Smart meter display - how accurate should it be

[WPA]

I am with EON and have a smart meter display in the kitchen, in people experiences how accurate should the reading be or is it complete guesswork.

I have been checking it against actual use with reading the meter and it is not even close.

Yesterday it showed 27kwh used but when I checked the meter it had only gone up by 4kwh, I am guessing the meter should be accurate so cannot see how the display can be so far out.

What I am missing or is it best to say nothing

[Baldchap]

WPA said:

I am with EON and have a smart meter display in the kitchen, in people experiences how accurate should the reading be or is it complete guesswork.

I have been checking it against actual use with reading the meter and it is not even close.

Yesterday it showed 27kwh used but when I checked the meter it had only gone up by 4kwh, I am guessing the meter should be accurate so cannot see how the display can be so far out.

What I am missing or is it best to say nothing

Is it set to weekly total?

[WPA]

Baldchap said:

WPA said:

I am with EON and have a smart meter display in the kitchen, in people experiences how accurate should the reading be or is it complete guesswork.

I have been checking it against actual use with reading the meter and it is not even close.

Yesterday it showed 27kwh used but when I checked the meter it had only gone up by 4kwh, I am guessing the meter should be accurate so cannot see how the display can be so far out.

What I am missing or is it best to say nothing

Is it set to weekly total?

Nope, just checked it is on daily or today

[Mr E]

Are you looking at gas rather than electricity?
27kwh a day would seem a lot unless you have electric heating or a car to charge.

[The Three D Mucketeer]

I've just had a SMETS2 meter installed ... it's taken 5 weeks to get the Gas working at all .... This was what it said this morning , my Gas hadn't been used after 9am





Where do they get an £11 /hr 30 minute average from ????? I used to get realtime Gas usage on SMETS1 , appears to be a backward set to me .
Updated .....
Just looked at now 13:44 ... 3 hours later and I've spend less on GAS than I had before ????

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Sunday 13th October 13:48

[phumy]

They are supposed to be tested to 0.2% accuracy

[WPA]

Mr E said:

Are you looking at gas rather than electricity?
27kwh a day would seem a lot unless you have electric heating or a car to charge.

Yes this is for gas, sorry should have said.

Not checked the electric figures yet

[Rough101]

The Three D Mucketeer said:

I've just had a SMETS2 meter installed ... it's taken 5 weeks to get the Gas working at all .... This was what it said this morning , my Gas hadn't been used after 9am





Where do they get an £11 /hr 30 minute average from ????? I used to get realtime Gas usage on SMETS1 , appears to be a backward set to me .
Updated .....
Just looked at now 13:44 ... 3 hours later and I've spend less on GAS than I had before ????

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Sunday 13th October 13:48

Gas isn’t live, it only updates the electricity meter now and then to save battery, the electricity meter obviously has power and is live. The display end has made some assumptions that were then corrected.

[The Three D Mucketeer]

Rough101 said:

Gas isn’t live, it only updates the electricity meter now and then to save battery, the electricity meter obviously has power and is live. The display end has made some assumptions that were then corrected.

Only since SMETS2 , my SMETS1 GAS has been realtime for 5 years without a battery change. BG changed me on to the "new" accounts system on the 28th Feb ... since then online data hasn't worked ... until SMETS2 change .I've had a case with OFGEM open for 2 months . Although I've received more in compensation payments than I've saved with a SMART meter and PEAKSAVE !!!!
If they're "assumptions" the person who programmed it is a numpty , I'm suspicious someone/something did a remote tariff change on the meter

A bit like the BBC weather forecasts on Thursday .... in Preston we were due 1400 MPH winds . .... Who pays the s/w people ?

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Sunday 13th October 18:16

[Rough101]

The difference is just in the way your display is showing it, they only ever updated every 30 mins or so.

The tariff is downloaded over the air to the screen, but it’s irrelevant if it’s wrong in terms of billing, as they take the real readings and apply the real tariff based on the cumulative units metered.

Personally, gas should just update once an hour, so it’s real, rather than the scenario here of the pseudo live data to placate the regulator.

[The Three D Mucketeer]

So please explain why my cost for the day can be lower 3 hours later when I'm set for meter readings every 30 minutes ?
and how on earth does a figure of £11/hour based on a 30 minute average (when I hadn't used any Gas for 90 minutes , so which 30 minutes is it ?) occur when my spend for the whole day to that point is £5.81 at that time. It's all bks .
This has only just started occurring with SMETS2. It's just meaningless and tomorrow I'll be sending my observations to the Ombudsman again !!!.
And I think you'll find the tariff is downloaded to each meter via the Smart meter hub and on to the IHD so may be a DCC issue.

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Sunday 13th October 22:13

[Rough101]

The Three D Mucketeer said:

So please explain why my cost for the day can be lower 3 hours later when I'm set for meter readings every 30 minutes ?
and how on earth does a figure of £11/hour based on a 30 minute average (when I hadn't used any Gas for 90 minutes , so which 30 minutes is it ?) occur when my spend for the whole day to that point is £5.81 at that time. It's all bks .
This has only just started occurring with SMETS2. It's just meaningless and tomorrow I'll be sending my observations to the Ombudsman again !!!.

