Green tech & greener living

I have a bluesun BSE6KL1 hybrid solar inverter  (rebadged Megarevo R6KL), battery storage, tied to the grid but no feed-in tarriff.The Solarman App displays the input to the inverter from the PV panels, battery charge/discharge, Grid In/out and “consumption”.I understand that the “consumption” figure should reflect what energy the house is using. Sadly it only displays 11 watts… Any thoughts?

Hello,We had a Hypervolt Home 3 Pro installed by Ovo yesterday and have been trying to connect it to Ovo Anytime via the app. However, we just keep getting an error message saying “You cannot currently enrol in the Ovo integration as we need to finish upgrading the firmware on your charger. Please ensure your car is not plugged in to the charger and try again in an hour”. Needless to say we have tried several times since the installation was completed yesterday afternoon, but are still getting the same message. I have tried deleting the Charge Anytime app and reinstalling it but still no joy.The troubleshooting test on the Hypervolt app says everything is fine. Have considered doing a factory reset or unadopting and readopting the charger, but the Hypervolt help pages say to only do these things if advised by their Customer Support team.We have previously used Charge Anytime D2V with my husband’s previous company car (Kia Niro) but both current cars aren’t compa

I am on Economy 10 and have received a letter regarding the radio teleswitch shutdown, however I am not convinced my meter is equipped with a radio teleswitch. It's a Landis+Gyr 5254E-X that looks like the one below. The technical data available online for this meter makes no mention of a radio teleswitch, so I am minded to believe it's internally switched and I can ignore the letter (there are no other mystery boxes nearby). Can anybody with knowledge of this specific meter confirm?  

Have recently had solar panels installed and although I can check how much I am exporting via the main electricity smart meter I cannot see how I can see this info on my smart meter display - apparently I should see a pylon icon - have I got an old display (photo attached). Thanks. 

I have a solar inverter installed with acrel dtsd1352 smart meter connected at grid site, however when i choose the consumption monitoring option from the inverter, the app stops showing me the load, import and export information. The inverter also turns off during the night even though i have the 24  hour function enabled. The only fix i have found is choosing the meter in grid option instead. However the load shown now is actually the average power across the 3 phases and hence shows wrong values of export as well. Why is the consumption monitoring option not working as intended, and is there a way i can connect the dtsd1352 meter to soliscloud?

We had new smart meters installed on Tuesday and a IHD3 box  and  yesterday a small envelope icon and display showing new message appeared. Does anyone know how to display message ... Tried tapping the icon but nothing happens.

Hi all. Thank you for taking the time to read my question. I am strongly considering getting a BMW 5 series 530e PHEV.  It's a huge investment and as part of my research I have been looking at charging.  My research has shown some compatibility issues with BMW/MINI around preconditioning, and according to some forums posts, the ability to complete a charge at all.There is a disclaimer also shown on the car charging information pages on the OVO website around this issue with BWM/MINI.My question is, does this issue arise when the Charge Anytime App is used for direct to vehicle charing only.  Ie, if I installed a supported charger through OVO, such as an Ohme charging unit, and did all the scheduling through that, would this deliver full fat, supported functionality including preconditioning? I don't want to get a new car, which should be an amazing experience, and walk into a world of stress with the systems all linking up or the car

Hi I have a old pipe which is caped off it goes along the garage wall then outside the garage and into the ground it is not connected to anything next to it there is a red box which says oil ? Any help will be appreciated I have included pictures thanks   

I recently joined OVO and added Charge Anytime to my account, but when signing up, it stated 10p per kWh instead of 7p per kWhdoes anyone know if OVO will credit my account to equal 7p per kWh or has the rate gone up to 10p per kWh? 

I had my smart meter installed last week and charge anytime worked fine on the first try. Last 2 nights there has been no charging so I had to do an urgent instant charge via the charger app this morning. The Renault app appears to be connected as it tells me how much charge I have, but Charge anytime is not initiating the charge. I have no idea how to resolve this.I feel as though I have 3 mechanisms of starting charge- by the Apex EV app, the Renault app or the charge anytime app and I don’t know whether this causes a problem.

Had a smart meter fitted Monday put my water heater on 1 to 4pm and no hot water 

We have a single phase 200 amp supply, which supplies several, all electric, holiday let cottages in Snowdonia.Our current supplier (and previous supplier too) wouldn’t listen to me and when they came to install our smart meter, sent out a normal engineer with a simple 100A meter.The first supplier said they couldn’t help us so we moved to Octopus, who after their failed installation have now given us the run around for the past 5 months. They tell me that they can install a 200A smart CT meter, that will give us access to the agile tariffs that we’re after, but that an external company has to do this (SMS) and that they have no free appointments in our area for the foreseeable future!If we moved to OVO would they be able to install us a 200A CT smart meter? I have read other informative threads on this forum, but they refer to polyphase or 3 phase supplies.Thanks in advance  

The Radio teleswitch (RTS) shutdown FAQ seems to say that the RTS meters may stop working at the end of 2023 (which is now less than 3 months away).  Is this correct or has the date been extended?  We have an RTS meter and are on the Superdeal tariff but have had no communication from OVO about this or what is happening.  Should I be worried?

