Gas & Electricity

Keep the Faith said:
Octopus are fine and you get daily updates of usage.
As far as smart meters go they can read SMET1's (the first version) as ours was installed 6 years ago and communicates to there system.
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I dont think our issue with Octopus is meter related as other energy consumers including EDF are experiancing the same issue, so it's either an energy company centralised glitch, or a batch of smart meters with a non smart life span. Our electric meter and gas meter both went down on the same day in Novemeber 2022.
 
Submitted my readings to British Gas today and my account was over £250 in debit from being in credit. I spoke to them online and they blamed it on repeat EBSS payments being duplicated to some customers. So challenge them as you could be classed as in debt through their errors
 
We've got an energy smart meter but it is actually dumb. It doesnt work. When I phone BG they tell me turn it off for two hours and then try again... Every fucking time I ask them they say the same. Getting to the point wghere changing energy supplier becausen their kit doesnt work. We cant tell what we're using ffs. Fedf up of being shafted by these people
 
Ours is £770 combined, which is almost double the cost from last year, despite our gas usage down 50% and electric down 30% compared to the same period last year.

We've not had the heating on at all during the day save for the really cold snap we had, and generally only put it on for the kids in the morning and night. I read something about health suffering if the rooms we live in are regularly below 18°c, not sure what they expect us to do though. Ours hovers around 12°c and has done since December.

Also got rid of my electric car and moved to petrol hybrid again, as it was costing a small fortune to charge it at home even off peak, real shame as it doesn't fit with where we should be heading at all.

Also had a reminder from our bank this morning that our mortgage rate goes up for the part not fixed. Hope they've made an error though as it's gone up by triple.

All in all, a crap day so far. Gimme gimme gimme from everyone, and here we are on virtually the same wage as last year and the year before. Looking very likely we'll have to stop paying into the kids wedding/car/first home fund for a while if there is no relief soon. Hope there's something positive on the budget later today.
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
We've got an energy smart meter but it is actually dumb. It doesnt work. When I phone BG they tell me turn it off for two hours and then try again... Every fucking time I ask them they say the same. Getting to the point wghere changing energy supplier becausen their kit doesnt work. We cant tell what we're using ffs. Fedf up of being shafted by these people
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None of them fucking work pal in my opinion
 
Keep the Faith said:
Octopus are fine and you get daily updates of usage.
As far as smart meters go they can read SMET1's (the first version) as ours was installed 6 years ago and communicates to there system.
Click to expand...
We use Octopus, we’re on the agile rate which changes every 30 minutes, depending on market demand, but they tell you what tomorrows half hourly rates will be the day before.
It’s really good because we can align our heaviest usage with the cheapest rates.
The maximum charge is 36p per kWh but mindful use means we pay an average of 30p per kWh.
Our kWh charges are actually skewed upwards by the fact that we’ve got a big solar array so often use electricity at the highest daily rate on the basis that we’re, for example, using 3kW but still use it at the highest half hourly cost (say 36p per kWh) because we’re drawing 2kW from the panels which means that we’re actually paying 12p per kWh at that point.
As the solar input isn’t seen by our incoming meter, it isn’t recognised in our average rates and it makes it look like we’re paying more for electricity than is actually the case.
If we didn’t have solar we’d move our high demand to off-peak where half hour rates can be very low indeed.

Our average daily cost for electricity, including standing charges, is £2.59 in winter months and we use a lot of electricity as we don’t have main’s gas so it’s electricity for our hob, ovens, microwave, air fryer, kettle, washer, tumble dryer, 3 freezers, 2 fridges, showers, instant hot water to some sinks, grow lights for the tomato, aubergine & chilli seedlings we’re cultivating & the cat’s heated bed etc. etc. ad infinitum.
In summer it’s considerably less because the solar really comes into it’s own in summer months, to the degree that we receive over £600 pa for the excess solar electricity that we sell to the national grid under a feed-in tariff.
 
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paulchapo said:
I absolutely refuse to have one. Everyone who got one has had problems with them including my parents.
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Ours is fine now EDF have taken it over (it's a SMET1 meter). It was put in by Our Power before we moved in (who promptly went bust) so we had no choice over having one, but since EDF did whatever they had to so they could read it we've never had an issue.
 
bluetonium said:
Ours is £770 combined, which is almost double the cost from last year, despite our gas usage down 50% and electric down 30% compared to the same period last year.

We've not had the heating on at all during the day save for the really cold snap we had, and generally only put it on for the kids in the morning and night. I read something about health suffering if the rooms we live in are regularly below 18°c, not sure what they expect us to do though. Ours hovers around 12°c and has done since December.

Also got rid of my electric car and moved to petrol hybrid again, as it was costing a small fortune to charge it at home even off peak, real shame as it doesn't fit with where we should be heading at all.

Also had a reminder from our bank this morning that our mortgage rate goes up for the part not fixed. Hope they've made an error though as it's gone up by triple.

All in all, a crap day so far. Gimme gimme gimme from everyone, and here we are on virtually the same wage as last year and the year before. Looking very likely we'll have to stop paying into the kids wedding/car/first home fund for a while if there is no relief soon. Hope there's something positive on the budget later today.
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(Wedding/Car/First Home Fund) fucking hell mate, you're not the bank !!
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
We've got an energy smart meter but it is actually dumb. It doesnt work. When I phone BG they tell me turn it off for two hours and then try again... Every fucking time I ask them they say the same. Getting to the point wghere changing energy supplier becausen their kit doesnt work. We cant tell what we're using ffs. Fedf up of being shafted by these people
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My smart metre is all over the place lately

either really high or too low that it doesn't make sense
 
paulchapo said:
I absolutely refuse to have one. Everyone who got one has had problems with them including my parents.
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Same here, except the parent bit of course. Everyone I know who has one wants to get rid and I had to email E-On and say stop mithering me I’m NOT having on! To be fair to them, apart from an acknowledgement, I’ve heard nothing for 2 months now. They were emailing me and ringing every week before.
 
Eccles Blue said:
Same here, except the parent bit of course. Everyone I know who has one wants to get rid and I had to email E-On and say stop mithering me I’m NOT having on! To be fair to them, apart from an acknowledgement, I’ve heard nothing for 2 months now. They were emailing me and ringing every week before.
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Yes Scottish power pestered me for ages but gave up in the end.
 
Gorton_Tubster said:
We've got an energy smart meter but it is actually dumb. It doesnt work. When I phone BG they tell me turn it off for two hours and then try again... Every fucking time I ask them they say the same. Getting to the point wghere changing energy supplier becausen their kit doesnt work. We cant tell what we're using ffs. Fedf up of being shafted by these people
Click to expand...
If you change energy supplier will they change the meter? I thought they used the same one nowadays? If it's not working correctly because it can't get a reliable signal, changing suppliers will make no difference BTW.
 
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