Ronan,
That covers everything, I think! Many thanks!
All the best,
Cearbhall
m +353 (0)833323487 e: cearbhall.omeadhra@xxxxxxx
-----Original Message-----
From: fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <fb-exchange-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On
Behalf Of ronan.p.mcguirk@xxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2023 5:22 PM
To: fb-exchange@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [fb-exchange] Smart Meter registration
Hi all,
I was discussing smart meters with Cearbhall recently.
Just a few notes on my understanding of Smart Meters.
When you have a smart meter installed, you may need to go through two
separate registration processes in order to get information from the meter.
The first registration is to say that the meter is a smart meter. ESB
Networks has installed over 1.5 million smart meters in Ireland. When
installed, these act as standard meters until they are registered as Smart
Meters. I was unaware of the need to register the smart meter until I
switched electricity suppliers last September. When reading out the terms and
conditions over the phone to me, the new supplier said I had a standard
meter, even though I had a smart meter installed several months previously.
After some discussion and a few phone calls, my new supplier was able to
register the smart meter for me over the phone. It seems strange to me that
the smart meters weren't registered as part of the installation process.
Once a smart meter is registered, I think this means that ESB Networks are
able to automatically contact and read the meter every two hours or so and
record the information centrally. This central ESB Networks database is
available to your electricity supplier to carry out billing.
Your electricity supplier may have a web page or an app that can let you
access this central information from ESB Networks. In my case however, I
found that my supplier had a web page that I could not read with a screen
reader either on Windows or an iPhone. Perhaps other suppliers have more
accessible apps or websites that will give access to this ESB Networks
information.
I found that there is an alternative if your supplier is inaccessible. This
needs a separate registration process however.
I registered separately to set up an account with ESB Networks. I found the
registration process worked well until I needed to link my smart meter to the
ESB Networks account. I phoned ESB Networks to find out what the problem
was. It seems that when registering with ESB Networks, you need to have
exactly the same name on ESB Networks as on your electricity supplier's site.
If for example your account is in joint names, then you need to have
identical text in the names on both ESB Networks and your supplier. In my
case, my supplier had entered the name field in the form "Joe Bloggs & Mrs
Josephine Bloggs" " This name field needs to be identical, character by
character, on your supplier and on ESB Networks in order to link a smart
meter to the ESB Networks account.
Once I got the second registration (ESB Networks account) complete, I was
able to follow a link on the ESB Networks site to download a CSV file. This
file can be read in Microsoft Excel and it shows readings every 30 minutes
of electricity that you used in the previous 30 minutes. This information
is up to the previous day. I used Excel on a Windows PC to analyse the
electricity usage. I don't know if any supplier has an accessible app that
will let you do this on a smart phone.
I wasn't able to find this double registration process explained clearly
anywhere.
Ronan
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