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

This is sadly not unusual. In most cases where the offpeak circuits fail to switch when they should on after a new smart meter is installed, it’s a faulty configuration of the meter itself. It’s not the engineer’s fault, because his system tells him that everything’s in order. 

We can’t tell whether this is the problem you’re facing, although a photo of the meter itself would help with diagnosis. If it is a simple misconfiguration, the solution is usually straightforward: you have to ask Support to get the smart team to send the ECAUL request to set the ALCS. I don’t know whether this will be possible on Bank Holiday Monday, but it’s worth trying. A visiting engineer wouldn’t be able to do anything else, so it’s probably quickest just to do it yourself.

If you could take a photo when the heating circuits are supposed to be active, we’d be able to see if this is your problem. It depends on where you live when that would be, but before 7AM is a fair bet. The photo should include the wires connected to the meter and we’d have to be able to read everything on the screen. 

Brilliant - just what the doctor ordered. This snippet shows the state of the two switches in the meter:
  

  
Switch ı should be always closed (o¯o); it controls the power to the tail labelled 4, for everything not on the offpeak circuit. Switch ıı is the one for heating, closed only during offpeak hours. This is the Auxiliary Load Control Switch (ALCS), governing power to tail 5.  

You seem to be in the West Midlands (WMEB) region, so your offpeak hours are 00:00-07:00 GMT, i.e. 01:00-08:00 BST. You can tell if the ALCS is working by checking switch ıı before 8AM tomorrow, when it shouldn’t be open. What does show there depends on how the engineer wired things up; it might show a closed switch (like switch ı) or something like LC1 or even LC1 LC2. So long as it’s not open, you’re up and running. If it is open, you have the same problem as many other customers before you (including me!) and the magic ECAUL request will fix it at the flick of a switch in Bristol. 

Best of luck!

Just something else worth noting by the way.

Please try to avoid pre-fixing your threads with “Urgent:” - that won’t get our attention any faster I’m afraid. Most of us patrol the Forum and respond to threads in reverse-chronological order based on the most recent activity (oldest to newest). Regardless of what you tag your posts with, we don’t usually guarantee that we’ll see your thread any faster so it doesn’t benefit you much.

Thanks!

You can certainly contact them today, via their social media channels if not otherwise. The blue button at the foot of this page will connect you via Facebook Messenger, or if you prefer, they’re also there at 

It’s quite likely that they won’t be able to reach the smart team today, though, but I’d give it a go if I were you. 

Hey @AsandaW 

I’ve had our Forum_Support reach out to you via private message, just to be sure we get you back on supply with the storage heater and hot water asap. If you’ve not already had the issue resolved by the Support Team, please message our Forum_Support back so they can help.

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. 

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.

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.