Sorry, I can’t explain it more clearly. If you’re visually inclined, then this pared-down diagram may help you understand a setup which looks very like yours. You’ll see that the clock in the meter has two roles: at midnight to switch the peak meter register off and the off-peak register on, and to switch power to the heating equipment on. It does the opposite seven hours later.

Energy consumed by the E7 equipment will all be recorded on the off-peak register, because the equipment is ‘off at the wall’ at peak times. All other usage - e.g. by your freezer - is recorded on the appropriate register according to when it’s being consumed.

You also can’t hold us forum volunteers liable or responsible for any charges, accurate or not. We act independently from OVO in a personal capacity. What you do or not do with our advice is also entirely at your own risk.

As far as I see it, doing the Smart Meter upgrade would at least provide more data that could help figure out what’s using juice overnight. If you’re on Economy 7 now, it would be set up as Economy 7 - and ANY usage at all during E7 hours would clock under the Night Rate with even more accuracy than your current meter. There’s no point in being sentimental about the current meter if it’s completely incapable of providing crucial data that could allow us to crack the case and solve it, when a Smart Meter in Half-Hourly Mode would provide all the data we’d need. If it doesn’t even have one decimal place on the display, we can’t dig deeper.

As for sealing E7 off at the meter and waiting a week? Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way. It’s either the entire meter gets tested, or it doesn’t get tested at all. There’s no half-test option. If you want the entire meter tested for accuracy, the fee is £160 and it only gets refunded (along with any overcharges) if the meter is found to be more than 10% inaccurate, otherwise you completely forfeit the test fee and get nothing back. And during the test, all five Terminals will be left active with full Economy 7 behaviour and functionality running.

It is my belief however, that the meter will almost certainly be less than 10% inaccurate if it’s only clocking a tiny overnight usage during E7 hours. If you still want to take that gamble, I must stress that it will be at your own risk and none of us here will be in a position to fund, compensate, contribute, reimburse, refund or otherwise pay anything towards it whatsoever.

I maintain my stance however, that I do not believe that there is a fault with the existing meter or any of its functionality.

A freezer alone - no matter how large or powerful - is not enough to justify Economy 7, in fact it’d be horribly expensive to use one on an E7 Tariff if that’s literally the only thing using it overnight. Best case scenario is that you pay no less than a Flat Rate.

Hey @Turnip 

I’d be in agreement with our volunteers on this one from everything you’ve explained.

The meters don’t have on/off buttons and continuously record your usage - they cannot be switched off. With E7, your meter works on 2 timeframes - a day and a night rate (times vary per area), when the day rate stops clocking, the night rate kicks in. No matter if you’ve switched off the immersion or storage heaters, you can’t switch of the actual meter.

1 unit overnight is not an unusual or unreasonable thing to see, for things like the fridge which most people leave on all night, 365 days a year.

I understand you believe it’s not recording this usage as you’ve said everything is off, but even if you’ve switched the storage or immersion off, the meter will still clock any other usage during this time on your night rate - so if the fridge is on, the meter will clock that usage. Similarly, if you were to cook a meal or make a cup of tea during the off-peak time, this usage would be clocked on the off-peak rate, as that would be the only register clocking - the meter never stops recording your usage. They’re not going to not charge you for usage overnight - hence why the meters can’t be switched off.

Unless you’ve switched the actual electric off at the mains, and you therefore don’t even have the fridge running or any access to power, so therefore no usage could even occur, then that would be the only case we could imagine seeing absolutely 0.0kWh being used.

Otherwise we’d expect there to be at least minimal usage throughout the night rate. If it’s recording less usage than you think, and maybe more on the day rate than expected, then it may be that the time-switch is faulty, in that case, the meter would need to be replaced. See below a similar thread where the time-switch was the faulty for no usage recording overnight:

Our volunteers have tried their best to help and to understand the circumstances, and have given you all of the information that we would and then some, as they’ve even got experience with their own set ups to help  back all of this up. 

I’ve linked below to a helpful topic on Economy 7 if you wish to take a read: 

If you’re still debating this matter then you can speak with the Support Team, but as Blastoise has said, the likelihood of the meter being faulty is slim, especially based on the information you’ve provided over the forum. It may be worth getting the smart meter installed so that you can view your usage in more detail and this may show you what’s using energy overnight. 

I’ve linked to another topic on situations where the meter is clocking too fast, this may help you judge whether you want to proceed with testing or not if you were considering going ahead with it.

If this is so why does my econ 7 meter not charge for the usage of tosster and kettle when im up at 5 in morn? It still only registers 1 unit.

I have told you the meter was tested, the bloke said he could not test econ 7 during the day.

We’ve discussed this backstage with the forum moderators. Forum_Support will be reaching out to you shortly via Private Message. Please keep an eye on your emails and https://forum.ovoenergy.com/inbox/overview for an update.

This is primarily so that they can take a deeper look at the account than we can.

Do the sums:

• Kettle 3kW x 3 mins > 9 kW-minutes  
• Toaster ditto > 9 kW-minutes
• Total 18 kW-minutes ÷ 60 = 0.3 kWh

If your fridge, freezer etc. are consuming say 0.5 kWh overnight, this will register as 1 unit. Add together: 0.5 + 0.3 = 0.8 kWh. Still only registering as 1 unit.