Our Smart Meter - does it need to be accurate?

[miIIicant]

I just changed our tariff last week to Octopus Go which gives cheap overnight electricity (car charging etc).

On the smart meter the rate is not showing up correctly in relation to what we've used. Does that matter? Where do they actually take the reading from?

They take readings from the smart meter.
You can submit a manual reading off your regular meter on the app if it isn’t right.

They've likely not updated your tariff to your IHD device.

The meter ia what's on your wall. NOT the display.

It's a one button click to do it their side so just email them to update it.

No, it doesn’t matter. You’re billed on readings from the actual smart meter, not the in-home display.

Ah, okay, thanks all.

Edf told me that the in home display is actually estimated rather than exact. As a pp says it is the smart meter itself which counts.
This made me wonder why in home displays exist at all so I unplugged mine as it was completely misleading and worrying me.

The in-home display doesn’t generate estimates, it receives readings from the meter. Sometimes, however, the supplier needs prompted to upload the current tariff to the IHD.

Well I had thought that would be true. But after a long saga and debate with truly useless EDF customer services this was their reply.
It was not tariff related. My display was showing way more units used (not just the cost) than the meter readings.

So the actual meter reading on the IHD is higher than the reading on the meter itself?

Yes, very much so.
This was a year or more ago. As I said, I don't use the display anymore.
It was showing large amounts used when nothing had been on at all but the actual meter itself was accurate.

@MemorableTrenchcoat
This is a screenshot of an email from edf at the time.

The IHD can certainly calculate averages, but only using data pulled in from the meter. If it doesn’t receive any, it won’t estimate what the readings might be, that would be ludicrous. Have you tried one of the free apps, like Ivie?

No, never heard of such a thing.
My bills seem reasonably similar to pre smart meter though.
Do you work in this field?

I recommend Ivie or Bright, free apps which interface with your smart meters.
Smart meters measure energy in exactly the same way as traditional meters so, contrary to popular belief, they can’t cause higher bills (unless the meter they replaced was running slow, in which case, too bad!)
I run a consumer energy group on Facebook.

Thanks for taking the time.
So are you saying the email from edf is basically nonsense then?
It all sounded bizarre to me at the time, hence I had made a complaint but I have serious health issues so sort of left it there.
Edf customer services are clearly based abroad as none of the agents had english as a first language and we frequently could not understand each other so the process was exhausting.
This email was the culmination of months of verbal and live chat attempts to get some understanding of what was going on.
Can you tell me the name of your fb group please? I would be interested in joining.

It’s mostly correct, apart from the IHD using estimated readings. I actually left the group due to the founder stealing money, but the other admins set up a new one, called Home Energy Matters.