I think my meter is clocking too fast - How can I test if my high usage is due to a faulty meter?

Im currently on my first month with ovo energy, and not sure how I’ve been using only £1+ a day on electric and all of the sudden I’ve apparently used £35+ in one day and all of the sudden I’ve been using £4+ a day?! It’s only myself who lives at home and never in!

Where are you seeing these amounts? On the OVO app?

Hey @Lowri,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community.

Can we get a bit more information on this? Have you submitted a reading which has caused a catch up bill or do you have a smart meter that’s been not in communication so we’ve been estimating usage?

Here are some great guides which might help answer your query:

If you are talking about the plug in device (In Home Display) the figures on this may be incorrect. This won’t affect your billing, you get billed to your readings from your meters. I’d log into your Online Account, check your statements and readings.

Hope this helps. 

Hi all, 

Having read a few threads on this forum it seems like a good place to get some advice on my smart meter, which I suspect might be reading high. I'll put my hands up first of all, as I've not fully researched this issue myself yet, that's a WIP but I'm hoping some of you guys might be able to save me a few hrs googling and point me in the right direction. 

So, I have an Aclara SGM 1433-B, which based on my initial research appears to be a beast of a meter and about as good as they get. This is because I'm on a three phase supply and will be installing solar PV shortly and a 22KW EV charger, so it's definitely the right unit for my needs. My property is a 4 bed detached 1990's build with mostly blown double glazing (it's a project house) and mediocre insulation. The problem is that since starting to use the smart meter my consumption appears to have gone crazy, and as I have my heat pump metered seperately for RHI purposes I can see what it is using vs the rest of the property.  Having visibility of my daily consumption is arguably part of the fight I've gotten, but even taking peaks and troughs into account on my old readings the figures I'm getting now still seem bonkers. E. G. So far today I have consumed almost 70kwh(!), yes that's today, since midnight, not this week!  Now in fairness around 20 of that went straight into the EV, but the rest has been used by the heat pump and other appliances. The problem is my heat pump whilst accounting for the lions share of our consumption, does not account for all of it.  As an example last night 5kwh was consumed by other stuff whilst we were all in bed, during which time the heating was off, and appliances (all of which are post 2008 and presumably standby reg compliant) were in standby mode and not in use. This morning between starting work and lunchtime 8kwh was consumed by other stuff, OK I have a laptop and two led monitors plus two lamps with led bulbs to add into the mix, but thats about it when I wfh. This seems crazy high, and I cannot fathom where all this energy is going. 

I started monitoring this yesterday and logging readings a few times per day, but I'm only on day 2 so need a bit more data, and to do a few more experiments before I get a clear picture. Conveniently I am on a bivalent heating setup where my boiler kicks in when the ASHP becomes less efficient, so with a bit of rewiring earlier I now have it setup so I can manually switch it over from ASHP to gas boiler at anytime (saving either the planet or the pennies, as I like to see it!). I did this tonight so this will help rule out any issues with the ASHP meter, and also give me a true comparison of the cost of the heat pump vs gas,but it doesn't help with pinning down the huge parasitic loss I seem to have, which would only be explained by the ASHP meter under reading, or me boiling the kettle for a few hrs in my sleep, which I'm fairly sure isn't the cause!

Now the reason I ask about the meters accuracy is two fold, one my consumption appears to have shot up massively since having it, and secondly having done a (very) quick Google I can see that some smart meters can apparently overread depending on how the current is being measured. It seems the confusing factors are led bulbs on dimmers, low energy modes on power hungry appliances which power cycle or operate at varying frequencies, and high draws to DC. Well I have hue bulbs throughout the house which are never at 100%, my ASHP is invertor driven and ramps up, and I have an EV, so it seems that I have somewhat of a perfect storm as far as  smart meter inaccuracies may be concerned!!

I clearly still have some testing to do to get a better idea where the drains might be, so I'm not sure exactly what my questions to you guys are yet, other than does anyone happen to know whether this meter has any kind of form for misreading, and are there any other ways I could easily verify/quantify my usage? 

Im not yet convinced that the meter is definetly the culprit, but it would certainly be a viable and convenient explanation, although probably a difficult one for me to diagnose and prove conclusively.  Hence reaching out here in the hope someone has perhaps been down this road already and might be able to help show me the way? 

​​​​

Hiya!

Personally, I find it extremely unlikely that the Aclara meter is faulty. It’s factory calibrated and performs self-calibration tests at every reboot and every few seconds. If it isn’t happy with the results of any of those self-tests, it will either try to adapt itself to get back on track, or automatically flag the test failure up as a fault so that someone can take a look. It’s a very powerful meter and it’s well designed.

