How To Read My Meter – Electric and Gas Meter Readings

It’s a good idea to know your gas and electricity meter readings. You can keep an eye on the energy you’re using and make sure your bills are accurate. Our meter reading guide shows how to read different types of gas and electric meters, and how to submit them to your energy supplier.

If you have read this guide and are still unsure as to how you read your meter, please contact your supplier and asked them to go through this over the phone with you.

Please note that smart meters are currently being installed across the UK as part of the UK wide government roll-out, so if you have a smart meter you may no longer have to manually submit readings again as your supplier will automatically receive these readings.

Electric Meter Reading

Digital Meters:

If your meter looks like the image below, read the meter display from left to right, and ignore ant numbers in red which usually spear after a decimal point or space.

Please note that if you have an Economy 7 or a Domestic Economy Meter, you will have two rows of figures. The ‘Low’ row shows the reading for off-peak times and the ‘Normal’ row shows the reading for peak time.

Dial Meters:

Some older Electronic Meters have dials instead of a digital row of numbers (please see below):

When reading a dial meter, you will need to read from left to right and ignore the dial that is marked 1/10. If the hand on the dial is between 2 numbers, please take note of the lower number, however if the dial hand is between 0 and 9, you must always note down the number as 9. Please note that this is only the case when the 9 is where 1 o’clock would be on a clock, for example dial 2 and 4.

If the pointer is exactly on a number, but the reading on the dial after it is 9, take one away from that number. For example, dial 3 above is pointing exactly on 7, yet dial 4 is pointing to 9, therefore dial 3 would actually be read as 6 and not 7. Looking at the example above, the dial would be read as 94694.

Gas Meter Reading

Digital Meters:

If your digital screen looks like the one below, read the first 4 numbers from left to right.

In your reading, do not include any numbers in red, or any numbers after the first red number. This same rule applies if your gas meter is metric, however in this case you will need to read the first 5 numbers.

Dial Gas Meters:

Some older Gas Meters use dials instead of a digital screen. A Gas Meter dial will be similar to the below image:

When reading a dial gas meter, you must read the dials from left to right, but note that you will ignore the largest dial on the screen, along with the red dial.

If the hand on the dial is between 2 numbers, record the lower value. However, if the pointer is between 0 and 9 as shown on the first dial above, record the number as 9. If any of the dials point exactly to 9, take away 1 from the dial before. For example, dial 4 point to 9, therefore dial 3 will be recorded as 6 and not 7. Therefore, the above example would be recorded as 9469.

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