Why are photos of smart meter needed?

Hey ​@Dreghorn1 ,

These are usually used to help figure out what’s going on - even with Smart Meters. Your supplier can’t physically see the thing so they can’t always tell from the data alone what’s happening so the manual photos are usually a way to figure out what the data isn’t telling them for troubleshooting.

Many thanks Blastoise 186 for your prompt reply. Much appreciated. Seems that smart meters aren't so smart then ! I still can't get my head around that if they can read the meter at any time AND they know which tariff ( Peak or Off-Peak) to charge, why photos are required. Kind regards and thanks again.

They’re a lot smarter than you think - it’s more that some suppliers aren’t quite as good as others. OVO uses photos as part of a Smart Meter Health Check because it’s good for verification purposes. I suspect E.ON Next probably didn’t tell you that?

A picture is worth a thousand words. There is much more information to be garnered from a photo; here are just a few examples:

• Each meter has a serial number, and with every smart meter the number is clearly displayed on the front of it. Collated with whatever is showing on the display, this can furnish evidence that a particular reading was taken from that specific meter. It’s not uncommon for meters to get  muddled up. 
    
• Register readings on the display will have a label which isn’t always intelligible to ordinary customers. A photo removes any doubt that a reading being submitted is in fact for the total amount of electricity consumed and not, say, for the amount generated by solar panels or the offpeak amount used overnight.
    
• Many meters incorporate a switch which can magically turn on night-storage heaters precisely at the start of an offpeak period. There is often no visual clue inside the house of when this happens, but there is usually a symbol on the meter’s display indicating the on/off state of this switch. 
    

The specific photos you’ve been asked to send in will show just which register (peak or offpeak) is recording  current consumption. Given the precise timings of the photos and assuming the display is clearly legible, they should be able to see why there’s confusion about your peak/offpeak usage. It will help if you make sure the display is lit up before taking the photos - it usually just takes a touch of one of the buttons to turn on the lights.
     

[PS] 
You wrote: “… with a smart meter the company can see any use at any time, possibly as frequently as every half hour.”  This isn’t absolutely clear.

The normal arrangement these days is that the meter records each half-hour’s consumption and salts the figure away in its memory along with its time-stamp. It also takes a snapshot of the peak and offpeak register readings each day at midnight.

Once a day, the supplier calls up the meter and asks it to send (a) last night’s readings snapshot and (b) yesterday’s usage data, 48 timed quantities.

So the company can’t see ‘any use at any time’. It can, however, ask the meter to send an instantaneous current meter reading.