Smart meter shows £5 electricity used by 6.30am?

[ENoeuf]

I’m really stressed since having it fitted out bills have gone through the roof. I checked at 6.20am and it was already showing £4.43 used! Gone up .66p in an hour and display showed between 0.03 and 0.09p per hour in that time. What is going on?

Yes that’s my plan - I do worry about stuff so I want them to confirm that it won’t impact anything. The smart meter seems to be reading fine from what they say, and the monitor showing usage (plugged in in the house) is terrifying me.

ENoeuf we had a smart meter installed on Friday and spent all day testing stuff yesterday, switching on and off everything! We established that the hot tub is about 25p an hour and the blow heater in the kitchen was about a million pounds an hour (exactly as I said, but oh no, couldn't possibly be that 🙄) but we seem to have a surge around 2am and just can't figure out what it would be 🤷🏼‍♀️ I can only think the fridge freezer and the coffee machine which is on a timer for the morning, also standing charge is added after midnight, but by the time one of us gets up around 6, £2.50 has already been used! But having said that it usually max out at about £5-6 a day

Ah thank you, I feel you are being sucked into it …. I honestly can’t reconcile the ‘current usage’ with the end figure. At the moment (shower (2) kettle (3) oven (20 mins) coffee (1) it’s at 7.33 for electricity - background is fridges etc. It’s mad. If this goes on they will be charging £16.66 x 31. I don’t even want to do the maths.

It can’t be right mines at at 91p now and I live in a reasonably big 4 bedroom house.

Wow. I’m really grateful to people for posting their experiences because it’s so easy to assume you just owe £££. I think the monitor must be faulty (not the meter - I’m going to take a reading in a minute and then compare tomorrow).

Mine (small 4 bed, kids either asleep or at school) with me using a laptop and the washing machine just finished a short cycle - £7.84 electricity. 0.00 kWh and 0.02p current usage.

Thank you everyone for telling me to check the actual meter - it’s not worked and sent a reading since beginning of January (hence the refund) so they are sending an engineer out.

We spend £4-6 a day in winter. Glad you're getting it seen.

£16 a day is crazy high. I average about £2/day for both gas and electric (more if I run the washing machine a few times). Unless there is something you aren’t saying like having a massive house then you need to explore this with your energy provider.

As an aside, I’m with EDF and we have an app that shows what things we are using out electric on. Might be worth seeing if you can do something similar?

Thank you. The issue was originally omg how am I spending £16 a day, then that’s weird I’m spending exactly £16.66 every day, then £5 by 6.20am, then hang on its gone up 11p in 10 minutes but the display says 3p an hour usage, then why is the app showing no readings, now it turns out the actual smart meter is not working and hasn’t sent a reading since 03.01.

Hopefully they will sort it - they’ve all been lovely I’m just glad I started the thread because I’ve checked things I wouldn’t have thought of.

My friends smart meter often shows nothing or the wrong figs....waiting for a replacement one to arrive.

I’m going to ask if we can ditch the monitor and just wait for bills.

@ENoeuf

I’m going to ask if we can ditch the monitor and just wait for bills.

You don't need permission to do that. Just unplug the in-home monitor and wait for a bill!

^^ I’m a bit scared to do that in case it somehow messes things up even more. I’ve got it facing the wall (like a naughty child!) at the moment.

I'd say it was a daily charge. Ring and ask what your daily charge is.

My smart meter does this. Sometimes I think the smart meter disconnects from the display and then when they do catch up, it averages out the usage and so you end up with days on end with the same kWh.

This happens in out house because the charger for the display is also the exact same charger for ds's headphones

And fwiw, I can't bear the stress of the smart meter. So long as the meter reading matches then I just try and ignore it.

😂 all my chargers vanish eventually. I’ve started putting sharpie on them saying MUM 😂
I think once they sort the meter (and the bill which hopefully won’t be through the roof) I’m ditching the monitor.

Generally, things that use a lot of power are things that create heat - water heaters, irons, kettles, showers, hair dryers etc And charging batteries - laptops, tablets, phones, cars.

Old appliances can use a lot more power than new ones. Our old tv used 7 times the power of our new one.

And anything malfunctioning can also draw a lot of power.

But it sounds like a problem with your meter. I'd start there.

@ENoeuf

Thank you. The issue was originally omg how am I spending £16 a day, then that’s weird I’m spending exactly £16.66 every day, then £5 by 6.20am, then hang on its gone up 11p in 10 minutes but the display says 3p an hour usage, then why is the app showing no readings, now it turns out the actual smart meter is not working and hasn’t sent a reading since 03.01.

Hopefully they will sort it - they’ve all been lovely I’m just glad I started the thread because I’ve checked things I wouldn’t have thought of.

Oh so it went rogue and was giving you numbers or had GUESSED at?! My goodness. Your poor blood pressure.

Yes! Random amounts that all added to £16.66 - then I realised the readings had stopped in the app in Jan and they confirmed the meter hasn’t sent a reading since 03.01! So they refunded what they charged and will now recalculate (will be more than bill but less than mad readings).

Mine has never worked properly. It displays electricity but not gas 🤷🏻‍♀️

Weird mine does the opposite. I am so relieved I started this thread as it’s been very reassuring plus some useful tips going forward (esp the heat creating stuff being more costly).

Just to reassure you, they have no idea if you’re using the in-home display or not! It’s a lovely idea, and does really highlight how expensive somethings are (hot air blowers as a pp found out!) but mine spends much of its life in a cupboard because it’s not clever enough to know I’m on cheap rate (octopus go) overnight, so I come down in the morning and it’s showing £5+ when it’s actually only a little over £1.

I use an app now, Octopus compare (apps.apple.com/gb/app/octopus-compare/id1545004095) and it’s completely accurate for all tariffs and gets the same data Octopus get direct from the meter. You can’t view anything more recent than yesterday, but it gives a useful graph etc and a 100% accurate cost. It’s much more useful day-to-day than the in-home display and once your meter is sorted I highly recommend it!

Thank you for the recommendation - the total of £14 doesn’t match the figures by hour? I think all of it is too stressful for me! I’m not going to use the monitor, it’s not fun!