It’s more likely that your old meter was under recording your usage, was faulty, wasn’t Three-Phase or perhaps you really are using more energy than you thought you were?

I’ll see if @Jeffus and @M.isterW are around though. This sort of thing is what they specialise in.

@Mutsy of course it could be the meter but i agree with @Blastoise186 it is more likely to be something in your house, maybe a few things based on examples we have seen here. 

It sounds like you are already on the case. There are lots of things we could suggest so here are a couple in case you haven't already done them.

1. Can you post some screenshots of your 30 min usage from the OVO website ? This would help a bit to see if there were spikes or constant usage. 

2. Have you done a creep test? Turn everything off at the consumer unit and see if the meter ticks over? Then place relatively known load only on the electricity if possible. Perhaps an electric heater with the thermostat turned up. See if the usage looks reasonable?

3. Check you are getting daily smart readings. The word smart should appear next to every reading. 

https://account.ovoenergy.com/meter-readings/history/electricity

Let us know how you get on with your investigations and what you have tried. Then we can usually make a few useful additionals suggestions 

Thanks Guys!

Really appreciate that, I hadn't seen the post re clocking too fast (wrong key words used on my search i think) so that's interesting, and good to know i can get a test if the creep test shows anything up.  As for as heaters etc I’ve got nothing like that on the go, as I’ve always been energy conscious so have made sure anything that's not efficient was banished a long time ago.  What i can't yet rule out though is things that have degraded, so it could be something like my fridge, tumble dryer or dishwasher, but they’d need to be pulling prodigious amounts on standby to account for the readings, as I’ve deliberately not used them since noticing that the consumption seemed abnormally high (aside from the fridge obviously, as its just always on).  As for the old meter, it was an old Landis & Gyr 3 phase 4 wire effort with a economy 7 timeclock contactor, I guess it could've been under-reading, but what made me sit up and take notice was the rate of consumption rather than the comparison, that just confirmed that it seems to have gone off the charts.

What doesn't help is I'm not actually with OVO (sorry!), its just you guys seemed to know your stuff so i figured this was a good forum to ask on!  I was with Green but following their collapse I’m now with Shell who installed the smart meter, but unfortunately that's where the smarts stopped, as despite it going in early Aug they still haven't managed to update their system to tell it I’m on a smart meter, so their system has been ignoring the readings it sends, and also has me on the wrong tariff.  I’m several phone calls in on that one and still waiting for somebody to sort it out.  Funnily enough as I’ve previously been a British and Scottish Gas customer, they’ve got a long way to go before they reach the levels of customer abuse that I’m used to from energy providers, so I’m finding myself surprisingly accepting of their incompetence at present.  I’m looking at KWh’s anyway though so the tariff isn't really the issue, its the usage, and obviously not being able to check the history on their platform doesn't help me in diagnosing the fault.  I do however have some tapo smart plugs, so i’m going to get these setup on my high power devices which are typically left on standby and see what they are actually pulling just in case there is a parasite somewhere that i’ve not noticed.  The creep test is on the cards too, but that needs to wait until the weekend when shutting down the house wont result in tears and tantrums!  From what i can see on you tube its not impossible that the meter has a parasitic drain, as others seem to have clocked theirs pulling 150-250w continually when everything else is off.  I still doubt that is the case, but guess i’m kind of hoping it is, as otherwise my usage is probably real and that's a much scarier prospect!  Even at those levels of parasitic drain though, it still wouldn't account for all of my ‘use’.

I’ve run today on my gas boiler so the ASHP hasn’t used a watt, interestingly £’s wise there isn't actually a lot of difference right now (bearing in mind tariff isn't quite right, but I’d still expected a larger discrepancy in favour of the boiler), but my elec consumption still seems totally disproportionate, I’m sitting at almost 17KW today and that's without the heat pump or the EV being plugged in, and the oven has only just gone on 5 mins ago for dinner.  Other than that its my laptop and monitors again, plus a couple of Hue LED lights, a few hrs of TV in the afternoon for the kids (TV is a 2.5 year old LED), and 4 rounds of boiling 1l in a kettle.  

I’ll continue to explore this and will hopefully be able to report back in a few days with something more conclusive, but thanks again for the pointers!  Meantime I’m keeping my fingers crossed there’s a smoking gun somewhere, but if any other suggestions spring to mind please do let me know...

Can you try the Bright or Loop apps to see your smart meter usage ?

https://loop.homes/

https://hugoenergyapp.co.uk/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.hildebrand.brightionic

Yep fantastic advice above from our members. 

