ESB Fault reporting charge.

But you need to identify your meter to report a fault. What about a pensioner, unable to fathom out the mysteries of an unseen power source and not finding it easy to afford the current charge, let alone a possible call out fee?

For something that seems so simple to identify, the threat seems totally superfluous.

I have an area of the house with a separate supply for relatives/ visitors. It seemed obvious and simple to stick a small neon mains indicator fed through a dedicated breaker for that and only that.

Anyway isn't a smart meter capable of deciding whether Volts are available, and if so why don't the ESB use that to tell the householder through their website what is down, instead of relying on reports from "unqualified" individuals who would be disinclined to risk a charge anyway.

One for the live and one for the neutral ? :-)

Good point actually, I always look for a known live before using a Volt stick. I have two, so it should provide a reasonable security if I don't have an independent 240 supply.

I have a smart meter, but it seems limited on what it displays. I was expecting to have a virtual War and Peace of data, but there is very little apart from power. In fact I have an Amp Clamp in the meter box as I still cannot quite equate the recorded usage with what I would expect.

I'm aware of the disadvantages, in fact once with a Fluke Voltage indicator, I ripped out several meters of trunking to find where the supply to my "dead" cable was coming from. I never thought that something using discrete LED's for indication could actually present a very much higher impedance across the measuring point than the multimeter I commonly used.

Neon's are terrible, I recollect decades back some crackpot at Uni decided to use a neon to indicate the time constant of an RC timing circuit. I had access to an electronics workshop at the time and was able to prove the fundamental flaws of using the bulb as an indicator. Having sad that, across the supply conductors of a company fuse or meter would be fairly reliable as a simple check by switching in a load would eliminate a false indication through leakage across an insulating medium.

I didn't think it would be charged too often even in the case of genuine errors, it was just that once again after arriving home and finding the house without power, it seems a pity the ESB does not at least pay more attention to the accuracy of status reports and other things like the cards they send through every few years, or tens of power outages.

I never looked either!

I will check during the next cut, I doubt I will have long to wait.

Stupid of me really as I was in the box adjacent to the meter when the power was off the other day.

It isn't always easy to make a quick diagnosis. It's not unknown to have a fault leaving me with around eighty Volts on the incoming supply cables and it does catch me by surprise when it happens as some electronic items including LED lighting are happy to work on that supply. The house is very old and has had building work and upgrades done over the years, but some of the power layout is still a bit of a mystery, so if there is the slightest chance of arriving at the wrong conclusion, I never miss the opportunity:-(

Thanks for the pointer.

Thanks, I have nothing too important here and they seem to pick up the problem within the hour anyway. The fridge and freezer are probably the only things at risk and neither would be missed if a motor burnt out.

It did surprise me when it first happened, I recall it wasn't unknown decades back in the UK, in fact I heard it was used as a strategy for power reduction until people started to use variacs. I cannot recall where I got this from but it would be in the 60's, after that power interruptions were virtually unknown.

Low power was a bit of a problem in the UK for me. I used to install projects with control systems that would do a full clean reset in the event of even brief supply losses of less than a second.

A lot of the stuff I dealt with was remote and suffered from brownouts though, difficult and unpredictable problems ensued sometimes.