I went to check the details on the card left by the engineer when my new meter was installed a few months ago. This is what I found:
  

  

The card isn’t even card - it’s just paper, and it was originally attached to the backboard by the screw to the left of the meter. Small animals have clearly come foraging and (luckily) found nothing to their taste except for this card. Not a single character penned by the engineer is left. By contrast, the yellow warning sticker is pristine possibly eight years after it was applied. The details on the card have to be legible for the life of the meter, 10 years or more.

Q1: Could this vital information fe.g. old and new meter MSNs, register readings and date, and ID of the engineer responsible] please be made more durable?

Q2: I‘m fairly sure the engineer took a photo of the card he’d filled in and (presumably) submitted it along with the rest of his report. Could I get a copy, if so? How?

I had to ask the engineer what the markings on the cables meant. It’s strange that the industry and BSI lay down a colour code for power cables, then make quite sure it doesn’t work by insisting that the coloured cables be sheathed in a uniform grey layer, so there’s no way of identifying them. Helpful engineers apply their own identification marks, whose meaning customers then have to guess at or ask about. L and N are commonly recognized as Line (or Live) and Neutral, but LS and LC?

There is no industry standard for these labels generally and (again) being non-consumer type cables, I doubt there will be much clamour to get one.

This all being ‘meter’ side of the distribution board, the layout, set up, markings etc., were never meant to be of interest to the consumer. 

Although I don’t have a ‘standard’ off peak tariff, every unit will be a little different. For example, your peak and off peak feeds are connected via connection blocks which can take a further spur if needed (not standard to my knowledge).

Fair enough, but the info card (often referred to in these forums as a ‘yellow sticker’!) is of great interest to the customer. It may be the only primary documentation of the closing reading on the old meter, for example.

The cable markings are surely of interest to the next sparks that comes along to fiddle with the electrics. Some dual-rate meters refer to them as Normal and Low, so I can imagine all sorts of disasters if sparks’ young apprentice marked two uniform grey line tails N and L.

I fell over EDF’s instructions for meter installers. Lots of details about what advice the householder should be given, but none on what labels and markings to be left in the meter cabinet. That’s why I’m suggesting that standardization might be a good thing.

I hadn’t actually noticed, but it seems to make sense. I have three CUs, no. 3 fed from no. 2, so no need for the extra conductor yet. But future-proofing for connections to a heat pump or an EV charger, say, sounds like a good idea. 

Hey @Firedog,

@Lukepeniket_OVO might be able to share some thoughts from an engineers perspective! When I first moved into my house and looked in my cupboard where my metering and power is the previous owner had turned it into spaghetti junction! Most of my cabling was the same colouring and it took a little time to trace where everything went to understand purposes. 

Coloured cabling is available 

I guess it just depends what the fitter has available. My swap card is actually card (and inside) so has not been eaten 

… yet! Same fixing method, I see:
  

How about this for cable marking, from a home in the Scottish highlands?
  

It was probably just as safe in the old red/black days, like the jump leads in my car boot. I wonder if colour blindness comes into it? Is it easier for more people to tell brown from blue than black from red?

Although the change to cable colours was to harmonise with Europe, it looks like red/green colour blindness was a key issue 

https://enchroma.com/pages/types-of-color-blindness

Hello everyone! 

Sorry for late reply for a few on here, firstly i will address @Firedog questions,

 

Q1: Could this vital information oe.g. old and new meter MSNs, register readings and date, and ID of the engineer responsible] please be made more durable?

Answer: That is feedback I can take back from both a engineer and a customers point of view so thank you for sharing.

Q2: I‘m fairly sure the engineer took a photo of the card he’d filled in and (presumably) submitted it along with the rest of his report. Could I get a copy, if so? How?

Answer: If you DM me your account number im sure I can retrieve the meter exchange label for you.

I had to ask the engineer what the markings on the cables meant. It’s strange that the industry and BSI lay down a colour code for power cables, then make quite sure it doesn’t work by insisting that the coloured cables be sheathed in a uniform grey layer, so there’s no way of identifying them. Helpful engineers apply their own identification marks, whose meaning customers then have to guess at or ask about. L and N are commonly recognized as Line (or Live) and Neutral, but LS and LC?

I was told that from this dual-rate meter, LC indicates the line conductor for the Constant load while LS is the one for the Switched load, live only during offpeak periods. I wouldn’t have known, so I wonder:

Q3:  Is this an industry-wide convention? If not, is there one for markings like this? Shouldn’t there be?

‘It is a CoMCoP requirement that the polarity on the customer’s terminals is both correct and properly identified/marked’.

Here is also screen grab of our cables markings, I do seem to remember SSE Markings having LC for Load Constant. None of our cables should be marked ‘normal’ or ‘low’, we do have a strict training regime and it is drummed into all of our Smart Energy Engineers the importance of cable markings.

All Cables supplied by OVO shall be Brown/Brown & Blue/Blue PVC with copper conductor. We can risk assess the supply size, cabling size and condition to decide whether to leave existing cables in.

I hope this helps =]

It really does - thanks very much!

Will do. Is that its proper name - ‘meter exchange label’, or perhaps just ‘MEX label’?

Tell that to the bloke who installed this meter :)