Annual electric consumption of 12,000 kWh for only 2 people- What's wrong?

I don’t think it’s a meter issue personally. When you had the meter checked were you asked if you’d like the results of whether the meter was within acceptable tolerances confirmed in writing? It would be useful to see the summary of this. If this was with the supplier you mentioned the quickest response is likely to be via Twitter direct message, if you use that.

Going back to basics, I’d turn absolutely everything off for 30-60 minutes, if you can, just to confirm that the meter isn’t picking up any abnormal usage. If it is then we really do have a puzzle.

Your comment about a shared meter still makes me wonder.

Work round your house and turn OFF every socket, switched spur, light, heating - EVERYTHING including fridge/freezers which will survive for a few hours.      But leave all the breakers and main supply on.    Wrap up in blankets with your torch and charged mobile for company - or go to teh pub!       

Check teh meter at the start and then after 1, 2, 3 hours - how much has been used?    It should be ZERO.       Then get back to normal.

If it is ZERO you will need to find out what device is causing it.   If it is greater than Zero,  then power is going outside your house.

Finally my issues were taken up by an excellent team leader, who acted very promptly to locate the result of the meter test. This showed it was up to around 8% inaccurate, with some variation between the three tests done at the same appointment. They will replace the meter with a SMETS2 and IHD and refund me for overpayments in the past.  This, of course, only accounts for a small part of our consumption, but it is a start!

I took  the suggestion from juliamc  re the possibility that the immersion heater was wired directly and not through the dedicated switch and turned that circuit off, last night at the consumer unit.  Coincidence or not, the half-hourly spikes disappeared and only two spikes were recorded across the whole overnight period. I’ll see if this continues.

I’ll start to do the wholesale switching-off of circuits when my wife is away for the day next week!

It looks now as though the heavy consumption is due to a range of issues - I am sure with the excellent suggestions on this forum, I will track down the problems.

Not a bad result then! It sounds like you’ll also get the £160 test fee back as well.

Just thought I’d let you know that it may take a few weeks for OVO to validate exactly how much to refund and make the arrangements, but you’ll know when it happens. The end result is that for the most part, you should be put back in a position you’d have been in had the existing meter been accurate.

8% inaccurate is quite substantial as well! 

Thanks Blastoise186  I have to point out that I am not with OVO. The previous poor responses were from another supplier. They don’t have an excellent forum such as this

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.