Green tech & greener living

I finished building my house this year and moved in back in June.  I’ve been using my air source heat pump for heating and water and not really thought anything about it until I noticed my electricity bills.  I’m spending about £13 a day on electricity and decided I need to learn how to most efficiently run my airsource and heating schedule.   There really isn’t much information online about this.  So I’m really hope someone here will be able to help me please.   Thank you My set up is as follows: Mitsubishi Electric Ecodan PUHZ-HW140VHA2 14kW air-source heat pumpMitsubishi Electric EHPT25X-UKHCW 250 litre water tankMitsubishi Electric FTC5 Ecodan Controller PAC-IF062B-EHeatmiser Streamline controllers in each room House: New build house.  Largely open plan downstairs.  Does have some large window walls in the entrance hall which we would lose a bit of heat through.Floor coverings: upstairs is carpet and low tog underlay.  Carpet is thick, but we kept the total tog below the recommende

I have 30 or so zigbee home sensors/devices in my smart home network. I discovered when I added a new outdoor sensor and zigbee router near my smart meter that there is interference. Rather than change my home network to another 2.4 GHz channel I would like to switch off the HAN function of my meter entirely. I have a pipit display but do not use it.Is there a way to disable the zigbee HAN on the meter or remotely?

What improvements are people going to make to their insulation ? I have some areas of my loft that do not have 270 mm so that’s an obvious place to start, but should I go higher than 270 mm ?My RetrofitWorks survey suggested finding out if the cavity wall insulation done some years ago was patchy or had slumped, is anyone else going down that route ?How about an extra internal wall insulation. Then there’s draught proofing… blocking the unused fireplace, the list is long...

Hi, I had a Aclara Smets2 fitted in February 2021 and the OVO engineer informed me after fitting that there was no communication to the meter and it would therefore need an aerial before the smart function would work. Despite numerous attempts to get the communication aerial installed I continue to be told there are no engineers available to assist. Can I purchase an aerial and install this myself? Within the next 4-6 weeks I am having solar pv installed and need smart meter functionality. 

I had a smart meters fitted for electric and gas in August this year, since being fitted the gas meter had never given a reading( the electric has). I’ve had countless phone calls with customer support at OVO  with them trying updates remotely that didn’t work and then was told that an engineer would contact me to sort this out, but they was no way of saying when, I would just have to wait.when I made a complaint about this I was told that there was nothing else that could be done and that they couldn’t leave a complaint open so I must agree to what was happening.  I moved to ovo to be more environmentally friendly and thought by having smart meters I would not have to worry about readings! I have to say its been there worst experience I’ve ever had with an energy supplier and would strongly advise anyone else not to bother.

I have a Tado system, had it before joining OVO, installed it all myself with the wireless extension kit as our combi boiler is in the loft and TRVs on all Rads.Best solution I could find as the system supports the OpenTherm bus standard (amongst others) for those boilers that can use it.I saw that there is meant to be a way of linking your Tado account to your OVO account. I had a Smart Meter installed a couple of months back and was hoping that this would trigger the ability to link, but still nothing.I have called customer services, but they aren't sure. I have sent an email over 10 days ago, but only had the auto response saying please allow 5 days for a response. The help topic mentions a Smart Devices option in the Menu, but it isn't there for me.Does anyone know how this is meant to be achieved?Are you meant to have purchased the system through OVO to get something to kick in? Thanks for any advice.David

My storage heaters currently come on 1030pm-1230am and then go off for two hours before again coming on 2:30am-7:30am. My e7 night rate MPAN 16 appears to run between 12am- 7am so I’m wondering is it possible to sync the storage heaters to the night rate?

@Tim_OVO  could you please help out by putting this question in the best forum and maybe tagging a few helpful people?I am getting solar panels installed soon. My understanding is to put excess electricity into the grid and get paid a bit for it, I need a smart meter. I requested one from my electricity supplier (so sorry, not OVO, I need to switch!) and was told:We’re sorry to say we can’t install smart meters for you at present.There isn’t strong enough smart meter network coverage at your property. That means a smart meter wouldn’t be able to send or receive information.Does this mean there is no way to get paid under SEG scheme for this? A bit of googling suggest the meter connects via a mobile signal? I don’t understand why this wouldn’t work. Any help understanding this from this awesome community gratefully received James  

We have a three phase supply with an Aclara SGM1433-B smart meter We are looking at Solar PV with a storage battery and have had a number of companies provide initial information and quotations.One thing nobody seems to agree on is if we should have a single phase or three phase inverter.  We have been asked if our meter supports phase vectoring but cannot work this out…Has anyone else come across this type of question or considered this position?Thanks in anticipation

