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It was time for the clocks to spring forward last night so here is a timely reminder to check that your car will charge at the time you think it will!

Check your car's clock and charge timer and the climate timer if you use one.

From the MUA EV tariff webpage: "you [the bill payer] are responsible to ensure that your electricity supply switches at the appropriate time by carrying out regular checks of the switching times of the meter. "

So it's a good time to check that your Electricity meter has the correct time and has not 'drifted'. MUA domestic meters operate on GMT so the off-peak rate for the EV tariff is always midnight to 7 a.m. GMT. Now that we are in British Summer Time (BST) all appliances that use the off-peak electricity should have their clocks checked.

My new MUA electricity meter, the Elster AS230 Single Phase Meter, has a clock capable of changing itself to BST but by the look of this image it is not activated.

The meter provides 2 Daylight Savings dates whereby the clock can be advanced by one or two hours at the start of the summer and can be retarded by one or two hours at the end of the summer.

That is a quote from the Elster AS230's manual which states that It is also capable of operating as a Smart Meter but that capability is not activated either. One day perhaps!



With British Summer Time ending this Sunday my mind turned to the dual rate meter and electric vehicle tariff. Especially now I am charging two cars I want to do it as cost affectively as possible and at a time when there's less demand from the rest of the house, and of course, the grid.
Screenshot 2015-10-19 08.45.02Manx Utilities EV tariff give you a reduced rate per unit of 8.75p per unit between midnight and 7 am GMT. It had been a while since I'd opened up the meter box to have a look and I discovered that the clock was wrong. I assumed it would be by about an hour as we are still in BST and the Manx Utilities literature does state that the meter operates on GMT. However, it turned out to be 48 minutes out. Not a massive difference but shows that the clock in these meters don't keep very good time so need checking on a regular basis.

Discussing this with EVIOM Senior prompted a check of his dual rate meter and this is where the real shock was (no pun intended). The clock on the meter was out by about 10 hours! Going back over old bills showed that the unit consumption on the overnight rate had been falling since January until the reduced rate was now being applied during the day.

We will both be contacting Manx Utilities to ask them to come round and adjust the clocks on our meters to the correct time (GMT). EVIOM suggests that all Manx Utilities customers with a dual rate meter check theirs regularly and ask for the clock to be corrected if it's found to be out.

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