RTS (Radio Teleswitch Service) Shutdown Update

That is certainly an RTS-controlled system that needs replacing before the RTS signal is switched off this summer. However, there are more plans than THTC that run on an RTS system, so it may be that you’re on a different one. The name of your plan should be clearly stated on a recent bill or statement, or on your Plan page if you have access to your online account.

I can only suggest that you contact Support again, using the web chat option so that you can upload the photo showing your radio telemeter. 

It’s true to say that THTC is not being replaced with the same tariff or service. With a smart meter, that can be set up to provide various ‘economy’ tariffs to suit need but as far as I’m aware, there will be changes to consider.

That looks more like RTS Economy 7 running on two meters to me. But it could be something along those lines.

Hey ​@Romina 

Welcome to the OVO Online Community 🙂

I can see our community members have given some great advice here. Just wanted to add the following here as they may be helpful:

Hi I have a rental property in wick the post code is *removed by mod* and I’m needing to get the meter change by the 30th of June 

Hi ​@michael.quilliam ,

Best thing to do for that is call OVO Support and chat with Squad 70.

If it’s Economy 7, you can either call 0330 102 8819 or use https://smart-booking.ovoenergy.com to get that arranged.

If it’s NOT Economy 7, try 0330 102 8594 and that team will sort you out.

Hope this helps!

Morning ​@michael.quilliam and a warm welcome to the OVO Forum 😁.

I’m assuming, given the date of the 30th of June, that the change of meter is needed because you have a Remote Teleswitch (RTS) meter. I can see ​@Blastoise186 has advised you to call into our Support Team - please do this and they’ll see what they can do with booking the appointment. 

You can find out more about the RTS switch off on our website here, and in this previous Forum topic:

Any further questions please feel free to give us a shout!

I see the government have now stepped in

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-steps-in-to-protect-consumers-with-old-energy-meters

315,000 meters still left to swap out as of May 30th (100,000 in Scotland)

No RTS end date actually applies now it seems ? 

Analysing this is taking longer than I’d like.

Bear with me - I’ll give my thoughts (hopefully) soon!

Alastair Carmichael MP said publicly last week after meeting the supply companies that they're targeting the end of the year to complete the RTS swap out. At least update they're managing to swap out about 3,000 a week in Scotland.

Great during the cold weather!

Ok… Finally had time to dig into the details and write this. So I’ve fired up Spotify for a bit and had it play random stuff for a while.

Please bear in mind these are just my personal thoughts. None of this has been checked by the Forum Moderators prior to me posting it and it doesn’t reflect OVO’s views.

 From what I’ve been reading, it appears that a small number of properties will have RTS shut down from around the 30th June, but we’re now talking around 600 or so to begin with, followed by ramping down service coverage area by area for the rest of the year - just like the Digital Switchover back in 2007-2012, albeit faster because it doesn’t affect anywhere near as many households as the previous switchover did.

However, you should assume that from the 30th June 2025 onwards, the RTS Service WILL begin to close as previously announced, it’ll just no longer be a single off-switch for the entire thing at once. If you’re able to upgrade, I strongly recommend you make the arrangements sooner rather than later - please DO NOT rely on extended deadlines as an excuse not to upgrade as it may come back to haunt you later. The more folks who can get upgraded now, the easier it is for the engineers down the road.

Either way, the last set of valves at Droitwich Transmission Station are already in service and they don’t last forever - we’re talking an average service life of 1-10 years and they’ve already been in place for a while. I can’t make any promises how long it’ll be before they go kaboom. But when (and not if!) they do, the RTS Service will end immediately - there’s no avoiding that.

Curious.  Since Droitwich transmissions cover the whole country, I can't see how particular areas can be selectively cut off.

Anyway, hopefully that won't be relevant to us.  After rattling the cage for several months, OVO finally got back to us a few weeks ago, and we now have an appointment for a THTC meter exchange tomorrow. So fingers crossed....

Easy. They can just stop broadcasting certain control codes related to areas they want to disable the service for.

Yes, when I thought about it, that was obvious. But are they going to disable the RTS meters completely, or merely stop transmitting new schedules so that the meter keeps switching on the same schedule?

Just the signal/schedule updates. No promises that the meters will still work though 

You might enjoy reading the Wikipedia article about RTS. Here’s one titbit: 

[‘User’ in this context probably means ‘DNO’ nowadays.]

