Bristol City Council hit with huge energy bills as staff can’t access some electricity meters

Bristol City Council hit with huge energy bills as staff can’t access some electricity meters

Bristol City Council has been forced to pay huge energy bills as staff cannot access some electricity meters. One example of a meter not read for many months led to a huge bill increase of £190,000, as energy companies struggle to estimate how much power is being used.

Meters measure the amount of electricity used and this information is sent to energy suppliers to help them figure out how much to charge. When this information isn’t set, suppliers estimate how much energy was probably used, although these estimates can sometimes be “wildly out”.

Council bosses are now hoping to solve the problem by automatically sending data every half an hour, instead of once a month or four times a year. This