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Strange Meter Readings (30 min AMR)

AncientMariner
With no booking for room hire and thus no income, I have been trying to reduce electricity consumption in our village hall. I cannot just simply switch off at the isolator, since there is another user who has access for an office.

This morning 09:41 looked at the consumption graph for Thursday 2nd April and was pleased that I had apparently reduced it by more than half from the previous days.  Then looked again this evening and I hadn't!  I thought I had seen similar yesterday, so this time copied the screen to a file:


The two images are at:  
http://ancient-mariner.co.uk/public/ScreenShot3832A.bmp  This morning's view of Thursday 2nd April and
http://ancient-mariner.co.uk/public/ScreenShot3836A.bmp  This evening's view of Thursday 2nd April


Confusing, to say the least!

Clive



  • 0
    Hmm, what are you thinking Clive, any clues?
  • 0
    What software is generating the graphs? and how does it get its data? (from a smart meter?)


    First guess was that the monitoring system only gets occasional updates - maybe once a day or something - so was missing some of the data on first view. But then I noticed the bar graph top right - which if it shows electricity consumption - would suggest that it did have a complete set of Thursday's data even on the first viewing.


    I'm guessing dodgy software so far...


       - Andy.
  • 0
    Whilst not directly related to your question, the "Average" figure shown in the bars on the top left is for seven days, even though there is no data for four of them.
  • 0
    Clive

    It looks to me as though you have a lot of consumption for someone in an office. It looks like electric heating which you have not stopped and some additional load sometimes. The whole lot looks a bit curious and I wouldn't trust it at all. I have no idea about the images they may be nonsense, probably as stated, rubbish software.
  • 0
    Do you possess a clamp meter ?

    It may help to know if this is a steady load, or bursty (tank thermostat or similar.)

    The hourly graphs top right,  if they are reliable, suggest a steady load of about a kW for all 24 hours, What hours is this office manned ?
  • 0
    The data you are showing comes from the central processing facility, not the meter. You would need to talk with your meter operator to find out what has happened. The billing information will be ok, but it seems that for some reason there was in issue in the data stream you were looking at.


    The best display for answering your consumption question, is the half-hour figures at the top right. The scaling on the left is kW, so you seem to have a fairly steady load of 1kW or so throughout the day. In an office, this could perhaps be a PC plus printer left on 24 hours a day and a thermostatically controlled heater, but I would have expected that to go up during the night when it is colder outside. 



    Regards,


    Alan.
  • 0
    Dodgy software!


    I measured the three phases, neutral and earth currents this morning with just the emergency lights internal chargers on, two permanently on outside low energy lamps and the fire alarm system.

    There may also be usage in the office that is rented to an outside firm.

    L1 0.235A  L2 0.98A  L3 1.15A  N 0.988A  Earth 0.175A (TN-C-S from cable sheath.

    This will have been less than Thursday's graphs, since found a fridge freezer running in the kitchen containing just two small bags of frozen fruit… That is now off!

    I obtain the graphs from SSE Business Electricity "Clarity" website https://www.ssebusinessenergy.co.uk/smart-metering/clarity/ so should be accurate. Although last July there was a slippage in the day of the week versus the date, which was confusing!

    With electricity usage varying day to day, week to week, depending upon hirings, I have never paid a lot of attention to the graphs, other than querying our manager when there were strange spikes late at night. It is only since our hirings have ceased so that what is left is the base load and from the graphs seemed somewhat high. Especially with no hiring income.

    Last night I dug out the monthly bills and found that contrary to what I had thought, the billing period is the actual month, not a month between the dates the bill is produced. The reading dates not being that clear like on a domestic bill. So with that knowledge soon found that for the three months ending 1st Jan, Feb & March, the "Clarity" Total kWh shown in the top LH corner for past history graphs was twice the correct figure from the Bill.  

    So our consumption for yesterday Saturday 4th is now showing 8 kWh. I am hopeful that today's consumption will be less, since besides the fridge freezer being on until mid-day there was a peak in usage due to my wife using hot water from the under sink heater to do some cleaning whilst I was fitting a new gents urinal flush controller.

    Must admit that we had issues last year with our gas graphs since these too are in kWh and the figures bore no resemblance to reality, since we appeared to be consuming gas at the rate of a small power station. (We have a 5 MW gas fired power station about a mile away.)  Apparently they had made a mess of the conversion factor to convert cubic metres to kWh…

    The above makes me wonder how many of their consumers use Clarity, I seem to been "selected" as the Beta tester…..


    My next job? An email to SSE.

    Clive
  • 0
    I telephoned the help number for SSE's Clarity this morning and the doubling of the previous days consumption was due to Clarity believing that we had TWO electricity meters, albeit with the same meter number. Their software was obtaining the data twice with an interval in-between, hence the correct figure later being replaced with the second added on.  

    They resolved it straight away and also corrected the historical figures.

    Clive


  • 0
    Hi Clive,

    it just goes to show.

    Modern technology helps things go along more efficiently.

    Even the cockups are more efficient and spectacular these days too ?
  • 0
    Indeed.  Anyone can make a mistake, but a monumentally silly  mistake really needs a computer.


    I know someone who programs for a living, and has done for many years, who after a few drinks once admitted to being involved in one that cost a contract for a large bank.


    To test the auto-mailing  correctly send different special offers to customers with different bank balances, the test involved using a set of fake customers, and checking that the right letters were sent based on balance, credit history whatever. The idea being something like  offering loans and overdrafts to one group and high interest saving options to the other.


    This testing including one fake customer called Mr Rich_Bar_Steward, or something in that jokey programmer style.  So far so good, but this was back when mail merge was new, and things were not as structured as they are today, and something was not parsed correctly, somehow several letters were printed that said things like.

    Dear Mr Smith,

    Rich_Bar_Steward,

    Would you be interested in broadening your investment  portfolio with our ...




    I understand it was spotted  quite quickly, but even so did not end well in terms of further business.


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