My electricity consumption (smart meter) suddenly increased

Please check your online account. It sounds as if you’re seeing estimated consumption for some reason, so check the meter reading history for clues. Estimates are based on the Future Annual Consumption prediction, which is often wildly inaccurate. See yours on the Plan page and compare it to your actual consumption over the past year.

Hi ​@alison_rose36,

I agree with ​@Firedog’s helpful info here - it may be estimated usage. If you have a smart meter it should be set up to give either daily or half-hourly reads, rather than monthly, but half-hourly is the best as it gives you the most up to date information. To get your reading schedule changed to half-hourly you’ll need to contact our Support Team.

If you check your readings online and they’re estimated, it might be that the meter isn’t in comms with us. In this case, you’ll need to send the results of a smart meter health check to our Support Team.

• Second generation (S2) Aclara smart meter health check (SMHC) Tutorial

• How to view your usage data on the OVO app Tutorial

• Questions about your energy use? Check out our handy FAQ F.A.Q.

• Faulty smart or traditional meters: Blank display, inaccurate, broken, noisy meters - DIY tutorial series Tutorial

Let us know how you get on! Hopefully we’ll get to the bottom of this quickly.

Its a smart meter that registers daily readings - at least thats all I can see. Hence how I know it increased from 1st Feb for no apparent reason, and when I was not at home.

OK, but on the readings history page, you should see a label saying where each one came from, e.g. Smart, Manual or Estimated. This is mine, from the OVO Energy app:
  

If yours are all Smart, there’s something gobbling electricity in your empty house. If some of them are Estimated, this would explain the high figures, which will be corrected once a real reading - Smart or Manual - is received. That will need looking into once you’re back home.

The last time I remember a similar situation, the householder got back home to discover that he’d failed to switch off the underfloor heating in part of the house before leaving. It was ticking over at its ‘security’ setting, keeping the whole house at above 12° while it was frosty outside. Another common culprit is an immersion heater for hot water, left on and keeping all the livestock in the attic nice and warm while the owner was away. 

I don’t know whether you can see the page called Edit meter reads frequency. If you can, you could check that Data used for billing is set to Every half-hour. You might also consider doing the same for Data used for settlement.

Thanks very much - helpful - I checked and my meter reading are “smart” and every half hour in my profile. I scrolled down and found my half hourly usage when on the day usage page.

The house is using 0.5-0.6 from 2am to 11.30am, then 0.05 to 0.1 thereafter. I cant go back to check before it went up (between 31 Jan and 1 Feb).

The consumption went up when I was not even home. Could someone be pilfering it? 

Appreciate the support.

Sorry to intrude, but I’m just gonna sliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide in here for a sec because of your latest comment.

If you think someone is committing energy theft, please see https://www.stayenergysafe.co.uk/ for options on how to report it.

Thank you for your understanding

Normal service will now resume

Thanks - Im not at home - so need to find a way to check. I just have no explaination why the house is using 0.5-0.6 from 2am to 11.30am, then 0.05 to 0.1 thereafter. 3x what it was before. 31 Jan/1 Feb. How can I get it checked if I am not home?

stayenergysafe was not too helpful - it was targetted at people stealing from their own meters as far as I could see. My issue is that my consumption has gone up for no reason I understand and while I was not at home. It trebled from one day to the next as I keep saying, so I would appreciate some input from anyone who could explain, or give me options to consider. 

Thanks for the very helpful reply. What is strange that is kicked in while I was away and no-one is in the house. Ill get someone to drop by and check for the above. I dont have a free standing radiator though. Maybe an electric blanket? Anyway - thanks again. 

Thanks very much - my son went to my house and found that the electrical heater (Id forgotten about - Im 89) in the conservatory was what was doing it. No idea why it suddenly started working, but its on a timer. Now disconnected.

Problem solved. 

Very much appreciated.

Hey ​@alison_rose36 

Thanks for popping back with that update! Glad to hear you got to the bottom of that.

Feel free to pop back any time if you’ve every got any other questions.😊