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Bulb smart meters in England wake up from comas miraculously speaking fluent Welsh

Nid fi yw'r bwlb mwyaf disglair yn y canhwyllyr

Smart meters in England are suddenly switching to Welsh language displays, much to the confusion of owners.

Several people report that the meters, made by energy provider Bulb, are spontaneously opting for Welsh instead of English, sometimes after freezing and being restarted. This would be unhelpful even for many residents of Wales, but the problem has been seen as far east as West Sussex.

The issue is fixable, although choosing the right options is easier if you speak a bit of Welsh. Anyone remember the fun of switching your mate's Nokia to Finnish language menus?

This seems to be the latest in a string of issues suffered by Bulb, although to be fair the firm is not the first to be stumped by the stupidity of smart meters.

Last month it updated customers who were having problems with the meters' "In-Home Display" – a small screen connected to the meter that is meant to show electricity usage and costs. Bulb now reckons 85 per cent of these devices will link to the meter immediately: "And the majority of those that don't connect first time can now be fixed remotely."

It is also dealing with a problem of automatic, monthly readings not appearing on accounts by taking daily readings, which apparently have a different process.

Bulb already limits smart meter installations to areas where it has enough engineers and anticipates good enough coverage for the devices.

If your meter gets hit by the Welsh bug, Bulb recommends the following:

Press the 'OK' button at the bottom of the In-Home Display, and then the right arrow button until you see 'Gosodiadau Wedi anfon yr'.

Press OK. This takes you to settings.

Press the right button until you see 'Dewis iaith Wedi anfon yr'. If this doesn't work, you may need to try the next option, 'Clirio Gosodidau Wedi anfon yr'.

Press OK.

Select English on the left, by pressing the left arrow, then 'OK'.

Iawn? OK. ®

Updated at 1421 UTC on 16 July 2019 to add:

Bulb has been in touch to say: "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."

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