Hacked electricity meter?

Is this an urban myth?
Our consumption has gone from 1000 units a month to 6000 .
We don’t have any extra gadgets on the go.
Help!

Live in a flat by any chance?

A shop with flats above.

there’s a secret cable powering next door’s waccy baccy farm in the loft

and yes the new remotely readable smartmeters are hackable

Switch everything off in your place, and see if meter goes round ,blinks, or moves.

various after market devices are availabe to measure leccy usage, and contact your leccy suplier.

Yes, both soft and hard hacks are possible. Hard hack is more likely.

Have turned it all off and the wheel stopped.We have the old fashioned meter.
What is a hard hack?

Doesn’t have to be hacked, it could just be buggered (that’s a specific technical term). If you contact the supplier and tell them that the recorded usage has gone up 6 fold without any change in actual usage they should investigate.

Hard hack = bypassing the Meyer or physically interfering with it
Soft hack = reprogramming more relevant to smart Meyer or ones with onboard processing

Perhaps not averaged yet? Fridge working harder in summer?

They will ask you to record your usage in KWh for a week ( read each day at the same time) 10 – 12 KWh is the norm so, start doing that now to save you some time. Then they will send the meter operator out to your address to look at the meter. If there isn’t anything wrong with it then they will charge you. Sounds like there is so don’t worry.

if the meter stopped when you turned all the devices off then you know that no one has hacked into it, try that rather than turned off the supply. Are you sure the meter has not just been mis-read at some point

We’ve got our bills going back years. It’s always averaged 30- 40 kwh a day.
Averaged since last November it’s been 100 kwh a day.
Had an investigate and all that’s changed is having the motor changed on the chocolate cabinet a month ago.
Even when it’s fan is running it’s drawing 0.9 kwh.

If you have a 900W fan it’ll sound like a sodding turbine.

Bought one of those power meters so there may be an element of user error in the readings but it said 884 watts.

Did I misread? It’s not just the fan that’s on then? Lights/heater as well?

Did the fan housing get cleaned?

When you restrict the airflow on a vacuum cleaner the power used goes down. I’ve seen similar with computer and equipment fans.

Now its clear, its maybe actually moving air and power use has gone up.

Fit a power monitor to your stuff?

http://www.fanbuyer.co.uk/FB-RS315-315L.pdf

This is a 300W inline fan, it’s 40cm across.

How big is your cabinet?!

It’s one of these 1m across and I guess the fan is 20 cm across. Nothing else has changed since last year and I’m just trying to see if anything is using up the extra 60 kWh. Even if the cabinet is drawing 1 kWh that only makes 24 kWh.Would an electrician of our choosing be able to investigate the meter or does it have to be the electric company? My thoughts are that they won’t really investigate too far as its to their benefit. No one likes a £2000 electric bill.

Leccy companies will have procedures to follow for suspect meters, it’s a regulated market so there’s probably things they must do, and do within a specified timeframe.

Oh and anything connected is hackable.

if the meter stopped when you turned all the devices off then you know that no one has hacked into it

Or they didn’t have the large current draw equipment they’re powering on at the time 🙂

Probably some fault in your house, fridge always on or …? Check the different circuits, see what happens.

Hopefully I’ve been a dimwit.
Can someone confirm this reading please.
When I was on the phone giving the reading I said 516865 as the hand was past the 5 and on the 1.
I now reckon it should read 506865 which would be a lot nicer.

50686 it is 🙂

You don’t need the lastlast number

Everybody feel free to take the piss!

We’ve gone through all the bills with the electric company and they now reckon we are £1800 in credit.
This seems implausible . What happens if we take the money and they later decide they were wrong?

They’ll ask for it back, and you will have lost nothing.

You were out by 10,000KWh. Or, ten Megawatt hours. Or, the equivalent of drawing 1KW of power constantly for 416 days.

Based on your usage (30-40KW/day), that’s about a year’s worth of electricity. Does £1800 per annum sound about right to you?

We didn’t pay the big bill.
They said we were £900 in credit last October we’ve paid £900 so far this year which would mean we’ve not used any electricity.

Scroll down to find analogue meter readings

A kWh is about 12 pence, so 10,000 kWh is roughly £1200 is So £1800 credit seems the right ball park.

Have the 1800 quid back, and stick it in some kind of reasonably accessible invetment account. Change supplier, and a few months later you should be on the clear to accept it’s really your credit to keep.

Oh, and ask if they can replace your meter, ‘cos that one is bloody ancient!

Does this mean the fan was only drawing 90w then? That sounds much more likely 🙂

With the fan on it draws 900 w
when it clicks off it draws 300 w.
Lights off and it draws 200 w.

You are not the only one who cannot read those dials.
I had a big argument with a landlord a couple of years ago.
The Tenant had moved out, the LL took the meter readings on ‘move out’ day, and let the Elec. Co. know the readings.
Tenant gets a rather large bill. He complains. The LL holds his deposit. Court action is threatenend, as Tenant is getting quite wound up as he needs his deposit back.
I get a call to investigate the increased usage.
Immediately I see the meter reading is 1 or 10k out (cant remember which). Tenant and LL are there at the time. I tell the LL the reading was wrong, he sees the needle pointing to the ‘0’, I say, no, it is between 9 and 0, meaning it is 9, look at the one before, which is on 8.
He just woudlnt believe it, and accused me of being mates with the Tenant, and trying to rip him off. I did know the Tenant, but only from school 25 years previously.
LL then says he wont be paying me as I’m ripping him off too.
I sent him the £30 bill for my time a week later, and he did pay, so must have calmed down, and realised it was his mistake.

I don’t understand. There must be something as well as the fan in there, is it refrigerated?

Either that or you have an archaeic fan!

I designed and built a device with a 300w 30cm fan in it, it was capable of generating a 20mph airflow in a 45x40cm section duct and sounded like a takeaway fan, or a vaccum cleaner at full chat.

This doesn’t add up somehow.

Anyway, I guess it doesn’t matter, your meter reading is sorted 🙂

these old sort of electric meters can really throw people off when dials are between number or sometimes even several dials at the same time, That meter does seem a little out of wack but it’s probably ancient. The reading is 50686 though can’t possibly be a 1 on the second dial.

Stripes, the unit is refrigerated.Keeps chocs between 14-17 c.
At night with no air con and choc cabinet on the shop uses 24kw.
Air con on and choc cabinet off the shop uses 9kw.
I am surprised how much the cabinet uses.