I haven't assumed the Op can see the meter/the meter is near the CU (he is using an IHD).
[Mystery] £400-600 monthly home electricity bill with Octopus
- Thread starter Minato
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Associate
I average about 45 after putting about 30 into the car overnight, so something is definitely wrong somewhere.
Does your IHD have a battery? if so you can unplug it and it still works for awhile.
Once you turn off all the breakers, if your meter is still recording 600w, you will be able to see this clearly on the meter itself.
The meter should be recording 0.1kwh every 10 minutes.
Next to the meter there should be an isolation switch for the whole installation. Turn this off, if the meter is still recording power usage, it’s broken.
What EV charger do you have and does it have a CT clamp? Can you read what this is recording and does it agree with your smart meter? If it doesn’t agree, it’s probably broken.
Once you turn off all the breakers, if your meter is still recording 600w, you will be able to see this clearly on the meter itself.
The meter should be recording 0.1kwh every 10 minutes.
Next to the meter there should be an isolation switch for the whole installation. Turn this off, if the meter is still recording power usage, it’s broken.
What EV charger do you have and does it have a CT clamp? Can you read what this is recording and does it agree with your smart meter? If it doesn’t agree, it’s probably broken.
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Nobody in the house is growing anything they shouldn't.
IHD doesn't, it needs to be plugged into a wall socket.
I will go and have a look at the physical Octopus Smart Meter itself to see if it gives me any information tonight.
EV Charger is a Zappi, I isolated this from the circuit breaker last night and it didn't drop the power usage on the IHD so don't think it's that.
Zappi reports its CT readings in real time on its screen. Does your Zappi have a CT connected and is this wrapped around your main tails somewhere?
Does the grid reading on the Zappi agree with your smart meter IHD (within a few % margin of error)?
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IHD should be able to have a battery inserted, granted it wont last long but for your purpose it should suffice, if its still plugged in and on then not everything is off.
Id contact them on twitter as if there is a fault and this only started during a certain month they should be able to see a difference in usage and understand that that baseline is not normal.
If you have switched absolutely EVERY switch off on your consumer unit and you are still getting 3 digit consumption they need to be notified so you can both figure out how best to proceed because that is not normal.
Id contact them on twitter as if there is a fault and this only started during a certain month they should be able to see a difference in usage and understand that that baseline is not normal.
If you have switched absolutely EVERY switch off on your consumer unit and you are still getting 3 digit consumption they need to be notified so you can both figure out how best to proceed because that is not normal.
These are all great suggestions.
There is a remote chance that a breaker has failed and isn't isolating a particular circuit when switched off, but this is unlikely. It should be obvious that the circuit is off or not but maybe not so much in a larger house.
If it were me I'd be using a current clamp meter and measure each circuit when isolated, and the incoming supply too. That way if it's zeros across the board then you know the smart meter is faulty. If you're not competent with such a thing then call in an electrician to measure it for you - then you'll have the evidence to take to your supplier.
Interesting problem!
Ok so here's a potentially interesting update following your suggestions @dlockers and @b0rn2sk8 especially.
I had another look at the Zappi charger. Turns out as you say, it's somehow connected to the mains and it displays the current power draw of the property, and seems to mirror my IHD pretty accurately. Which means I don't need to isolate circuits inside the house, I can do it from the mains boards in the basement next to where my smart meter is.
These are the mains circuit breakers that supply everything in the property. They're right next to my smart meter. I had a look at the meter, it shows my usage in kWh but that would mean having to turn everything off and wait an hour to see if it goes up by 1kW which isn't practical.
So I did the next best thing, I found the small breaker that supplies the Zappi and the Zappi only, left that on, and turned every other breaker off from the mains for the entire property.
Lo and Behold, the Zappi displayed 0.0kW for the first time.
Turning breakers on one at a time, starting with the far left on the picture above, the Zappi went to 0.4kW. The second one then turned most things in the house back on it seems, as Zappi went back to 1.1kW which is my standard baseline where it then remained.
So I guess that rules out a fault with the smart meter since it went to 0.0kW? And it means there's something dodgy on the property itself?
I had another look at the Zappi charger. Turns out as you say, it's somehow connected to the mains and it displays the current power draw of the property, and seems to mirror my IHD pretty accurately. Which means I don't need to isolate circuits inside the house, I can do it from the mains boards in the basement next to where my smart meter is.
These are the mains circuit breakers that supply everything in the property. They're right next to my smart meter. I had a look at the meter, it shows my usage in kWh but that would mean having to turn everything off and wait an hour to see if it goes up by 1kW which isn't practical.
So I did the next best thing, I found the small breaker that supplies the Zappi and the Zappi only, left that on, and turned every other breaker off from the mains for the entire property.
Lo and Behold, the Zappi displayed 0.0kW for the first time.
Turning breakers on one at a time, starting with the far left on the picture above, the Zappi went to 0.4kW. The second one then turned most things in the house back on it seems, as Zappi went back to 1.1kW which is my standard baseline where it then remained.
So I guess that rules out a fault with the smart meter since it went to 0.0kW? And it means there's something dodgy on the property itself?
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Did you not do the individual breakers in your consumer unit before?
So I've got these breakers in the basement next to the smart meter.
I've got 2 sets of breakers in the main part of the house inside that supply all the rooms.
I've got a breaker in the pool room, and a breaker in the garage.
The latter 4 sets of breakers is what I turned off last night, thinking that covered everything inside the house and property. But clearly that resulted in that ~660W still going. Doing it from the breakers next to the meter got me to 0.0kW. I'm not sure why there's a discrepancy there.
Soldato
may not be relavant but I was speaking to a solar company last week and they said they had a customer that had abnormal electric bill, it turned out it was a old lamp they used and was somehow using a crap load of power when it shouldn't of been.
Ive also read a person on reddit had an issue with his under floor heating which had issues.
You may need to get a sparky in to do some further testing
Ive also read a person on reddit had an issue with his under floor heating which had issues.
You may need to get a sparky in to do some further testing
Soldato
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Yeah pump or heater? Or heated floor?
But those two main breakers are just a single switches, and I don't know exactly what it supplies since it's down in the basement.
The cabling is a bit confusing, I can't make head or tails of what goes where.
Any of the above.
Is none of it labeled?
It’s basically process of elimination I’m afraid. Working though it all circuit by circuit, mapping out what is going where and powering what. Labelling it all up and it will make much more sense.
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Something is leaking like a sieve, id carry the IHD around with you and start room by room and flip switches and wait 10 seconds after each turn off, if you turn up nothing then its something that doesn't have a switch at the wall, find every plug in every room and write down what you have electrical in each room and what you have done to check it.
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I've seen worse, those black boxes are just junction boxes for meter tails, normally referred to as 'Henley Blocks' so you can connect more than one distribution board. It It is the individual circuits in the distribution boards should all be labelled.