[Danda2022]

I hope someone can help. My son is a student living alone in a 1 bed flat with storage heaters.
I am paying his bills til he can support himself (I live in Ireland). End of November I switched him to a day/ night Flex tariff because of the storage heaters. The bill for Dec was £650 for 4 weeks. He was actually home in Dublin leaving everything switched off for some of the time.

Daytime usage was 2500 units, night 350. Is that even possible? At the very least I need to switch back to a standard tariff but I have emailed 3 times for help/explanation/suggestions and I just get told to send yet more readings and up my direct debit. Readings/usage has been normal in the weeks since. He checked the numbers do not move with master switch on the fusebox off, it's a (very expensive) mystery....

[theunknowntech]

Howdy! Good thing theunknowntech is around then. :)

I can try to figure this out, but I'll need photos of the meters please. I get the feeling your son has been getting the readings the wrong way round, so I'd like to check that he's reading it correctly. I can't access the account, but I can give advice that might solve the mystery.

[Danda2022]

Thanks for replying. They are definitely the right way round.

18 Sept. Day. 12487. Night. 06398
3 Oct. Day. 12573. Night. 06448
19 Nov. Day. 12612. Night. 06556
16 Dec. Day. 15109. Night. 06896
20 Jan. Day. 15498. Night. 07031
3 Feb. Day. 15663. Night. 07120

I have attached photos from yesterday.

Any thoughts appreciated. I live alone in a 3 bed house and don't think I could use that much power in 1 go even if I turned everything on at once. He is in a small 1 bed flat and doesn't have a dishwasher or tumble dryer.

[Beki]

@Danda2022 Hey there, Beki here. 👋
I can see what you mean, there is a massive jump there. Can I ask if the readings from Sept, Oct and Nov were estimated readings or whether you had taken them yourself?

[theunknowntech]

Just as a quick note as well. Your current electric meter has approximately 16 months left on its certification and will be due for re-certification in June 2023. It's at this point that it'll be considered end of service life for the most part, so you might want to consider getting it upgraded soon. There's no rush just yet as you've still got just over a year left on it, but it's probably worth considering soon.

[Beki]

@Danda2022 Also, one is reading R and the other is R1.... 🤔

[meldrewreborn]

The front of the meter says R1 is night and r2 is day. We’ve no picture of R2 reading, but the readings have been reversed at some stage.

Also clocks for the heaters might no be in sync with the meter switching.