Oh ok fair enough! Same process either way though! XD

They told me that a test would cost around £80 to £100 if the meter was found to be OK. I agreed and assumed that they would, as the relevant part of the .gov.uk website advises, install a check meter and send the existing to an independent test lab. What happened was a man in a van with a fan arrived and carried out what looked to me to be very simplistic tests that would not show, for example, an intermittent fault. This was over a month ago and no result came and their helpline wouldn’t answer my questions! 

Yesterday, a team leader took over and apologised for the service I’d had over the many months I’ve been trying to sort this out. She got the result (meter up to 8% out using the test results from man van fan) and undertook to refund excess payment and to have a SMETS2 meter installed. She made the appointment and, all in all, she was excellent in the way she dealt with the issue. Clearly some members of her team need shaking up; and I suspect this will happen!

I still need to identify other issues that must exist and, indeed, I am going to switch off the underfloor heating pumps overnight to include or eliminate them from the mix. Then, if that isn’t the answer, I’ll start to eliminate other circuits one by one.

BTW This an excellent forum! 

Thanks! I’m glad you like the place. :)

It’s a LOT of hard work to keep this place running, even with the efforts of all the forum volunteers and moderators combined.

Generally if the existing meter is found to be more than X% inaccurate as the result of a Meter Accuracy Test (OFMAT for Gas), it triggers the process you’ve seen. You don’t get charged extra if the meter was clocking slow however - the supplier will let you have that for free in such cases.

Gas meters are always sent off to a testing lab and replaced as part of an OFMAT, since there’s no possible way to test them on-site. Electric meters remain in place with a check meter and are only replaced if they’re faulty.

Just curious though, but who is your supplier?

@Blastoise186 The process sounds very much like it is the tentacled one. In which case I am confident that the customer won’t lose out due to the errant meter readings. When they struggled to get readings from my meter for a couple of weeks they wrote it off without even being asked.

Making some progress! The spikes throughout the night and day are very short in duration and are caused by the Quooker hot tap maintaining the temperature of its insulated reservoir. I turned this off for two nights and the spikes disappeared, but the underlying usage is still around .9Kw to 1Kw throughout - so the major problem still exists and I’ll will investigate further.

@edgood good to hear you are making progress.

As you say the background usage is very high which indicates one or more things on continuously. 

Ooh - that sounds like a very extravagant gadget ! Bet it’s fab though... 

That is still excessive in my opinion and you need to find out what it is.   I have a large house with remote garage and workshop.       Permanently running:    Intruder alarm with radio links to remote buildings,  a full wired and wireless network with radio data links to remote,  intelligent home lighting control panel, water softener,  TV aerial splitter,  mobile phone picocell, plus radios, phones,  mobile phone chargers, TVs, microwave, cookers, washing machine, dishwasher, PCs, printers   all on standby,  fridge/freezers (3) on but not chilling.      With no lights on,    all of that comes to under 300w.

The intruder alarm - including smoke detectors &c uses 20w,  the computer network when idle around 60-80w,  lighting control maybe 30w …    So,  all of my other devices takes maybe 150w - and there is a lot of those.

So,   where is your consumption going ?      You will have some fun investigating.

Good progress @edgood 

Now let's try and get the baseload down to save you some money.

Worth remembering that a baseload that is 500W higher than others could be costing around £4 extra per day, so getting on for £1500 extra per year.