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Not so smart: ‘Smart meter said I owed thousands’
Electricity usage – one of these may cause a shock.
A woman has spoken of her surprise when her smart meter quoted thousands of pounds for a day’s usage of gas and electricity, due to a system error, reports BBC News.
Jane Allen was one of many confused customers who posted the strange readings from their SSE smart meters on social media. One customer’s display showed more than £30,000 for a single day.
SSE apologised and said no customers would be charged “the extra amounts resulting from errors”.
Smart meters send information on energy usage back to the supplier. They let the customer know how much electricity or gas they are consuming each day – and how much it’s costing them – in real time.
But for some customers, the readings have been somewhat higher than usual over the past week.
Jane Allen, from Portsmouth, has had her smart meter for around five months. But on Wednesday, she started to notice the strange activity.
“I was quite frightened to be honest – thinking it could be a gas leak,” she said. On Sunday her meter stated she was on £36,448.29 for the week – far beyond the daily £3.80 her family usually use.
“My worry is that they are going to try and get that sort of money out of my bank. Ms Allen called SSE who assured her “not to worry”.
Usman Hussain, whose meter suggested he had used £9,576.98 of energy on Friday, wrote on Twitter: “Think my SSE Smart Meter for energy and gas may be having slight problems! Either that [or] a neighbour has started nicking my leccy or gas.”
For the reading to be accurate, Mr Hussain would need a home bigger than Buckingham Palace – which, with 775 rooms, was billed £1m for a year.
The average annual bill for a large house in the UK is £1,486.
Full report: SSE glitch: ‘Smart meter said I owed thousands’ – BBC News
Source: https://tallbloke.wordpress.com/2017/03/05/not-so-smart-smart-meter-said-i-owed-thousands/
