[DickieW]

Morning all,

Just wondered if anyone had a similar experience following smart meter installation? I had a smart meter fitted 2 weeks ago. We are 2 people in a house and have used circa 250-300KW per month over the last 8 years and spent around£100 per month on electricity.
Had a smart meter fitted 2 weeks ago and first bill for only 2 weeks shows 850kw usage and £260 bill. Therefore for the whole month usage has jumped by 8-9 times with zero change of appliances etc.
Checked today and we've apparently used another 160KW in 24hrs-this comes out at around £42 so a yearly bill of £15,000 as opposed to our standard £1500.
Contacted EON next who are looking into it but did suggest the old meter was reading low! I pointed out we were 2 adults out at work all day and run a TV,fridge and electric shower at worst(central heating and water is gas) and that £15,000 a year was a tad high.
My in home display did show £31 the second the engineer installed it which he had never seen before but then settled to £2-3 per day in line with our expected usage of around £100 per month.
Hoping this can be sorted as I don't want to be paying as if I'm running Amazon. All previous bills have been with confirmed not estimated readings.
Grateful for advice if anyone else has experienced this!
Thanks

[meldrewreborn]

@DickieW

I'd demand that eon next install a check meter.

Our expert on these matters is @theunknowntech but I'm not sure if he's about at the moment. I'm fairly sure he would suggest, as a first self help step, is to perform a creep test, which involves turning everything off via the fuse box and then see what happens on the meter. If it still shows consumption then its clearly faulty. In which case a replacement meter as a matter of priority is called for.

[meldrewreborn]

This is what @theunknowntech posted to another similar question

With that, I've got the next steps for you. It's extremely important that you only perform this test during the day because you'll temporarily lose all power as part of the process. If your mother relies on electricity for medical reasons or similar, please don't perform this test as I'd rather not risk disrupting supply to critical equipment.

With that said, here's what to do.

1. Safely shut down all electrical/electronic equipment but leave a single light on
2. Grab a torch - it may come in handy
3. Take a meter reading from the electric meter, ideally from both registers as you've got Economy 7 (ignore the Smart Meter, that's probably for someone else) and note these down
4. Turn off the power to the entire property using the fusebox/consumer unit
5. Observe the electric meter for around 10 minutes - ALL dials and rotors should stop spinning completely within 30 seconds
6. After 10 minutes, take another meter reading and note it down
7. Turn the power back on and you can now power up anything you turned off before the test
8. Please let me know the results of the test and the readings both before and after it.

Based on the test results, I'll then give you advice based on what I think is best.

[DickieW]

@meldrewreborn Many thanks for the reply. I've been taking readings the last 3 days and we have been used 7,7 and 9 KW respectively which is just what I would expect. The previous day was 159KW and the 15 days before averages 53 but I didn't think to take daily readings for that period as I presumed the new smart meter would be correct. Therefore from the last 3 days it looks like it has settled down but the previous consumption is a mystery as nothing whatsoever has changed.
I turned all off as you suggested and left it-nothing went up on the meter-unfortunately since the old meter went there are no dials or things moving any more, just green flashing lights so I'm not sure how you know if it's showing consumption-do you know if there's a way please?
Thanks again for your help.

[meldrewreborn]

@DickieW
you jest compRE THE READINGS TO DETERMINE CONSUMPION. Sorry about the caps!

[theunknowntech]

Nothing here is suggesting that the meters are faulty. Are you maybe just using a lot more juice than you expected perhaps?