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Sunday 13th October 22:09

I have explained it, basically it picked up your worst period and extrapolated it to the display on the assumption that would continue. It shows the worst case so that folk don’t moan that it under reads.

Your real consumption is what goes to the AMR server. If you want to waffle to OFGEM mention project Blue Flame’s objectives. It’s not a SMETS1/2 issue, it’s a display programming protocol. You can’t make the gas meter export data more frequently through settings, indeed if it misses one, you’ll get more mumbo jumbo and you’re better taking a daily average.

I’ve no skin in the game, you just need to understand how it works to get the best from it.

[Crafty_]

They appear to need a little time to "settle down". I had one installed at a previous property and for a few days the display showed random things, at one point it said I'd used £28,000 worth of gas. Took maybe 4-5 days to start showing sensible numbers.

[The Three D Mucketeer]

Crafty_ said:

They appear to need a little time to "settle down". I had one installed at a previous property and for a few days the display showed random things, at one point it said I'd used £28,000 worth of gas. Took maybe 4-5 days to start showing sensible numbers.

I think you may be correct... But I still don't understand how "Cost So Far TODAY" can be lower 3 hours later by £3.81 , surely it just a matter of subtracting one meter reading from another and applying the tariff .... Doesn't need any "assumptions" for that !!!!!

What amuses me is BG used to quote calorific value of Gas to 14 decimal places on my bills because it varied on supply.... so you would have thought they were obsessed with accuracy

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Monday 14th October 10:12

[Crafty_]

In short, rubbish in, rubbish out.
The gizmo has a little bit of software in to calculate those numbers, if it is fed rubbish from the meter/sensor it displays rubbish. If the meter sends some different rubbish, it displays different rubbish, but its still rubbish !

[tux850]

The Three D Mucketeer said:

What amuses me is BG used to quote calorific value of Gas to 14 decimal places on my bills because it varied on supply.... so you would have thought they were obsessed with accuracy

They are, but that obsession doesn't extend to your IHD which aims only to be an indicative display of usage which, particularly when extrapolation of sparse data sets comes in to play, can easily lead to some misleading numbers appearing. For gas usage in particular you are better off looking at usage over long(er) time periods (i.e. days and weeks) to understand how much you are actually using/paying.

[Joe M]

I've got the same ihd as above.
Electricity readings seem totally accurate.

Gas... When it updates every so often it's reasonably accurate, but sometimes it will not pick up the gas meter for a day or so showing nothing. When it kicks back in it shows the total amount for that period as the last half hour...

I wouldn't worry too much, the totals will be ok and you will be charged correctly.

[The Three D Mucketeer]

I think I sussed it ....
With the Old SMTS! IHD

If the SMART AMR/HUB/UNIT looses connection and misses it 30 minute meter reading it would say connection lost

Now with the SMETS2 IHD , it just says 0 usage , and doesn't recognise it's missed a reading ... so when eventually receives a meter reading .... maybe 2 days later , it uses it's last meter reading with the new one , and reports it as an average for the last 30 minutes .... Numpty programming !!!!

I looked at my meter reading through the IHD at 10 am and it was 187.6 m3 , i went out , no gas being used CH/water off , looked at 1pm and meter reading 196.4 m3 ... So the stupid IHD reports as used in the 30 minute average.

I think the same applies to my usage TODAY .... if it has received no readings that day , it is in fact Yesterdays usage... hence it can go lower when finally it does connect .

Reminisent of Boeings 737 Max problem with missing data from sensors , at least I didn't crash .

Edited by The Three D Mucketeer on Monday 14th October 13:30

[droopsnoot]

^ I've got one the same as that, and obsessively note the numbers because I can't rely on the British Gas site to show me. I've noticed a few times where it's got the gas usage correct, but wildly inaccurate for the price. For example one day it will show that I've used 4.56 things of gas, at a cost of 56p, and the next day I've used 4.24 things and it's 23p, then 4.49 / 24p and then back to the more expected 4.33 / 55p. I haven't asked BG, I suppose I should go on the web site and see if their online records (if they haven't disappeared) match mine.

[The Three D Mucketeer]

droopsnoot said:

^ I've got one the same as that, and obsessively note the numbers because I can't rely on the British Gas site to show me. I've noticed a few times where it's got the gas usage correct, but wildly inaccurate for the price. For example one day it will show that I've used 4.56 things of gas, at a cost of 56p, and the next day I've used 4.24 things and it's 23p, then 4.49 / 24p and then back to the more expected 4.33 / 55p. I haven't asked BG, I suppose I should go on the web site and see if their online records (if they haven't disappeared) match mine.

Go on the METER READING screen on your IHD and make a note of the figures , that will confirm if your readings are missing.