Green tech & greener living

Hi, I’m looking at changing my ChargePoint EV home charger to the The Indra Smart LUX however need to confirm that the EV charger will work with the Charge Anytime facility?  Im currently charging 2 vehicles (a Tesla and a Vauxhall Vivaro E) using the ChargePoint however due to their being no support for a Vauxhall Vivaro E, I need to swap the charger.  Thanks 

Has anyone else been contacted by Efficient Homes regarding the GBIS?  I registered as in a band D, EPC D house that is badly in need of loft insulation.  My understanding is that under this scheme you will be given a Gov grant towards the cost with the rest funded by you.  I was expecting to pay a couple of hundred quid but I got a call this morning from Efficient Homes and was told my contribution would be over £1500 to insulate the loft plus I was not able to have the pitched roof insulation which is what I really wanted.  I’m sure I could get a professional insulation company to do the job cheaper than £1,500 but was curious to know if anyone else had registered?  What have your experiences been so far?  Anyone know how much the actual grant amount is?

Just switched to Ovo from SEB, but have had a type2 smart meter / IHD for about a year. Im on Economy 10 and Ive got very used to what Im normally charged at various times of the day.Got up for a pee at around 1:30am today (not a spring chicken any more) and was surprised to see the red usage light on. Normally its amber as the off peak heating comes on.Upon checking my IHD I saw was racking up £1.29 per k/wh when Im normally at around £0.84 when the overnight heating is charging up. To check, I turned off the off peak switch and it dropped to £0.14I also checked the ‘boost’ switch in my cupboard to make sure I hadnt turned it on by mistake and no it was offI think I may have found the possible issue. When I checked the tariff readings on my IHD, it said I was being charged peak rate at 2am in the morning, and it would revert to off peak at 6am. This puts it out of sync with my storage heaters / immersion cylinder and would explain the red usage light

Hi, been using Charge Anytime for many months now and pretty flawless (2 times failed since started using). This week though the app hasn’t updated from the car since Monday (4 days) and so it’s charging straight away when plugged in.I’m sure it is not my cars fault (Mini Cooper SE) as its own app if working perfectly - this proves that the Mini/BMW servers are working normally.It’s as though the app needs a ‘pull down to refresh’ function! Force quitting the app and restarting still shows status from my Mini last updated 4 days ago!I have emailed the team but wondered if anyone else here affected or any tips to kickstart it working again.

Hi all,New to the forum and to solar panels.  This isn’t really my area, so I apologise in advance if any of these questions don’t make sense.We got a combined ASHP and solar panel setup last week and they finally got the solar panels up and running yesterday.  There’s an issue with the battery, but they’re getting that sorted out with the supplier.Our system is using:Solis Hybrid invertor (Rhi 5kw Hybrid Single Phase)V-TAC 5kw battery (VT48100E)10 x 410w V-TAC half mono solar panels (VT-410B) I have a couple of questions though:1 - I noticed on the SolisCloud app that generated and consumed energy figures are the same.  Is this because we currently don’t have a battery and aren’t exporting to grid?2 - The app shows used from as being 0, but I know there has been times when we pulled from the grid yesterday.3 - When we are no longer generating power from the panels (ie at night) the invertor switches off.  Should th

Hi,My Charge Anytime app seems to have stopped working for some reason. I have been using it successfully since Feb 2023 with no issues however now it shows as last updated Saturday 26 August, one week ago. My car is a BMW 530e and is still charging when I plug it in (and it shows it is charging on my BMW app) however I can’t get the Charge Anytime app to update. I have not changed my car, charger (BP pulse) or energy plan nor have I changed anything in either my BMW or Charge Anytime apps nor the settings in my vehicle. I have tried logging out and back into both my charge anytime and BMW apps but this has had no impact.Any thoughts/ideas greatly appreciated!Many thanks.

My gas usage is not showing hourly, although electricity is showing hourly. The smart meter is sending half hourly info and this has been checked by OVO. I’ve uninstalled the app and reinstalled it, checked online, logged out and back in again, and was told to ask on here for help by the chat assistant, as I think they have run out of ideas. Does anyone have any ideas please?

We are trying to get a smart meter installed to replace our THTC meters.  We have been told by engineers who visited yesterday that, in order to get rid of our THTC meters, we need to change to a heritage economy 7 meter first then we can swap to a smart meter. Is this correct? We have storage heaters and need to keep an economy 7 type tariff. Getting in touch with OVO to get this heritage meter is proving difficult!!

Hi - does anyone have any experience of the lead in time between placing an order with OVO and getting an EV Charger installed?  Trying to work out if I should use them or use a different company to get this done. ThanksMatt

I have recently had an Indra Smart Pro EV Charger installed and joined charge Anytime.  All went well for the first charge, then I had red flashing light which stopped after several resets and leaving it for a while.Now I have a constantly flashing White Indra Logo (Almost ready to charge apparently) and when I connect the car it starts charging almost immediately, the car reads it is charging at 7.5kWh but the website for indra shows it as charging at 0.0 kWh and it does not record how much energy is being used hence will not log that information into the Charge Anytime calculations.  Resets of the unit have not helped. Has anyone else seen anything similar?

