"Arfa Daily" wrote in message
...
A few months back, my old mechanical meter was replaced with one of these
small white Landis & Gyr jobs that has an LCD display, and a small blue
button to cycle through the available displays of recorded units, totals,
time etc. I check it most days, and was surprised to find that this
morning, at 9am, it was still reading Economy 7 units - or whatever they
call them these days. A few minutes later, the reading had increased by
one, confirming that it was indeed still recording night units. I scrolled
through the readings, and was intrigued to find that the clock was 4 hours
slow, so the meter did indeed 'think' that it was still in the Economy 7
period.

So, does anyone know how the clock is set on these ? I was present,
chatting to the fitter the whole time he was doing the job, and I don't
recall him doing anything to the meter, other than removing it from the
box, screwing it to the board, and wiring it in.

I'm thinking that maybe time synchronisation signals are superimposed on
the grid, and that these meters can read them, or maybe that they have a
DSF type receiver in them for getting the time - in fact now that I think
about it, I have a dim recollection of reading that somewhere. But in
either case, I would have thought that the update was every few seconds,
or minutes at worst, so how did my clock get 4 hours behind in the first
place, and why has it not 'caught up' ? It was correct yesterday, so it's
something that's happened 'suddenly'.

At 11am, it changed over, confirming that this is all down to the clock
having the wrong time. I wonder who, in the event of this carrying on for
any length of time, is responsible for the fact that I would be getting
'cheap' (er!) electricity for 4 hours longer than I should be ... ? :-)

Arfa


Our flats communal lighting hallways, stairs and car park switches to cheap
rate at night - except that the time switch was hours slow so we paid peak
rate all night the other winter as nobody (including the now sacked managing
agents) was monitoring the charges. EDF put the clock right but wouldn't
discuss any refund. Fortunately not a fortune between 24 flats but it is
worth checking the clock. I also had a work colleague whose clock was 12
hours slow/fast, now that was worth not complaining about!

Peter