Electricity meter change

[harry]

I was ten years, you are right, I changed many but that was in the

60s/ days of spinning disks. It was an accuracy issue.

Maybe the electronic ones don't need changing so often now.

[harry]

The supplier and the grid owner will not be the same company.

[Chris J Dixon]

Some years ago my gas meter was changed to an electronic one. More recently, they changed again, and went back to the old mechanical design.

Apparently, what with the changes in responsibilities for metering, the new company didn't want the hassle of battery replacement.

Chris

[Bill Taylor]

Our mechanical one was changed to electronic in 2008. At the beginning of January it was replaced it with the same type, the man who changed it said that they had problems with the LCD display becoming unreadable.

FWIW that's the third time our meter has been changed since 1999; every time they have arrived when they said they would and they have been pleasant, competent and read the meters correctly.

[ARW]

I cannot remember if it was the gas or electricity meter that was supposed to be swapped and they failed to turn up.When I called them the excuse was "it's a new build and we cannot find the address". Odd that as my house is over 60 years old and I had been paying the metered bill that the meter readers took for the last 10 years.

[Andy Burns]

My previous gas meter had an unused pulse output. but this was changed for a smart gas meter (also with a pulse output) at the same time as my smart electricity meter was fitted.

They are on opposite sides of the same wall, by rather than fit a 12" cable between the two, the gas meter has a 10 year battery and transmits its readings every 30 minutes to the electricity meter (powered from the mains) which in turn transmits readings to the supplier by 2G mobile phone network (at present, once a month) and by Wireless M-BUS to my in-house display unit (every few seconds).

I'm half tempted to buy one of these to see what non-encrypted information is flying about.

But £55 is a bit steep for possibly nothing, my old CurrentCost box used to spit out information in XML format to a serial port.

[Andy Burns]

Since 1990, my electricity meter has been changed once, and my gas meter twice.

[Another John]

OP here: thanks for all this feedback chaps: glad I asked! :-)

John

[Part Timer]

I have a friend who told me 4 years ago her meter was only recording suspiciously low amounts (10s per quarter!) but she paid the bills on time and no more was said. She owned the property and it had done this since moving in. I'll have to ask if it's still there.

[John J Armstrong]

I've been following this thread with interest. My daughter is in a flat which is about six years old. The LCD display on her electric meter recently became unreadable, constantly flashing "88888". She got in touch with her supplier (EDF) who helpfully sent her a leaflet explaining how to read the meter and telling her that a "flashing red light on the meter was perfectly normal". After a lot of phone calls, and emails over several weeks, she was told that someone would call to fit a new meter last Thursday. On Wednesday evening she got a call from EDF saying that as she was about to change supplier (quite true) they would not be calling to change her meter, and she should take the matter up with her new supplier.

They say they'll accept an estimated reading when she changes.

Any comments, please?

[ARW]

She should say that the flat has been empty since the last proper meter reading.

[Dave Liquorice]

The "grid owner" only deals with the supply up to the cut out.

The company that you pay for your electricity is responsible from the cut out to the CU tails, ie the meter and other associated connections. So changing supplier (note supplier not supply) moves the responsiblity for the meter etc from one company to another.

[Huge]

What he said.

[ARW]

dennis will have a fit.

[Huge]

Good.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I worked on a remote meter reading project in late 1980s. At that time, domestic meters were designed/specified with 40 year life. One of the reasons they couldn't use LEDs or LCDs at that point was they didn't have a 40 year life. (It was the first thing just about everyone who joined the project asked.)

[Terry Fields]

I once had a meter with Normal and Low mileometer-type readouts.

One day the meter reader inserted the wrong values into his box, and I got billed for £6000.

It took *two years* to sort out, and then it was only because a nice young lady in the call centre spent an entire afternoon chasing readings through the now-defunct system used at the time, these being incompatible with the new system.