Electricity meter rollover: recording problem?

Ste.phen

Hey guys,

This might be the wrong forum for this, but I'm wondering if anyone's had a problem when their electricity meter rolled over? (from 99999 back to 00000) with what appears to be amazingly high usage?

The bill hasn't arrived yet, and I'll likely follow up with my supplier when it does, but as part of rearranging bills in a house sharing situation, we took a mid-cycle reading to make it easier to calculate who'd owe what due to people moving out.

The last recorded readings (not estimated) by ESB networks were:
98189 back at the end of July (actual)
99072 at the end of September (actual)

My manual reading at the end of October was: 390
The manual reading I took yesterday was: 600

Working all this out, and assuming the meter rolls over at 99999, the usage for October was 1318 units, and for November was 210.
The October figure seems ridiculously high; I've a spreadsheet of bills going back about 4 years, and the average usage is about 400 units a month .

So, short question: Does the meter in fact roll over at 99999, or is it earlier?
How likely is it that something screwed up during the rollover?

Thanks,
Stephen

Davy

By the end of November you will probably be around the 400 mark.

They do roll over at 99999. Their are usually quite accurate as things go. Their isn't a different to the meter of the what digits it is, the mechanism simply just keeps turning.

Something more simple like a reading took at a different stage of the month etc or that you actually used it

Ste.phen

Yeah, it does seem like the meter's likely to be right, i just can't account for the sudden spike in usage for October, over the course of the year the graph looks like: _____/\_
The reading I took today was about 600, so even averaged out over the two months it's higher than normal. Aah, just gotta put up with it i guess

Fnergg

There is no reason why anything should have gone wrong with the meter at the rollover.

Electricity meters are in fact highly reliable and when they do (rarely) malfunction they invariably stop recording altogether.

Yes, there was a significant jump in usage: from a daily average of 15 units approx per day between July and September to 44 units per day for October. The usage has since dropped to 10 units odd per day between the end of October to the 20th November.

That explanation for that increase in October has to be found from the people in the house at the time.

Or, the reading of 99072 of 30th September, while ostensibly actual, may have been incorrect - meter readers sometime make mistakes.

Take the total usage between July and 30th October: 2201 units - an average of 24 units per day.

It's either a massive demand for electricity for the month of October or an incorrect meter reading at the end of September that distorted the situation.

Regards,

Fnergg