Letter from ESB Networks, meter faulty

Irish Steve

Had a letter from ESB Networks this morning, and supposedly, the meter is faulty and they are coming at some stage to replace it, and if necessary, they will refund us for any overcharge. They tell us that their systems have detected that it's faulty.

The meter is an electronic precdecessor of the smart meter, and was fitted a number of years ago when there were problems with the time switch that did the day / night switch over. We're on 3 phase, which may affect what gets installed, apparently, there's no rush on installing smart meters for 3 phase users.

So, how would they identify a "faulty" meter, and what can fail on an electronic meter, I'd have thought that an electronic meter is going to work, or fail completely, rather than record incorrectly, and how would they identify a faulty meter other than from profiling usage over time.

Will we get any choice in what gets installed?

OPW have been doing flood prevention work in our area for longer than I care to think about, and to facilitate their work, they "buried" the ESB mini pillar that our supply comes from, is it possible that due to the way it's been buried, there's water in the mini pillar that's causing problems? We've not noticed any significant variances in our usage over time, which is why I'm wondering what's going on.

zenith

Maybe it's just buried and they can't read it, electronically or otherwise. Sounds like a form letter to be honest, if your usage hasn't changed but you've been getting estimated bills for a while, it might trigger a visit.

From what I understand, you'll get a smart meter but your tariff won't change unless you choose to.

meercat

I wonder if it has been discovered that all of these types of meter are faulty and it’s not just yours that’s being replaced

smuggler.ie

Wonder how would they determine how much.... "they will refund us for any overcharge"

Irish Steve

The meter is in the garage, (long story that goes back to the days of having a computer system out there), and isn't read as often as a result, but if they leave a card, we read the meter and process the information on line.

The suspicion based on a call to find out what the time scale for the change is left me with the impression that although it's an electronic clock rather than a mechanical time switch, it's not showing the correct time, which has been flagged by the meter reader. That could be a result of the internal battery becoming weak, and the clock losing time during a recent power cut, I'm guessing that there's a small rechargeable battery in the unit to cover outages, and presumably, it's gone weak.

Apparently, they are not pushing smart meters out to 3 phase customers at the moment, which may be just as well, as our present supplier is not offering very good packages on smart meters compared to Day/Night, so we'll stay on the tariff we're on for now.

Gooser14

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058259445/letter-from-esb-networks-meter-faulty

Assuming it is a day/night meter it may be that it is showing an incorrect time & this has been reported by the meter reader. You can check that out yourself but bear in mind that the clock is set to GMT (or whatever it is called these days) & if showing the correct time should one hour behind the current time when checked.