‘Big Six’ energy utility SSE has sought to reassure customers after a smart meter software upgrade caused some displays to show daily bills worth thousands of pounds.
Customers took to Twitter over the weekend to complain that the energy consumption features on their SSE-supplied smart meters had begun to show inaccurate bills, with some displaying bills as high as £30,000 for that particular day.
And today the utility sought to reassure customers that the actual billing system had not been affected, blaming the display errors on an “issue” identified within a routine software upgrade carried out last week.
“We’re aware of a small number of SSE customers currently seeing inaccurate information on their in-home display as a result of an issue with a routine software upgrade carried out last week.
“Customers should rest assured that their billing is completely unaffected as the technical issue only affects the digital display in their home, as opposed to the actual smart meter.
“We will be contacting any affected customers directly with more information and hope to get their in-home displays back to normal as soon as possible,” the statement read.
The government is currently behind schedule with its plans to have smart meters – designed specifically to make customer bills more accurate – installed in every home and business by 2020.
The government does however expect deployment to ramp up significantly over the coming two years and recently launched a national advertising campaign to increase public awareness of their use.