Why's my bill higher after my smart meter was installed?
Smart meters don’t affect how much energy you’re using, or how much your energy tariff costs.
But they do give us more accuracy around your billing. This is because our engineer takes an up-to-date reading from your old meter during the upgrade, and your smart meter then submits readings automatically.
If we haven't received recent meter readings from you or a meter reader before your smart meter upgrade, it's likely that our estimates for how much energy you were using were too low.
To see if this is the case, please take a look at your previous bills. You'll see estimated readings which may be lower than the actual reading taken on the day of the exchange. Because any difference between the old estimate and the new accurate reading will show on the bill with your smart meter upgrade, it can appear as if the upgrade itself caused your usage to increase. When in fact the higher bill has been caused by past energy use that hasn’t been accounted for.
If the amount of energy you use has gone up, it's worth remembering that many people are at home a lot more than we were before, and using more energy. That might be a reason for higher bills.