Re: E7 etc
"my day/night meter clock is *clockwork* "
There may well be a clockwork time switch. If it's like the (inactive) one here, the clockwork is wound electrically (!), but as designed, there should always have been enough life in the clockwork spring to ride through foreseeable power outages. People used to care about these things. Nowadays, less so.
"meter readers don’t check [time switch] has the right time"
Why would they even check if they're not paid to, and especially if there's no administrative or field engineering process for getting the timeswitch corrected even if the issue were to be reported?
"[people] don’t really know what their day and night usage is"
Probably true, but readily fixable with a £50 or so (retail, quantity one) electricity usage monitor from someone like TheOwl. No installation (as such) necessary, no E7 needed, no "smart" meter needed. Just a clothes peg to go round the meter cable (well, a clamp on current sensor, actually) and a simple remote display which is capable of translating actual real usage (kWh) into cost (£££) if you tell it the per-unit charges and applicable times of day.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
