Crossed wires for households as smart meters go Welsh

SMART meter displays have randomly switched to Welsh, confusing homeowners in the latest glitch to plague the devices.

Several customers of Bulb, a renewable energy company, contacted the consumer website Moneysavingexpert.com to say that their meter’s display had switched from saying “today’s usage” to “Defnydd heddiw”.

In order to fix the problem, non-welsh speakers were told they had to navigate a five-step menu in Welsh. But when The Daily Telegraph showed the menu options to a Welsh speaker he described them as “gibberish”.

For example, at one stage users are given the option “Clirio Gosodiadau Wedi anfon yr”, which the Welsh speaker said translated directly as “clear the installations has been sent”.

Bulb, which has 1.3million customers, said the problem only affected one in 200 of its smart meters and was the result of a software issue.

James Tombs, a Bulb customer who lives in Sussex, more than 100 miles from the Welsh border, told Moneysavingexpert.com: “I don’t live in Wales and don’t know Welsh. One day I saw my meter was in Welsh … I turned it off with the power button on the back and back on and it loaded up again, in Welsh – but it was operational.”

He added: “I went on to the Bulb forums, found others with the same problem and followed the directions to change language. It has been fine since.”

But not all afflicted customers were so lucky. One told Moneysavingexpert he had made a formal complaint to Bulb after its proposed fix only temporarily rectified the problem. Bulb would not reveal how many smart meters it has but said that the wider rollout of the devices was a big technical challenge.

A spokesman said: “In some rare cases, in-home displays switch to Welsh. While we think Welsh is a great language, we understand that in many cases people will want their display to be in English.

“Luckily the solution is just a few button presses away, and language settings can be changed in less than 10 seconds.”