SMART meter understanding

I can only see a total

I don't have a smart meter, but I have a LOT of always on kit - refrigerators, freezers, router, Openreach fibre NTE, two house servers., a 24 port Ethernet switch, a telephone PABX, a UHF/VHF distribution amplifier. A sewage processing unit. Smoke alarms. Central heating controller. Smart thermostats

Adding a kettle or a cooker makes little difference, and the house was well over 22°C all night so no heater needed.

I take your subject line in the same way as 'Military Intelligence' is often used.

As I meant it to sound. SNAFU!

As well as the "Today 2.96 kWh" you can see the longest "hour" bar is calibrated as representing 0.34 kW / kWh.

You can also deduce that the tiny bar for 1100h to 1200h is WAY less than 15 minutes would lead you to expect.

Weird.

You're missing my point. How come that the meter didn't appear to notice the heater or the PC? And why doesn't the total match the sum of the bar-graph's bars?

So it seems!

I've just had an email from Octopus.

During their "free"-energy hours I've maxed out on storing heat, using about 7 kWh per hour. For each hour, I've been charged £1.76 - then rebated 23p.

How dishonest is that?

I don't think you can take too much notice from the in house displays. I turned my heatin on for a couple ot house the other day but according to the display I didn't use any gas at all. Probably the only way you can tell for sure is to compare the meter reading one day with another.

Fixed 12M tariff: 25.25p per kWh

and I read all of the below before I signed up for a SMART meter.

It is just not working as per the above - period !

I also criticised Octopus for estimating my Gas consumption. Withering remarks about the purpose of fitting a Smart Meter. So they are going to look into that. The meter was installed on 5th August, so they've no excuse for doing nothing useful about that issue, either.

What's all that carp I hear about how good Octopus is?

See my comment to alan_m

I agree that it is all anti-KISS, but the foul-up is human.

Octopus state that during each "free" hour you will still have to pay for what you would have used had it not been a "free" hour.

What petty over-complication. My typical consumption is 0.25kWh per hour. Can't they - for KISS's sake - forgo the 6p baseline for that one hour?

Classic FAFO from Octopus

Which means you can't really use s smart meter for what 'they' have been telling us they're good for.

In reality an ammeter with a nice analogue needle would be far better at telling one **now** what power is being consumed. This whole process of sending signals all over the place, back to the cloud and down again is pointless.

What was your normal usage? Which tariff?

quote During the time period specified in the email you can use as much electricity as you like, and any energy above your norm will be free!

How do you work out my normal use?

We'll look at your historical smart meter readings to work out your typical energy use at that time of day. If the Session is on a weekday, we'll look at your half-hourly usage over the last 10 weekdays. If the Session is at the weekend, we'll look at your half-hourly usage at that time within the last 4 weekend days. We'll not include days where a Session took place in these calculations.

Also,

How does free electricity work with Intelligent Octopus Go and Intelligent Octopus Flux?

During the session, FILL YOUR BOOTS: all the electricity you use above your normal household consumption will be free – excluding any power from your Intelligent device.

https://octopus.energy/free-electricity/#intelligent_faq

Don’t confuse “smart meter” with the “In house display (IHD)”. I would be paying vastly more for my power now were it not for the access to tariffs that a smart meter gives me.

I have never kept any of my IHDs out on display but as far as I can recall, they’ve all had the option to display “instantaneous” consumption.

Tim

It’s a sad fact that the smart meter tech that has been rolled out in the UK is pants. Where the “smart tech” is most important is for electricity consumption reporting. Few, if any customers, are on tariffs where time dependant gas consumption figures are important so sorting out gas meter reading issues have a low priority in the grand scheme of things.

Don’t like estimated gas bills? Then just submit a manual reading through the app. Very easy to do.

Whoever you’re contacting at Octopus, “withering” or other types of remarks made to support staff don’t help. They’re just doing a job. If you want action from Octopus be polite, persistent and explain why you need your smart meter to work as described. Contacting them through Twitter/X has always worked for me.

After 4 smart meters and a comms unit extension cable I have at last, touch wood, got reliable comms. Octopus have worked hard for me (and my neighbour) to get our meters working.

Are they the best of a bad lot? Possibly. Personally I have a lot of respect for Greg Jackson and Octopus’s innovative approach to selling energy. It would take a *lot* to persuade me to move away from Octopus.

Tim

That doesn't work as many loads are intermittent. The fridge takes 0W when the compressor is off and rather more when it's on. It also doesn't consider power factor.

Your IHD gives yourconsumption with no cloud, only the wireless link from the meter. The metering data does need to be uploaded for billing purposes.

(the reason the Mini uploads your live data is because people want to use phone apps. I think somebody sells a USB device for local access)

For you it might be 0.25, for someone else it might be 20. They have to have the same rules for everyone. (and it's all computerised, there's isn't some clerk writing your account in the ledger and deciding to be generous)

It sounds like there is some problem with either your meter or your IHD. I would raise it with Octopus. Although I would first confirm the readings on their website - the ones they are sent are the ones used for billing, not whatever it says on the IHD.

Theo

• You, what? More than 10 MWh per month?

I have and I have.

So? The sell of smart meters was that they showed you your consumption **now** so that you could see what was usong the electricity you were paying for. In your example it would be clear that your fridge takes electricity in chunks.

Oh, yes, you're right in that the Mini shows consumption locally, but it's still no better than an analogue ammeter and not as good in many ways. If you use the Octopus API to get readings back then they

As I've been doing for many years and letting a variable DD keep the balance at nil. And is what should be happening, still. Except that it isn't.

I've the advantage of actually having taken part in the call.

I would have agreed before this issue arose. Octopus should have detected and addressed the issue by now, 45 days since the meter was installed.

Octopus states that the gas data isn't being reported. I suspect that they may not be getting the electricity data, either - which might explain the bogus rebates. That said, both meters know the tariff details and the gas meter itself is metering the gas correctly, so - Hmmm.

Not too pleased with the early August physical conversion process from non-Smart to Smart, either. Not at all straightforward.

Does your ammeter show live consumption, consumption over the last five minutes, consumption over the last thirty minutes, daily/weekly/monthly/annual consumption? Does it switch between kWhr and cost? Does your ammeter also show your gas consumption?

Tim

You can check what reading Octopus have by going your on-line account and downloading the data in a .csv format - suitable for Excel or Libra Calc. "My Energy"/"Get your energy geek on"/select Gas or Electricity, Start and End date and press download. It's quick for a few days of data but if you select months it may take 5 minutes before the download.

The data for both gas and electricity has a resolution of 30 minutes (unless you have changed the default settings)

Just below the download button for the above is a link for Smart Meter Data Preferences

Earlier readings look like less than 0.34 - so maybe that side of things is accurate enough.

Quite how it's recording usage shown given your described usage is baffling. I'd stick with getting Octopus to explain it.

Meantime, if you have a smart phone, maybe try the Hildebrand Bright route. I might indicate a problem with your IHD.

Other IHDs are available . . . but I'd try and sort out what's going on here first.

My Eon display is pretty accurate and informative, although there's a maximum