Smart meter display consumption.

If you are looking at the total for the day don't forget you have a daily Standing Charge which is about that level. In Home Displays (not the smart meter display) only take much less than 1W which is 24Wh a day which comes out at 0.6p a day absolute maximum. New IHDs use a lot less than that and they are probably £1 or less per year as per your research.

Peter 

Thank you Peter.  My bill shows usage of 49p per day.  Nothing else but the smart meter display was used as the house is empty and unoccupied.  The standing daily charge is separate from this usage and I understand that.  However yesterday we turned off this display unit and the consumer unit completely.  Today my usage is now 0 kwh and £0 cost.  ,(apart from the standing charge).  I am horrified that for the last period from 9th Sept till yesterday I was being charged 49p per day and yet prior to that date from March when the house became empty, there was no charge.  OVO not seem to be able to understand my question as to why I was charged so much !  I doubt they will refund me.

Sylvia

It is the actual bill on my laptop showing the daily usage you can scroll back to any month.  It clearly states 49p a day (cost) and when I looked at it today on line it says 0 as I turned off the consumer unit completely.  There shouldnt have been that amount of usage with just the digital display.  It's of no use to anyone anyway as the house is empty.

The standing charge is payable regardless of how much or little electricity you use. It’s likely that if the IHD is the only consumer that its consumption doesn’t even register!* You can see what the standing charge is on the Plan page of your online account. The average for GB is currently about 55p per day, but it varies from 43p in London to 68p in Liverpool. Standing charges fell by a few pence on 1 October if you see a change then. 

* The meter records how much is used in kWh. every half-hour. If the total power draw is less than 1W, then that’s less than 0.0005 kWh in half an hour - so it won’t register in the daily usage figures. It may show up in the meter readings - I’m afraid I don’t know. If it does, at 24Wh a day, it would take six weeks to move the meter’s reading by 1 kWh.

It seems telling that turning power off at the consumer unit then gave you a zero figure (wherever you are looking).

That strongly suggests that there was something else other than the IHD drawing power.

49p a day would be about 2 kWh a day. If it's constant throughout the day then that would suggest something drawing 94 watts sll the timr, or something switching on and off that is averaging 83 watts over the day.

A fridge/freezer may draw an average of around 83 watts, a gas central heating pump can average about the same. (Presumably even though the house is empty you have low heating on to avoid frozen pipes).

Can you see your half-hourly usage figures? (also change it to show kWh rather than £).

That should show if it's a constant 83 watts throughout the day, or if it's something switching on and off.

Something lik a forgotten plugged in thermostat heater that comes on for a short time overnight. And yes, we have seen exactly that on a fee previous threads.

​@sylviacaldicott thanks for your post. I’m glad to see a few members have given you some great advice here - I hope it’s been helpful.

Ultimately, if you have smart meters then the usage they’re clocking should be bang-on accurate, so something at the property would have been drawing power. If you’ve now turned the consumer unit off, then it should stop clocking any usage at all. If the meter does clock usage whilst the consumer unit is off then this would indicate a fault, in which case you’ll need to speak to our Support Team to get this looked into.

Let us know how this all goes.

​@Ben_OVO I don’t know if you spotted my PS earlier. I wrote:

I think ​@sylviacaldicott may be confusing some of the information about costs that she’s finding on the account website. It would be really helpful if she could share a couple of screenshots of what she’s seeing.