As said, it’s the codes for specific user groups and tariffs that will be gradually withdrawn

There are actually three transmitters, Droitwich (which covers England and Wales) Westerglen (near Falkirk) that covers Southern and Central Scotland, and Burghead (to the east of Inverness) that covers Northern Scotland,  All three are using equipment of the same vintage, but it’s Droitwich (because it’s so much more powerful) that has the ‘special’ valves !  

RTS is going away, to be switched off next year. There is no replacement. It has been used to switch the supply on and off to power-hungry equipment (primarily heaters) in order to prevent overloading weaker parts of the distribution network. It is truly a signal sent by the DNO to individual customers switching their heaters on and off.

Smart meters have the capability of carrying out this switching, but only at predetermined times. It looks as if the timings will be varied from customer to customer by means of specific codes in the MPAN. This means that a particular customer may have power to his heaters at times different from his neighbour, probably in half-hour chunks.  

Thank you so much for this little nugget of information! This is the first time I have heard that the smart meter will actually do the switching on and off of the heating etc.

I have opted for Economy 10, so 10 hours of off-peak time split into 3 chunks. But no-one could or would confirm whether that meant I had to manually switch things off in order not to run them on peak rate (since I have no way to put timers on them).

This is a big weight off my mind.

Thought I would post about my experience as it may be useful to others...

I had my RTS and two meters swapped for an Aclara smart meter with an axillary load control switch (to  turn my storage & water heaters on and off to match off-peak times) back in mid-January. I moved to an Economy 10 tariff with 10 hours of off-peak supply split into 3 chunks.

Whilst the swap-out itself was done very quickly and efficiently, the meter wasn’t setup with the Economy 10 time pattern regime from the start - apparently this is done remotely as part of the commissioning process after the install. This took my supplier (not Ovo I must add!) over a month to get right, with the result that during this period my heating wasn’t being switched on & off correctly, and my supplier had no way of billing me correctly either. I don't know if this typical, or if my supplier was particularly poor, but something to watch out for.

The other thig to be aware of is the use of randomised offsets. These are used to help ensure relatively big loads (like storage heaters) are not all turned on at the same time, to help protect the distribution infrastructure and are “built” into smart meters with axillary load control switches. The SMETS 2 technical requirements specify that the randomised offset is used to delay the Tariff Switching Table times and the Auxiliary Load Control Switch switching times (section 5.7.5.28). My randomised offset is just over 2 minutes, but they can be as long as 10 minutes and maybe as long as 30 - my research is inconclusive. This means my off-peak periods do not start at precisely the times given to me by my supplier, so no switching on the washing machine at precisely 12-noon or whatever, as per the TV ads! Not only did my supplier not tell me about the randomised offset, but my in-home display shows tariff change times at the “advertised” times, rather than the actual times (i.e. with the randomised offset applied0 - this is misleading, and to seems to be either a deficiency in the SMETS 2 technical requirements or a failure to implement them correctly in this particular meter.

Many thanks for this - it surely is helpful.
  

We’ve heard this several times. It seemed in the early days as if the tech tasked with making the remote change wasn’t quite sure how to go about it, while sometimes it took several attempts to get the change to stick. We must hope that the backroom boys get better at it as time goes on.
  

Certainly. Ideally, the installing engineer - who is responsible for setting the offset - will brief the householder about this, but he won’t be able to say what the offset (always a delay) will be. That will have to be determined by observation, but only once! The offset is set in stone as the meter is commissioned and won’t change.
    

Interesting. I asked another customer about this specifically, and the reply was that the IHD displayed the offset time for the next tariff change. I wonder if this varies with the IHD - what variety do you have?   

Regarding the IHD showing the non-offset tariff change times, I asked the meter manufacturer about this and they said:

“The offset that is applied to the time the tariff changes on the meter, is not applied to the time the tariff changes on the IHD and this is something that cannot be corrected. The tariff is driven directly from the switching calendar on the electricity meter and this has been implemented according to the industry specifications.”

So that reads to me that it is a “feature” of the meter itself and not the IHD. The meter is an Aclara SGM1433-B and the IHD is a Chameleon IHD3-PPMID-AAA. If the manufacturer’s last sentence is correct then, the “industry specifications” are too loose in my opinion, as it was surely not the intention for IHDs to show tariff switching at the wrong times!

Thanks - it’s good to have that documented from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. My earlier correspondent must have been mistaken, if the spec dictates that that’s how it must be.  

My engineer never mentioned any offset, but I can confirm that my IHD reports tariff changes at the official times.

Forgive my stupidity but I was under the impression that the IHD is a remote extension of the meter and that their timing would be synced ie that the IHD was giving me the actual meter info at any given time.

How silly of me to think that.