After Replacing My Electricity Meter with a Smart Meter, I Feel My Electricity Bill has Increased Significantly. Is this a Common Phenomenon?

Maybe your readings were estimated and they had been estimating on the low side. Call your power company and ask.

https://help.davidenergy.com/en/articles/5869505

One bill is not enough to really know what is going on. If it returns to normal next bill, then Rixter is right. But let us consider that there may have been an increase in the fuel charge which may explain the increase in the bill. Or, the date when the power company made the meter change did not align with the billing date and they may have used their own estimate for part of the billing time. You may be able to get a better feel for what is happening by comparing the kilowatt usage from before the change to what is happening in the first couple of months after the change. Hope this helps.

I agree; give it several months to see if the bill goes back to normal. This one could have been for a longer time period or estimated previous bills. I didn't notice any change when they changed my meter.

The easiest way to figure this out is to get the kilowatt-hours from your last 12 or 15 bills and see how they change over time.

If you haven’t changed your load, then the kWHrs should match up, within reason.

It’s unlikely that either your old meter or your new meter are not recording reality, but there is a slim chance that there was a problem.

I have a 3000 SF 30 yr old home in NC, and Duke Power says we are a far more efficient home than average, AC in summer, electric dryer in winter are the big loads. 343 kWHr in May, their efficient home was 577 kWHr, from a sample of almost 2000 similar homes, nearby.

1. As per the other discussions, it could be the day of the month the meters were installed, or similar timing issues that results in one "reading" month having less days than the other. Your usage habits could be masked by this, so you'll see over the next month or two, when compared to the kWh average over the previous 6+ months.
2. If you had an antique rotating disc kWh meter, then maybe it has under-read your true consumption. As per 1 above, you'll see this after a few months.
3. It could be that you were put on a different billing strategy by your utility - one with higher monthly connection fees, or with time-of-use methodology (that can get very expensive if you don't watch it), or such matters. You'll see this if your kWh's stay relatively constant, but your charges (dollars/ pounds/ whatever) increases.

Let us know, I'm always curious about these issues. We just had a case where it was a combination of "long" and "short" months (44 days and then 17 days!), coupled with the annual electricity increases in the same month, and a very high increase in fixed (connection) charges.

A couple of issues I have seen over the years:

Bad connection before the meter causing the meter to read high. Found with a thermal camera.

Old meter reading low due to wear on parts. This was an old dial type meter.

One specific design of smart meter was proven to give high readings when large induction motors were used with it.

I have experienced faulty electricity and gas smart meters. Here in the UK energy suppliers seem extremely reluctant to admit that there is a fault. I one case my gas meter stopped altogether and I enjoyed about six weeks of zero usage! They finally corrected the fault and have been good enough not to back charge me. Equally I had an electricity meter that had been overcharging for years and I was only credited back for one year. It is definitely worth checking the meters against known loads in real time.

Old meters were basically DC motors measuring the voltage drop over a resistor - if you fiddle around with the resistor the reading would be different. The old meters had jumpers to change the value of the resistor.

Old meters were not that accurate but the same can be expected from snart meters.

What I like about smart meters is that I can take daily readings and can determine why more power is used on specific days = washer , heater .

Only daily readings?

Most UK providers give 30 minute breakdowns via an app.

And some even change the tariff that quickly, sending out details the day before so users can plan when to use at the cheapest rate.

I am no expert, but I have heard from others that the price of electricity can change throughout the day (especially during summer months to prevent brown-outs) and with smart meters, they are able to tell when you are using it. The old meters just calculated how much you used and not when. This could be a factor in price changes. Check into how much the power costs and if there are different prices during peak times.

Got ours a couple years ago. These meters report all of your usage.

Your power providers can check it out.

Here in UK I'm on my second smart meters.

The gas meter sends out its readings and I'm billed accordingly. It is outside.

The electricity meter is a bastard to read as you have to go through a complicated routine which rarely works. The reason I'm required to read it is that the Octopussy's tentacles don't reach inside our power station grit concrete block walls. I can get a meter reading on the monitor that came with it, but I'm not certain if it's just the current rate total or the night rate or both.

On asking for a meter man to call Octopussy helpfully asked if I'd consider having a smart meter. Well at least I had to laugh out loud.

Update : Since I was away, and having requested a meter read, I have just received a bill for the last 13 months electricity use, with readings.

Clearly, the meter, being inside, is incapable of connecting with the WAN used by the company entrusted with collecting data, so I assume that someone came with a data recorder outside the house, and interrogated and downloaded a years data.

Encountered a similar issue after my meter was replaced and found this article with some concerted sleuthing:

Electrical Engineer Explains How “Smart” Meters Can Lead to Higher Bills

https://westviewnews.org/2023/04/09/electrical-engineer-explains-how-smart-meters-can-lead-to-higher-bills/gcapsis/

Approached my power service provider (Xcel) and they would neither confirm nor deny the accuracy of this article. It has to be costing power companies astronomical $$$ to replace all of these meters; who do you think is paying for this (rhetorical question)?

The article states that the smart meter consumes 114 watts continuously, (2.74kWHr per day). That is disgusting if true. Being outside and spread over a 6" cube, you may not notice the temperature rise, I suppose, but that seems high for the technology, wireless routers don't run that hot...

That’s most likely a typo (drop the kilo ‘K’) and a misstatement; Iq = 2.75W, or 2.75Wh if steady-state for an hour, or 66Wh/day (on average). Surprisingly, the data sheet for my iTron smart meter does not spec power demand for the unit itself, but does show/spec power in its front panel (240V 3W). I would guess that they’ve done this so as to apply the same data sheet to multiply variant members of the same meter family.

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What caught my attention was the statement that each 15 min sample period is reported as the peak demand during that period. So if your fridge compressor starts during that period, reported power demand for that period is not the integrated average of all demand, but the peak value that was captured. You can bet that Public Service is recovering the cost of its smart meter replacement/upgrades in some fashion, is this the likely method they’ve employed?

Standby power and low-load power was unrecorded by the old meter. But since smart meter is more accurate, it recorded.

Hi, perhaps they are charging harmonic current. Or reactive. You have to sea the lecture window, if the are three numbers (successive) that means active, reactive and harmonic power. May be some charge for they.