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Recommendation. Photograph everything. I record meter readings a few times a month just by photographing the meters which are saved with a date stamp. It helped me profile how much we were using.
On switching energy providers I signed up, entered that days readings (photographed), and took screenshots of the acknowledgement and opening readings on their site. 3 months later I notice they had unilaterally changed my opening readings effectively overcharging me by £80.
This was OVO Energy.
I'm going to demand they put the balances back where they were sometime when I've nothing better to do.
Trust none of 'em.
 
Recommendation. Photograph everything. I record meter readings a few times a month just by photographing the meters which are saved with a date stamp. It helped me profile how much we were using.
Better still would be to set up a simple spread-sheet to record daily or weekly readings which could then be analysed. I've gone a stage further and written a computer program to both record, analyse & report.
ScreenShot.png
Naturally, todays reading is yet to be taken but you'll see that Electric & Gas readings are weekly and Solar (FiT) daily. The E & G graphs all show the weekly usage and the FiT graph shows the units generated. The change in colour is determined by the date - those to the right are from last year.
 
After many years of resisting, waiting for compatibility between suppliers, I finally had smart meters installed.

Set up with half hourly readings and downloadable data I could spend hours analysing gas and electricity usage. Occasionally I have a look.
I'm trying to optimise the hot water heating/storage. 3 bursts a day, or just one? I'm thinking it shouldn't really make much difference.
 
After many years of resisting, waiting for compatibility between suppliers, I finally had smart meters installed.

Set up with half hourly readings and downloadable data I could spend hours analysing gas and electricity usage. Occasionally I have a look.
I'm trying to optimise the hot water heating/storage. 3 bursts a day, or just one? I'm thinking it shouldn't really make much difference.
When the hot water is cooling down it is heating the house. If you are out do you need hot water and heating to the house. I would heat the water when you need a lot of hot water. You could also time your use of the hot water so that you benefit from the waste heat.
 
Anyone managed to use the SSE website for submitting reading in last couple of days. "We are sorry this service is not available. We are working on the problem". Not until AFTER you have spent five minutes filling in the minute detail. VERY RUDE WORDS.
 
Anyone managed to use the SSE website for submitting reading in last couple of days. "We are sorry this service is not available. We are working on the problem". Not until AFTER you have spent five minutes filling in the minute detail. VERY RUDE WORDS.
The websites will crash if too many people want to use them at once. Could well be taking 100 times normal volume. Read again tomorrow then try.
 
When the hot water is cooling down it is heating the house. If you are out do you need hot water and heating to the house. I would heat the water when you need a lot of hot water. You could also time your use of the hot water so that you benefit from the waste heat.

Optimising hot water schedule

Started my own thread to avoid disrupting the meter readers.
 
Whose a stupid boy then? When the SSE website doesn't work, it says to ring there 0345 number. Yeah, and hang on for half an hour of dreadful muzak, interspersed with "We are receiving a high volume of calls........". In desperation, rang this morning and the whole process was done in two minutes.
 
I've had to drag this thread out of the 'forgoten' area. :whistle:

I posted an image of my program which records my usage which I have now updated with a small adjustment which has been most 'telling'. There has - of late - been much gnashing of teeth as to the high cost of energy which is often blamed upon the way Russia has acted and in consequence been sanctioned leading to a 'hike' in the cost of Gas in particular.

The additional display that I've added shows exactly how my costs have changed since 2013 - a simple graph plotting the sum of the Standing Charge and Unit Cost at each change.
ScreenShot - Tariffs.png


It somewhat surprised me to see that the Gas tariff was higher in early 2015 than it is today; primarily down to the 'Standing Charge' which was then 35.76p per day compared to todays (post October increase) 25.56p per day. - admitedly the unit rate is now ~2.7 times as high and this will have a greater impact on the overall cost but it does show that looking at basic figures on an energy suppliers bill doesn't tell anything like the whole story.
 

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