Storage Heater and hot water not working even after Smart Meter installed

That’s good news, at least in part.

We had a similar case recently where the meter was apparently working as designed after the smart team had done their ECAUL magic, but the heating circuits were still not active when they should be. It turned out that someone - suspicion fell on the installing engineer - had been a bit heavy-handed with the cable from the meter to the consumer unit for the offpeak circuits, and it had become disconnected at the CU. The customer’s own electrician was able to reconnect it in a matter of minutes and the heating started to work again that night. 

[EDIT a few minutes later to add:]

It’s not straightforward for the installer to check that the offpeak circuits are working properly unless he’s there during the night. He should have checked that the connection was continuous to the CU, but he might have missed that bit.

@Abby_OVO It could perhaps be standard procedure for the engineer to activate the boost function in the meter briefly just to make sure that the circuit was live. 

In my case, the hot water supply resumed using the off-peak supply after resetting the control unit at the hot water cylinder. Additionally, the meter is running during the off-peak period. @Firedog , do you think it's still possible that the heating circuits were not yet active?

@Abby_OVO , could you please confirm if a full investigation will still be conducted on this matter?

Now that the meter is working as designed, OVO’s part is finished. Any remaining problems are for your electrician to sort out. If there are additional controls on the heaters themselves, these may need resetting after a period of no power.   
 

I can’t speak for Abby, but I can’t imagine that any sort of investigation will take place. If the ALCS was not configured on installation, then this is a known problem with a known workaround. The solution (getting the engineer’s app to report the ALCS status properly) is clearly taking time to be implemented. It’s unpleasant for those subjected to it, but all’s well that ends well. Let’s hope your electrician can sort out your heaters quickly - it’s lucky we’ve had a warm spell for the past few days, so your home won’t have been unbearably cold.

I can verify this. It’s not worth doing a deep dive or full investigation for minor issues that can be fixed with a single SMETS Command such as ECAUL/ALCS stuff. The resources required just can’t be justified for that.

If a ton of meters were randomly exploding however, that would definitely get one because it’d be a safety concern.

Hey @AsandaW 

As our volunteers have already mentioned, an investigation now would be unlikely as they’ve explained, but I’ll also have Forum_Support double check this to be sure.

Hopefully an electrician can sort the storage heaters out and everything will be as normal.