Green tech & greener living

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.    

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 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?

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 0.79mba

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

Updated on 29/10/25 by Ben_OVO At OVO we often provide a Geo Trio IHD during all new Smart meter installations. Whilst these devices are not CAD-enabled you can find out how to connect this device to your WiFi for software updates in this guide. We also really recommend the

I need to find my smart meters. Can anyone tell me where to look please?

I have looked and looked and I cannot fine a customer number that's only 4 digits anywhere, would this give account information or more specific results to the IHD?  Also is there a way to save battery consumption on the unit by shutting off display or is it an in and off affair?  Thank you in advance all! 

Hi, The OVO engineer has refused to install the gas smart meter (there is currently a BG one in situe but the OVO meter is considerably larger. Apparently the "Earth Ground Cable" is preventing the meter being "raised" to install the OVO smart meter in place of the BG one. Whilst its frustrating that there was no standardisation of the sizes *at the very least*, I have just spoken to an electrician who I used to meet at my networking group and he thought the installer must have been a "wet behind the ears type who didn't want to bother". I have to say I was very surprised that a qualified engineer wouldn't do something as basic as this as part of the installation as it looks like its a simple matter of unscrewing the cable connection and moving it to the back of the pipe. I've attached pictures - could you tell me what needs doing so that the "fully qualified" engineer can come back and finish the job.

 Hope someone  can help. Our gas smart meter is not communicating, I did contact Ovo via the chat. They asked me to fill out a questionnaire, which I duly did, & haven't heard anything since. The problem is the meters display has bad condensation on the inside of it, (pic) making it impossible to read. It also doesn't respond to any button pressing and is making a noise. There clearly is a problem with this meter, and would like it looked at asap, as my bills seemed to have increased, probably due to an estimation on the gas.I look forward to your reply.Regards.

I moved across to a smart meter on 22 July 20.  The IHD is a Chameleon display, and it was all working fine for the first few weeks barring the odd blank screen which having read around the threads was expected as some work was done in the background to commission my meters etc. I came home from work late Friday night, 21 Aug, to find that while the meter was still functioning, pretty much every single bit of data was now showing up as blank, this after it had been working for the first few weeks.  It’s not a communication issue - it’s on the kitchen window ledge, something like 6 feet from the pantry where the meters are, and it has been working fine until now.  Having checked the meters themselves they seem to be working ok and have readings on them that look sensible.   Any ideas on the IHD?  I’ve attached a couple of photos to show what I mean.  Thanks in advance. 

We have no gas supply to our property. The boiler is displaying fault codes indicating lack of supply and there is no gas at the hob. Note that there is a known issue with a (Cadent) mid-low pressure regulator at our property and this is due to be removed 17Feb. OVO will be fitting a mid-domestic pressure regulator at the meter the same day.I called Cadent. They asked me to look at the meter and press button A. When I told them the meter displayed VEND mode, they said they could not help and that my only next step was to call OVO. Unfortunately, there seems to be no number for OVO that works on a Sunday!I cannot see from the forum what to do. VEND mode seems to relate to pre-payment. We pay by DD and are in credit and have been for a long time.I am confident the issue is probably with the Cadent valve (again) and I explained all this to the Cadent helpline today but they insisted the VEND mode display means I have to contact OVO. I have emailed OVO and got a rep

I'm told I cannot have a smart meter beciase my standard meter is located outside Electric is in a white box and gas in a brown box I'm trying to get one as I would benifit greatly from one any ideas what can be done?