@Mutsy you have all the green tech - and now 4 forum badges to show. I know the Solar and EV charger isn’t in yet, but you’re well placed to talk about that stuff with the experience of finding and choosing your set up. 

Let’s hope you can narrow down your search for this phantom usage... Keep us updated on all fronts!

No worries about not being with OVO! This forum is open to everyone regardless of supplier. The only difference you telling us you’re with Shell makes, is that we won’t try to recommend OVO specific solutions. Otherwise, we always help you out the same way we would for anyone who stops by. :)

Ironically, this forum also gets the odd visit from people who actually work in the energy industry as well! We’ve had a few people like that and some of them help us out from time to time. :)

Just curious, but could you try running your meters through this tool? https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk/

We don’t need to know your MPAN or Postcode here (we definitely don’t need that on the forum!), just what the results come back as. It’ll either say your meters couldn’t be found, that you don’t have a registered smart meter, you do have one but it’s not on DCC or that it is working in Smart mode and who the linked supplier is. That’s the bit I’m interested in.

This will help us figure out a bit more about what’s going on.

And yes, British Gas and Scottish Power are known for being absolutely terrible for customer service. Some people might disagree, but it’s been well known for many years at this point. Scottish Gas is basically a cheeky white label trick that British Gas uses, but it’s ultimately still British Gas once you peel back the fancy labels.

I have my gas central heating on for half a hour a day I am a recent widow and struggling.  I put my gas central heat  on for half a hour then turned it off.  My smart meter continues to increase in cost but apart from the pilot light there is nothing else on. It was 65p after quarter of a hour it’s off apart from pilot light it’s now £1.42 I don’t get it. I have arthritis I am froze to death sitting in a hat and coat this surely is not right. I do have a gas hon but that’s not bin used for over a year you can tell by the dust lol. Any solutions anywhere I am desperate thank you in advance x

What sort of boiler do you have? Is it a combi (that heats your hot water on demand) or a conventional boiler (heats a cylinder of hot water that's in a cupboard somewhere in your house)?

Hi it’s a 3 year old normal boiler that is serviced every year.  Was last serviced in August thank you. My electric seems fine but it’s the fact when gas off still uses money x

Your IHD (in home display) only updates from your gas meter every half hour (the electricity updates every 10 seconds). So it can increase if you've used gas in the last half hour.

Omg 1.42 for half a hour blooming hell I’m already only eating cornflakes if I want to be warm I’m not gonna be able to afford that. Any tips on how I can save money. I turned off all the radiators I don’t use don’t know what else to do. Any suggestions would be appreciated xx

Try this tool: https://ovoenergy.com/winter-support-delivery/sign-up .

Also, https://www.ovoenergy.com/register-for-priority-services

https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/debt-and-energy-assistance

https://www.ovoenergy.com/payment-support/sign-up

How much gas are you using each day, in kWh? This info is available on the OVO app or website. We can then try to work out if you're using a lot more than average.

Is your boiler the only gas appliance? How big is your property and how old is it?

had a Smart meter fitted in September, so far no problems. My usage of gas and electricity is quite low, modern 1 bedroom property, single occupant. Total daily cost has been rising as the weather gets colder but generally around £4 to £4.50 a day. yesterday saw a sudden rise, electric has remained as per previous days, but gas soared to £7! Today is a similar story, electric at 88p, gas at £7.63. So far I’ve run a shower and had the heating on for a couple of hours (heating is set at +19C) Anyone else noticed a rapid increase in gas costs? I’ve checked the app, shows usage to be as per normal days, something doesn’t seem right.

Does your account show an increase in gas usage? If my IHD was showing unusual figures the first thing I'd do is check what my meter is actually sending to my energy provider.

I've checked, usage is almost identical. Interestingly, the rate I'm paying between my account on the App and the IHD is slightly different. I'm calling OVO on Monday and will keep monitoring until then 

The difference may be vat and the standing charge. Also Monday is probably the busiest day on the phones.

My gas for November was 3 to 5 pounds per day.

with no change to usage the last day of the month is £35 pounds, and the was a 3 day delay in this being indicated.

Is it some form of manual input by OVO??

Hey @Ron Sandy,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community,

You can find out more about our live billing system here:

If you don’t submit meter readings your account will be estimated, but when you submit a read your account balance will automatically update within 24-48 hours. 

If you haven’t already got one, I'd recommend getting a free smart meter installed. That way your billing will always be accurate! 

Hope this helps.

So it’s an increase in usage costs, showing on both the In Home Display and the online account, @Nigel R1803 ? 

Bear in mind that any drop in temperature can mean that gas boilers have to work harder for hot water and heating, even when no changes to usage or target temperatures are set.