RTS (Radio Teleswitch Service) Shutdown Update

Thanks. I see the MPAN now.

Sadly, it doesn’t settle this once and for all, but it does hint at why they think this is an RTS system. MTC 136 translates to a few SSCs in the Southern region. They apply to a standard Economy 10 arrangement. There are two varieties that look promising (TPRs 374/375 and 1423/1422 for offpeak/peak). They are identical, except that the second pair apply to an RTS system. So I suspect that this is what has happened: the system was changed some years ago to remove the teleswitch, but the TPRs weren’t changed to reflect this, since there would be no difference to settlement or billing. So the supply still has that now-misleading RTS flag against it (TPR > 999). 

Good luck explaining that to anyone …

[It’s a bit different if yours is in fact a setup with peak rate only on weekdays 07:00-21:00, with everything else at offpeak. I haven’t come across a configuration like that. Don’t tell me this is your arrangement!]

Further to the £10 a night question I decided to ask OVO on the webchat and was informed that economy 9 doesn’t exist. I had just been on the link provided by Firedog looking at smart economy 9 tariff!  
 

can anyone shed some light on this?

Hi ​@Flora48 ,

Economy 9 does exist with OVO. IIRC it’s currently primarily being offered to those who are being booted off of RTS Meters due to the RTS Migration. It may become available to others later.

You’ll need to speak to Squad 70 if you have RTS and are considering E9 as your new tariff - they’ll be able to advise further.

Great thank you. I had been told I was being put on economy 9 and I had been in the RTS situation but now have a new smart meter. I will be phoning OVO soon!!

Thanks for the information …   I will try to talk with support.

Going into the depths of memory … Whe we moved in here in 1988 there was a separate time clock but that was removed around 1990 and a self switching dual rate meter.    That was not RTS and the time slippage was significant.

2010 saw the meter removed and the current one installed - originally time period followed the GMT<>BST change over but after a couple of years a technician arrived and without informing us, changed the firmware to stay on GMT.    I and many others complained,   we got apologies but a refusal to revert the change.

We have three off-peak times - 00:05-05:05,   13:05-16:05 & 20:05-22:05

Thanks. It sounds like the scenario I painted earlier. I hope you manage to convince Support.

The timings are offset by 5 minutes; it could well be that neighbours on the same tariff find their timings slightly different. This is to avoid power surges on the network if everyone’s multiple space and water heaters started up at the exact same time. Smart meters do the same, but with a delay that’s a random value between 0 and 30 minutes, fixed for the meter. 

I live in a really old house, cottage, with rooms downstair and attic upstairs with a proper stair. My meter set up is on the bulkhead above the stairs. I’ve had three different engineers visit me so far, look at the setup, realise they can’t reach just by standing on the stair and telling me I’ll need another appointment when someone with a ladder or platform can be used safely.  They take lots of photos, update their job tickets and go away. Then I rebook an appointment, explaining about the access issues and that the engineer needs to come equipped to sort out access, then they arrive and so does groundhog day.  Any tips on how I get an OVO engineer with the necessary access equipment rather than same-old-same-old-can’t-reach-book-again-and-it’ll-all-be-fine. Very frustrating.

Hi, I would nag and keep nagging the engineers/installation department, ask to speak to a Manager and explain your plight, at work we have a water meter that needed replacing 5 years ago and every time a person comes to sort the meter they leave saying that there unable to change it, it`s farcical.

Just keep asking for some one that actually knows what there doing before there next visit. 

​@kirsmith this thread and post in particular (tagged) might be helpful 

In this day and age of much increased Health & Safety these issues such as working at height poses a real problem. It may be that they will now need a tower rather that just a ladder or being able to stand on a stool/chair to reach your meter location. The latter not of course allowed now!

As mention in this thread you need to make OVO very aware when booking the access requirements they will need to meet. It’s not good for you as a customer to have wait for a repeat visit. Neither is it good for OVO sending out an engineer who then cannot complete the job.

We live in the North of Scotland and are on the THTC tariff.  We’ve been aware of the RTS switch-off for a number of years and have found this post, and it’s predecessors, both invaluable and enlightening, compared to the official communications.  Thanks have to be given to the regular industry contributors for this.