All was going swimmingly. The app installed. The tado arrived. I started the process and the app asked for the name and model number of thermostat and boiler controller. Happily it recognised my specific British gas models. Each device installation begins with scanning its QR code, and you are then given simple diagrams and instructions. The app led me step-by-step, screen by screen, through the installation, using in part generic diagrams and in part model-specific wiring guides. At each step, you have to touch the confirm button before the app lets you see the next step. You cannot look ahead.       First is installing the Internet bridge, which has short 25cm ethernet and usb cables. Happily my router had both an unused ethernet socket and a usb slot. So the power comes from that, and I didn't need the supplied mains charger. The app checks that it has connected up properly. I then got a welcome email from tado.Then you switch off the power to the heating syste

Hi all, Just starting the process of getting solar installed (ie getting quotes). I’m sure i will have more questions on this to come, but here is my first.There is a product called iboost that takes excess electricity you are creating from PV, which is going back into the grid, and uses it / some of it to create hot water via the immersion.The question is, as I now have a ASHP, is this of any use? My thinking on this is that if I had 2kWh of ‘spare’electricity from PV, then via the immersion I get roughly 2kWh of heat. But (assuming a HW COP of 2) it would only take 1kWh of electric to do the same via the heat pump. That leaves 1kWh spare which I might get paid 5p for, or at least someone else can use as green energy.The only thing I can think is that the ASHP is only heating up to 50 degrees. The immersion could push that up to say 65 degrees. This has two benefits i think. 1) the legionella setting does this every 7 days, so I might be able to turn that off (maybe) and be using PV t

My boiler stopped working and the boiler engineer has just been and checked the boiler and the meter and says that there is gas supply into the meter but not out.OVO is closed until Monday. Do I have other options to get it working again before then?

My smart meter tells me that I have used 55/60 pence of electricity/gas when I get up before I use anything. Is this the daily standing charge?

We currently use electricity for general lighting, cooking and heating three upstairs bedrooms and two bathrooms with far infrared ceiling panels.Downstairs radiators and water heating are through an oil fired boiler.We plan to stay in the house for at least ten more years and would be really interested in replacing the oil fired system with a completely electric system (even if we don’t get all our money back) using cheap off peak power and batteries.If we got rid of the oil tank, we have a large concrete base that could house these.We’d need a water heating system and six new electric radiators.Can current batteries large enough to last the whole day, especially in winter, be charged up from off peak power?We live in an old Grade II listed building and do not want to use solar panels.Is this is a feasible option?

Hi everyone,Thought I'd leave my tale of woe about my smart meter installation.New smart meters fitted Jan 19th(already had smart meters which were working!!)for whatever reason. Installer fitted both electric and gas meters and gave me the Ihd for them.He then tested gas meter told me I had a 2mbar drop on gas pressure (4mbar permitted),then he told me I had spillage in my gas fire and capped my supply off.Opens his phone and tells me to look on yell.com(yellow pages) I need a gas engineer to come sort the problem out.So Jan 19th no central heating and no hot water.... wonderful.Electric meter installed working  ok Installer then turns the ihd device on and says this could take 24-48 hours to sort itself out.Luckily for me I'm friends with a plumber who's gas Safe registered he came round redid the pressure drop test with a digital meter with printout (not the water gauge the installer used) and this recorded a drop of 0.79mbar which he said is absolutely fine. The condemned gas fire,

Given the upcoming weather, and the fact all my ev charge plugs  and all public chargepoints all say "donnot use in thunderstorms" I was wondering:A) WhyB) What is the real riskC) Will anything prevent it actually chargingD) If you have a virtually flat battery in a storm, what should you do if you need to keep driving!E) Is it (more?)dangerous with a v2g?

Does anyone know if the Daily/Monthly budget limit on the Smart Meter is based off your Direct Debit Payment? or is it based on average usage? or something else completely? E.G. my monthly Direct Debit is £119, so is my daily budget based off not exceeding my monthly DD?  Any Comments are appreciated!

After my central heating boiler failed to fire up, discovered a blank display on my meter (pressing A still gave no display). After talking to OVO they thought it was almost certainly a battery failure and sent out an engineer for a fix. Turns out he had to install a traditional meter because it was out of hours for OVO to give codes for a new smart one. This means that we have to yet another visit to have a new smart meter installed Questions are: Why can't a battery simply be replaced under such circumstances. Should be quick and easy. It it isn't easy, why on earth not? Why can't the unit send a warning beep to us and send a message back to base when low battery is detected?

Hello,I have an old British Gas electricity smart meter installed in a cabinet and would appreciate some advice as to whether we have enough space for a SMETS2 smart meter. Hopefully the attached photo will show the current setup.The cabinet is near the ceiling and the bottom of the cabinet is  2.25m from the floor (we receive our electricity supply from an overhead cable). Many thanks for any advice. 

Himy indoors display doesn't show the consumption of gas for a few weeks now. the gas meter shows “Rejected” on the screen when I press any buttons.Any idea what could be?thanks