Yawn, another meter question

They do say humour is wasted on t'internet.

I done that years back and never bother now. What I do is make sure things like washing machines are full loads and fridge/freezer are never going to be off anyhow so doesnt really matter what they use as I cant reallt influence it.

My bills for a 4 bed detached were around £1500 per year 6 years ago and now around £1000 and thats with several price increases although I have switched suppliers twice.

Indeed so. Interestingly the cost of electricity for a dishwasher load is less than the detergent capsule.

Chris

Then there is the useful life of the kit. I have only had 3 years from this unit:

It enabled me to keep an eye on my PV system and usage. I liked being able to glance at the display and also look at the real time graph on my PC.

Getting a good signal for the remote display can be tricky, and I don't have thick walls or a long distance to cope with.

The accuracy was generally acceptable, though it sometimes seemed to imagine PV generation at night, or spells of zero usage.

However, it has now stopped working completely, and shows no signal even if I hold it right next to the transmitter. I might try changing channels again, but I think it is probably dead. :-(

Maybe if I am looking to replace this, I might look for something that will do both the immersion trick and provide monitoring data, but it does make me pessimistic about payback/ life.

Chris

ISTR old money had shillings...

Possibly after changing batteries there is a reset or pairing sequence that is not detailed in the manual.

I have a British Gas branded electricity monitor that after a battery change will not pair with the clip on sensor unless a sequence of buttons is pressed. This sequence is not detailed in the instruction book but is urban knowledge on the Internet. This sequence is not the same as the first pairing instructions.

I recently changed the battery in a friends oil tank sensor. The instructions helpfully told me to just change the battery and as the senor and display had been previously paired the link again would be automatically established within an hour. Fat chance . In the end I had to start the pairing from scratch which involved again removing the sensor from the tank and placing it in contact with the display. The sensor has a reed switch and the display an inbuilt magnet and when brought together the reed switch is made which puts the sensor into a pairing mode.

The sensor battery is in a holder on a PCB which has to be removed from the sensor casing. The PCB can be reinstalled in the casing in one of two ways. Nowhere in the instructions does it say identify the reed switch on the PCB and make sure that the PCB is inserted so that it is adjacent to a (painted) spot on the outside of the sensor casing. The pairing instructions say place the sensor with the spot adjacent to the display (which puts the reed switch in close proximity to the magnet). Guess what doesn't work if the PCB is inserted the wrong way around and guess how long it took to work out what was going wrong.

You got the Spanish version.

Do you have a sore throat?

I metered my dishwasher and washing machine and both were using pitiful amounts of electricity - and I wash "normal" at 60/40C and towels at 95C.

And there we have it - just as I've guessed with so many.

Brexiteers want the UK to be top dog again - just as it was in Victorian times. Didn't realise just how old they actually were. Apart from Rees Mogg, obviously.

Apologies if anyone else has already linked this, but this blog from someone who seems to understand the electricity market concludes it is a con. And the National Audit Office is due to report in the Autumn, apparently.