As background, our house is about 35 years old and THTC was installed during construction.  Accordingly, we have an external meter cupboard.

We booked our slot for about five weeks ago, and were given a four-hour window.  Additionally, I have to praise the engineer (he was from SMS rather than OVO).  He called at the weekend before the appointment to introduce himself and also ask if he could advance the appointment, as they’d had a cancellation for earlier that day.  On leaving the prior appointment we got a text which allowed tracking off his van, he started about 40 minutes away so we had plenty of warning.  The only strange thing was the reliance upon Satnav and post codes (with the latter of only general use in our rural area!).

During the appointment he indicated that there was a problem with our setup.  He was extremely clear in his communication during this time.  He then took some photos and spent over an hour on the phone to his technical team.  Eventually he left saying it couldn’t be done!  He did, however, comment that there was no issue with signal strength.

I thought I’d post here given the specific reason for the abort.  As I mentioned our setup is an external meter cupboard. However, the RTS switch itself was fitted within the house. Apparently, there would have been insufficient space within the meter box for it.  The engineer said that technically the new meter could be installed but it would require a second device within the house.  OVO have apparently said that this is not acceptable.  The only alternative would be to try feeding additional cabling through the house wall.  Given how far advanced we are with the installation program I’m astonished that we would be the first house with this setup, particularly as Scottish Hydro were promoting THTC for new builds in the 1980’s.  

Since then I’ve spoken to the support line.  They are friendly but not technical experts and so can’t really give any useful information.  What I have been told is “don’t worry about it, the engineers are working on it”.  Also “please just disregard any further reminders for meter swap-out as OVO will contact you when they are ready”.  So while the words are reassuring there was no insight into timing or progress.  We’ve now had an “Urgent” reminder to book an appointment.

I’m really trying to get some kind of feel / reassurance as to the likelihood of a fix within the timescale given, as I say, that I can’t imagine that we have a unique physical setup. 

Sorry for the long post and thanks for any insight you can give!

I’m sorry to hear you’ve ended up in this situation. It won’t be any comfort, but you’re not alone. There seems to be a problem in cases where the RTS and the meter aren’t adjacent, e.g. in different rooms. The cabling to and from the RTS will presumably have to be reworked, because a smart meter only has two line feeds out - one for the switched (offpeak) circuit, and the other for everything else. I’m not sure what the ‘second device within the house’ your engineer referred to; was this an OVO engineer in a green-liveried van, or from one of the contractors working all over Scotland to beat the RTS deadline?

In any case, post a couple of clear photos showing the meter cupboard and the teleswitch in situ, showing the cables to and from them. We may be able to find someone to make sense of them.

Hi ​@Pollowick,

Have you had a chance to speak to our Support Team yet? When you do by all means link them this Forum topic if it will help as there’s some really useful advice from ​@Firedog. Hope this is fixed for you soon!

Morning ​@EddyInverness, I hope you’re well.

I really can understand your worry with the appointment abort and, as ​@Firedog has said, you’re not alone in this situation, and not alone with the particular setup you have. The back office teams working on the RTS shutdown are well aware of the setups where there are large distances between the teleswitch and the meters, and they’re working on a fix for this. It may be that some sort of remote device will need to be installed to get everything working. At the moment it really is a case of having to wait to be told what OVO can do for you - but I really do understand that this is worrying and frustrating. We’ll be in contact when a fix is in place. 

I also just want to thank you for your kind words about our great Forum community, and also about the SMS engineer - we do really value this feedback! If you could get back with the photos ​@Firedog’s asked for that would be grand, and we’ll of course update you if there’s any news from our side. This is a huge shift within the Industry but we’ve got great people working internally on this and fixes are being planned and put in place for a variety of eventualities.

​@kirsmith good morning and welcome to the OVO Forum!

I’m sorry to hear of what’s happening here and, to add to the already helpful replies on this thread, I just want to let you know that you should ask our Support Team to log this as a complaint. The fact that you keep getting appointments aborted for the same reason definitely justifies a complaint, as it sounds like the relevant notes aren’t being added to the bookings when they’re made. If you log a complaint in this way you’ll be given a complaint reference number, and will be contacted by a dedicated complaints handler who will remain in contact with you until this is resolved. It might be that the Advisors you’ve been speaking to are new or lacking in experience when it comes to booking more technical jobs, so I think it’d be good to get this escalated.

