Why do I get estimated readings in my bill when I have a smart meter?

Roughly 3 every month? It is a shared space with the bins so we submit them whenever we take the bins out.

The supplementary readings that they have estimated based on our given ones look right though, no crazy high numbers there.

Do you mean “3 months”? You’ve said you only moved in 2 months ago.

Did you open a new account with OVO  when you moved in, and was OVO the already the energy supplier?

Just to double check something here.

What readings are shown on your bill(s).

Are they the “too low” readings that you submitted? Or are the bills using “Estimated" readings because yours are considered to be too low to be true.

PS. How are you paying, is it by Direct Debit?

i mean 3 per month,  just under one a week.  OVO  was already the supplier though 

Its the peak energy use that is most of the bill - adds about £50 onto the bill. Last month I only did 2 readings and it estimated the third, which looks accurate. It said these are very low readings when I inputted them, so I assumed I would be charged less.

maybe there is something wrong with the meter readings though? like i said, we have all switches off at the plugs unless we are using them, lights turned off when there is daylight, no heating used and water heater on only just before a shower.

There’s something very strange here. The readings on the bill you shared are labelled Smart meter, yet you say you don’t have one. When you submit readings, you’re told they’re too low. It rather sounds as if there’s a meter mix-up here.

Just above that Electricity in detail section, you should see both the supply address and the Meter Serial Number (MSN). Is the address right? and does the MSN on the bill match the one on the meter itself? It might help if you posted a photo of the meter so we could see for ourselves.  

Hey ​@cwniamh 

I’m glad to see a few of our community members have already stopped by to help out here.

As Firedog mentioned, it looks like you’ve already got smart meters installed, which would explain why you’d be ineligible to have them fitted.

Would you be able to share a photo of the meter? It would be helpful to know which model it is, and if the meter serial number is correct. As Firedog also mentioned, those additional meter readings sound like they may not match the ones coming from the smart meter if they are being deemed too low, so a photo of the meter would be helpful.

It does look though as if you are being based on the smart meter readings so the billing should be accurate if it’s been based on the meter readings from the correct meter.

Do let us know how you get on.

🤦‍♀️ sorry - dyslexia rules KO 

Studying that bill your usage that you are being billed for actually seems reasonable.

You are on the Simpler Energy variable tariff - the charge per kWh is the same whather it’s peak or off-peak.
I assume that it’s being shown as peak/off-peak like that because at some time the meter has been set up for E7 or E10 tariffs; which is exactly what you would want for a flat with electric storage heaters.

I’d take an educated guess here that the the flat has electric storage heaters, and that the previous tenants were using them; probably on E7 or E10 tariff.

If they were they they would have been using a lot more electricity each month especially in winter.

That could be why when you give a reading the computer says that it looks low - because it is much lower that they have been used to seeing for that property when the previous tenants were there and using the storage heaters.

Looking at what the bill says, and ignoring for now if those are smart readings or your sent in readings.

For your billing period 18th March to 17th April you used a total of 218.894 kWh of electricity.

That doesn’t seem anything out of the ordinary to me.

It’s more than the 146.75 that I used in the equivalent period (mine’s 24th March to 23rd April) - but I’m single and there are 2 of you so I would expect you to use more.

The 2 of you are using about 1.5x the electricity that I use as a single person in a 1-bed flat (I have gas heating), which looks reasonable to me.
Indeed I would say it’s a low use for 2-people.

I’d just ignore it when it says that your readings look low.
They look low to the computer simply because that are lower than what it was used to seeing from the previous tenants.

PS. You could probably get the price per kWh down if you went for a fixed tariff, but I know that isn’t always possible in a rental if you are not expecting to be there long term.

here is a photo of the meter - i dont believe it is a smart meter?