Clive Page wrote:
There has been a news story this weekend about EON overcharging a number
of customers because their gas meters measured cubic metres when they
should have measured cubic feet, or maybe vice-versa. These stories are
all confused and hard to believe, especially because the ratio of these
units is around 35.3:1, and anyone who had a bill to small or too large
by a factor of 35 would surely notice. Does anyone understand what
actually went on here - the newspaper and website reports don't help at
all, and no reporter seems clued up enough to investigate or explain.

I can check easily enough whether my gas meter is recording cubic feet
or metres and corresponds to what is on the bill, but is there any easy
way for the consumer to check that a gas meter is actually recording
roughly the right number of cubit feet/metres? With an electricity
meter it's not too hard: turn everything off but one appliance such as a
1kW heater, then run it for a set length of time. But checking a gas
meter seems very difficult for the end user.

I think the old meters recorded 100s of cubic feet and modern ones use
Cubic metres so the ratio is nearer to 3:1 but still ought to flag up a
problem with alert consumers if they bother to read the bill. Cost
changes could be obfuscated by annual budget plans and energy price
hikes though.

Almost impossible to check a gas meter calibration other than rig the
boiler to be on full blast with no modulation and run it for so many
minutes and compare the gas volume measured with the rated heat output
of the boiler. lots of scope for error in the measurements and
calculations so would only pick up gross errors. The only fault
mechanisms in mechanical gas meters that I can think of would give
errors in favour of the consumer.
Modern electronic ones would have been tested to death in development
and likely to either just stop working or run for ever.
I believe so called smart meters (and maybe earlier electronic ones)
have batteries that need changing every few years. They are possibly
clever enough to send back battery data to the energy provider though.

Mechanical meters are changed every 10 years or so - mine was done a
couple of years ago as was the leccy meter. Both non smart types.