When you do hear back from the complaints handler, make sure to tell them to refer to the previous job reports, as these will contain all the photos and information required to get this booked in properly. I’m sorry - it sounds like you’ve had a string of bad luck with these job bookings - it’s rare but I’ve seen it happen before. I hope we can get this all sorted for you soon! You should hopefully find the thread ​@BPLightlog has sent very usefu.

Thanks everyone for the quick replies

Firedog

Here are a couple of photos as requested. If they aren’t clear enough, or show what you want, please let me know. 

One thing to note in the photos is that I think the teleswitch is actually a meter, although the metering function is not being used. This was installed as a replacement after our existing switch stopped switching!

I think the second device the engineer mentioned was to be some kind of wireless device. I got the sense that it may also be SIM based, but wouldn’t guarantee that I interpreted him correctly.  

Regarding the line feeds out I can see the logic of just two. I thought he mentioned that the meter planned had five, but I may have misunderstood what he meant.  

The engineer was from SMS, rather than OVO.

Thanks all

Who on earth would put in that Horstmann RTS/THTC Meter unit and just stick a label over it?!?!?!

thelearner wrote:

Blastoise186 wrote:

In that case, if you could post those photos we can definitely check. Three-Phase THTC is extremely rare, but I’ve heard of one or two installs where it’s a thing.

 

So after phoning OVO, ensuring they had all the photos and info I have posted here, sent by email to OVO, and the original meter engineers report from 02/12/24, the latest engineer turned up today for the 2nd appointment. Very nice guy, subcontracted by OVO and from London. Took 1 look and said I cannot do this - not certified it is 3 phase. He said he would feed all this back to OVO and ensure next time an engineer came they could do this job, which was what was supposed to happen this time. 

I will phone OVO again tomorrow. This house is on a development with lots of identical houses - guessing built in 70’s - it is a standard domestic house - cannot see anything that would have required a 3 phase supply here. 

I might actually enquire with the DNO to get them to confirm what type of supply this is. 

Looks like a polyphase service fuse though - that might be the trigger which blocked the job.

Also been monitoring my dads bills this winter on the new E10 tariff and comparing with last winter - seem to be about 20% lower. 

The engineer definitely did not say anything about this - he said 3 phase supply. And the OVO engineers have already looked at all these photos - well that’s what we have been told. Todays OVO engineer also said 3 phase engineers were in short supply. 

I don’t believe that is anything more than single phase but can understand the confusion. (Polyphase just means more than 1 and is often used in multiphase systems).

It looks like a looped supply to me but I’d be interested to know where the red cable indicated here goes

Of course, getting a 3 phase authorised engineer would sort things anyway 

BPLightlog wrote:

I don’t believe that is anything more than single phase but can understand the confusion. (Polyphase just means more than 1 and is often used in multiphase systems).

It looks like a looped supply to me but I’d be interested to know where the red cable indicated here goes

Of course, getting a 3 phase authorised engineer would sort things anyway 

That’s exactly what I would like to know too it looks like it goes behind the wall - be interesting if they pulled that fuse to see what happens. 

I have an inspection camera and there is a hole where the old consumer unit was - so I could try and look at that with the camera. 

I have also contacted the DNO to see if they can clarify what type of supply is fitted to the house, they have replied asking if we want to downgrade for 3 to 1 phase - have just asked them to confirm supply details - if they have this in their records. 

Don’t put yourself at risk of course. Whatever it is, it’s high energy.

The reason for my assumption is that the red cable that disappears behind, has to go to a separate meter or be isolated (as it’s directly from the grid) and if you have no other meters, then it’s either looped elsewhere or actually isolated. 
The two red cables to the right are from the same fuse and feed your two meters. Similarly with the next two cables, these are neutral connections which are used in various places.

That cut-out also has its own incomer (two thick black cables coming from below). Could that indicate each half of the service head carries a single phase, with one of them siphoned off to power somewhere else - looped to the neighbouring property, or the cannabis farm in the loft (!), say?

In any case, I should have thought two incomers was a pretty sure sign of a polyphase arrangement, needing a specially-trained engineer to unravel.