Hello.I have an Aclara SGM1411-B. I would like to make use of one of the time of use plans so that I am charged less for electricity usage during off peak times. Customer support says my smart meter can’t do that, but from what I have read the Aclara is able to support time of use tariffs and can also be remotely updated to do that. So why am I being asked to pay (£100) for an engineer visit? Can the meter not be updated remotely?

Hello, I hope someone can help with my situation because OVO chat is not helping.I was an SSE customer top-up and moved to OVO. I have in my house a storage heater and water, and they run during the night, so ask for a new meter (SSE put the wrong one for 3 years). Monday the engineer from SMS plc came and change a Smart meter Aclara SGM116B, and said that meter was ready for Economy7. Every time I need to contact customer service I mention that I have, even Monday I said to the engineer and I confirm to me that now I could use it during the night because that one is off-peak.Today I contact OVO . They send me the tariff that I’m in this moment Unit Rate (anytime): £0.2859 kWh (£0.2723 excl. VAT)Standing Charge: £0.6673 Daily (£0.6355 excl. VAT)

I've previously posted with regard to my hot water and heating both being wired up to the off peak meter even though the storage heaters were replaced by thermal radiators before i moved in.  What I'm trying to find out is what hours the cheap rate actually is.  If i knew this then i could time my heaters to be on during these times rather than on the expensive rate. I just keep getting told it can be between 5-12 hours which is very vague.I know it changes depending on weather etc but surely there is a way of finding what those hours are.The sooner they phase out thtc and change my meter the cheaper it will be for me.Any help greatly appreciated

We have an advice of a planned power cut for next week and I wanted to check what happens to the data feed from the smart meter. During the outage, presumably nothing will be sent as the meter will not have power? By nothing I mean, not even a zero figure, so how will the system react to this, possibly thinking that the meter has gone off-line

Have just bought an EV. We have an Economy 7 tariff and plan to charge mostly overnight. Is it worth getting Charge Anytime? I read EV charging is 10p per kWh but all other uses are charged at Standard Rate under Charge Anytime. Any advice!?

Why do my pvs give energy to the grid when the batteries are not full?  

We have recently had solar pv fitted, with iBoost on the hot water tank to use any generation excess.I am trying to get a figure for the savings made by using the solar pv to heat the hot water rather than the central heating gas boiler. There is a 3-way valve to control rads & hot water separately. This raises the question:Does 1 kWh of immersion heating produce roughly the same amount of hot water as 1kWh of a gas boiler heating the water? I realise it will not be identical due to efficiencies and losses, but are they similar?I hope to be able to compare costs of heating hot water by pv or gas, ie loss of SEG payment vs gas rate.Then I will know the savings to be made.

I’m hoping anyone on here can shed some light on this.Before I go into the issue in more detail, my questions is as follows:What can cause a manual reading on an ovo smart meter (when you press number 9) to be different to the smart readings ovo are receiving? History (mainly so I can keep a record of whats happening as its starting to get confusing).Over 4 years ago Ovo came out and installed an electric smart meter. During their visit, they were unable to install the smart gas meter (since it was semi submerged in the ground in a box). As such they only installed the electric meter.After a month I noticed that due to my thick walls, ovo was not receiving any readings. I contacted ovo who came out and installed an separate aerial. However, once connected the meter started signaling it had a WAN connection so the external aerial was left inside the house (in the cupboard with the meter) instead of being mounted outside the house.

I am currently on THTC but with a single rate for both meters as I don't have storage heaters or other timed appliances.   I am due to have a smart meter installed on Tuesday which I am very pleased about after lots of aggravation over recent months.  Because of the THTC system,  there are 2 consumer units for the different circuits in the flat.  Will the installation engineer do the necessary work to connect both consumer units into the meter?

Earlier this year I had a standard rate smart meter fitted. Since then I have bought a plug-in electric vehicle and I think it may be more economical to charge at 'Economy 7' overnight rate. I have two questions...... 1) Is it possible to retrospectively change a smart meter to dual rate mode? 2) If yes, what are the current costs for each rate? Many thanks for your help.

Hello, I have just had grid tied solar panels fitted, I believe I have to inform ovo within 28 days, is that correct

I’m having problems with my EV charger. The manufacturer couldn’t help and it was referred to OVO to send an engineer but I’ve not heard from OVO about a visit. Getting through to OVO EV support is a nightmare, holding on for ages and then getting cut off and having to start again repeatedly. While writing this, their holding ‘music’ is playing the background in a loop for the umpteenth time! I just want to know if and when an engineer is calling. Anyone have any advice, please?

Car is 2022 X1 30e hybrid which is on the anytime list.I have a pod point solo home charger. The car is set to immediate charge when plugged inThe OVO anytime app is set for car to be charged by 8am Frequently when the car is plugged in the pod point clicks to a red light indicating a fault.Also,Automatically, The car sets itself from immediate charge to a random planned departure date and planned charge period. The car does not charge. Is this a compatibility or hardware issue?

Since the price change in July my smart meter has not updated to show the new tariff rates and standing charges. What can I do about this as as one of the main reasons for having a smart meter surely is to have accurate pricing information on hand?Any advice would be appreciated.