Reading your meter

If you have a new smart meter, we read it electronically each month. Otherwise, we aim to read meters every second month in most urban areas, and every 3 to 6 months in most rural areas. In the interim months we generate an estimate based on your previous electricity usage and the time of year.

You may also receive an estimate if we are unable to read your smart meter electronically for any reason. It's a good idea to check our estimate against the actual meter reading. If the variation is large, you may wish to provide us with your own meter reading. This can reduce fluctuation between bills, helping you monitor how much electricity you are actually using.

You can send us a new reading:

• if you have received an estimated bill – do this within 5 days after receiving the estimated bill, and we'll re-issue the bill within 7 days
• before an estimated bill is produced, so you always receive bills based on actual reads – just call us to find out the date and frequency to read your meter
• if the meter reader has left a card saying they were unable to access your meter.

If you have a smart meter that only displays the total electricity used, you may not be able to carry out your own meter reading. Please contact our Customer Service Centre on 0800 496 496 for assistance.

Three ways to send us your meter reading

• Fill in this online form
• Sign into My Meridian
• Call us

You can also fill in and send us the 'no access card' if the meter reader has left one.

How to read your meter

There are three different types of meters – digital, electronic and dial. Submit readings for all the meters you have at the same time.

Digital meters

Simply read the numbers from left to right, ignoring the last number. In this example the meter readings are 450 and 1906.

Dial meters

The two top dials, 1/100 and 1/10 are for testing purposes only, so you can ignore them.

Read the other four meters from left to right. When reading this type of meter, always take the number that the dial has just passed, even though this may not necessarily be the closest number to the dial.

In this example, dials 1 and 3 read clockwise and dials 2 and 4 read anti-clockwise. The reading here is 9704.

Electronic meters

These displays show readings for more than one meter. You can view the readings by either pushing a button or scrolling automatically. The display will also show a total reading of the two or more meters combined. Please send us only the individual readings.

The reading illustrated is 19345.