

And out of those two... The blue "A" Button on Secure Liberty meters is pretty much redundant if your meter is in Credit Mode, as it only really exists for Prepayment Mode. So that's Secure out of the running! As for Aclara... Easy. The SMETS1 Aclara SGM1300 Series definitely has blue buttons... Except that both the A and B buttons are blue, making that guide a little unhelpful. The SMETS2 Aclara SGM14100 Series however, has only one blue A button and the other one is an orange B button. That's probably what the guide refers to.

Then again, for an Aclara meter you don't even need to touch it anyway to grab meter readings. ALL Aclara meters auto-scroll through the meter readings on the display by default whenever the meter is in sleep mode, making it easy to grab them hands-free. You only need to press any button at all if you'd like to wake up the backlight and/or hold the display on a particular screen for a while. :)