Hi,I use “Urgent Charge” to opportunistically charge my car during the day from solar when our home batteries are full and the sun is likely to stay out. I can do this from any location as I leave my car plugged all the time.Once initiated, I can’t find how to cancel urgent charge from the app so that the normal schedule kicks back in. I believe you need to physically go to the car, unplug, possibly even drive to a new location etc before the app spots you are finished.Am I missing something?It would be really useful to be able to simply cancel urgent charge from the app so I can do this all remotely. Thanks,Frank.

Hi, I’m having terrible trouble with OVO. Only went with them as the previous householder used them.Firstly they didn’t set up an account when I phoned when first moving in - wondered why my direct debit hadn’t gone through weeks later. No record of my phone call, giving bank details, agreeing tariffs etc. Secondly they organised a new Smart meter last week and cancelled the day before as they can’t do it as I have economy 10. Nice guy phoned to explain that the customer care team don’t know what they are doing when it comes to accounts with two meters. That’s very true. Thirdly, I phoned today to ask for the ‘third party’ to come and fit a single meter (as the guy last week explained I should ask for) and after 20 mins the customer adviser didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. She said I had to phone DNO?, wouldn’t explain who DNO are and then cut me off. Please help! OVO is driving me bonkers :) 

We’ve had our charger for nearly 5 months and went onto ovo charge anytime end of April. Since having the charger we’ve had numerous times that it fails to charge the car( before and since having charge anytime). Numerous phone calls to Indra who kept telling us it was too high voltage going into the property. Had SP Energy out, who did a 2 week long voltage reading, one week with solar panels off the next week with them on, and yes the voltage was over the allowed 253 for more than 5% of the time. They reduced the voltage going into the house.still having a lot of problems where the charger just won’t kick in at all. Often plug inin the evening, when i get in from work, expecting to charge the car up somtime before 8am the following morning, only to find it hasn’t charged up. I have had to get up on numerous occasions in the middle of the night to get the charger to start, by turning the boost button on and then off and this usually kick starts the charger running (not on bo

Got up this morning and car wasn’t charged. Nothing was added. I’ve lost a days pay as a result. MG4 has been charging 5 nights a week faultlessly since July 2023. I use the OHME app to schedule charges as the MG is incompatible with Charge Anytime. The last charge session showing on the OHME app is 04/12/23? It has worked since then including overnight Sunday into Monday. I did update the OHME app last week as an update was available and thought it might fix not showing the charge sessions. any help greatfully appreciated as worried I can’t work tomorrow.

Hey everyone, I need some help and advice.  My Solis Inverter still draws minimal energy from the grid even though my solar panels are generating enough energy for use and storage.  The problem is that this minimal amounts are costing me almost £1 a day, around £30 a month. Is there anyone of fixing this issue? Solis says there is nothing that can be done at the moment but have raised a ticket that has not been allocated to anyone.  Would this be the same issue with all inverters? 

Many thanks for the suggestions for alternative ways of estimating heating demand and hence heat pump size. I have tried a few and the results are in!Our Bryant’s Maldren house has a floor area of around 122 m2 and last year our gas usage (water plus heating) was around 9600 kWh.In all of these methods the “Heat Transfer Coefficient” or HTC is the fundamental value that is calculated, basically how much power is needed to raise the temperature of the house by 1 °C.Rule of thumb methodsThe Michael de Podesta’s video provides an excellent introduction not only to his rule of thumb method but also heat loss calculations in general. It’s well worth watching. Thanks to @BPLightlog for his recommendation.Michael de Podesta Rule of thumb

My app keeps disconnecting - I get the dreaded red dot top LH corner of the phone screen, and I have to disconnect my Renault Zoe and reconnect it which is a pain. 

While exploring options, I wondered if anyone could share their experiences holidaying with an electric vehicle. We do tend to travel around the UK and occasionally the near continent, so it would be useful to hear any tips, pitfalls and suggestions from those who have tales to share of their travels - positives and negatives. 

Updated on 20/02/25 by Abby_OVOWhilst OVO doesn’t currently offer a dynamic ‘Time-of-Use’ plan, check out our latest ‘Type-of-Use’ plan - Charge Anytime which gives you an exclusive rate for EV charging.Check out our grid balancing schemes that reward you for shifting peak usage:   Time of use tariffs These are tariffs/plans which have ‘dynamic’ pricing. The unit rates change at di

Hi all, anyone seen this before? I’ve re added my car about 5 times and the image below keeps appearing. Thanks