Big discrepancy between the usage graphs and the actual meter readings

I’ve taken this one away to our Smart metering expert who’s advised:

The challenge here is it is not a singular explicit regulatory statement. It is a culmination of clauses and obligations, including monitoring measures where we are required to report on our behaviour and what we've done, within our Licence and the associated Codes.  As part of the Credit Management journey, there is no differentiation allowed for the metering installed. The same rules and processes must be followed for a Smart meter as for a Traditional non smart one, which require us to go down an explicit route. None of which allows a Supplier to remotely 'turn off' a Smart Meter for any reason without providing clear and explicit pre-warnings and that would be due to the customer not topping up and 'self-disconnecting'. This in the Supply Licence Clauses relating to Self Disconnection and Prepayment Meters - which include Smart Meters in Prepayment mode.

Does this help, @Simon1D?

Thanks, @Jess_OVO I think it does, although I’ve no intention of reading the linked documents in any detail.

I’m left thinking that it was just a peculiar way for the smartme website to summarise things, giving the impression that suppliers might have had some choice in the matter.

BW

Yeah, I’d agree with the expert as well.

In my personal opinion, any prepayment meter that disconnects supply due to running out of credit automatically falls in the locally triggered disconnection category, since the disconnect was triggered by the meter itself without any input from - or in response to - any external entity.

Admittedly the legacy PAYG+ tariff that Boost used to offer is/was a bit of an edge case due to the nature of how that worked, but the same rules still apply regardless.

Care to expand on why you expect the increase to be so much? So far I am not seeing much, if any at all. Sure, few kWh more in winter for the LED lightining, maybe, but double? I don’t think so. Why do you think you know my usage better that I do?

Generally speaking most households do see an increase in the energy they use at this time of year, given the darker and colder days, @gmmarcin - obviously this is dependent on the way you heat your home as well as the energy efficiency of your lighting and other appliances.

It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you’ve recently joined us or made the upgrade to a smart meter, these usage projections do become more accurate over time. The longer you’re with us and the more usage data we receive from your smart meter, the better we’re able to anticipate your seasonal usage patterns, although these may of course change over time if there’s a particularly colder or longer winter - or you make any home improvements such as upgrading your home’s insulation or heating system.

Have you been using the Direct Debit calculator on your online account to see these projected usage costs?

So you assume the usage and we all know what assume means.

I think even I can read off @gmmarcin’s graph that they joined Ovo in February (the zero usage in January is the clue - or maybe that’s when the smart meter was installed).

To be technical for a moment, if I were fitting a model of usage to that graph, where there was a background constant part plus a seasonal part (more in winter than in summer), the best fit would have essentially no seasonal part. And I can do that in my head. No actual calculation required. It’s “obvious”.

If Ovo is doing anything at all with a customer’s usage data when it estimates DDs, then what it is doing makes no sense whatsoever.

I’m another user whose electricity consumption is essentially flat across the year. It’s also only 10% of my total energy consumption (or was before the old gas boiler was replaced - I’m hoping that gas consumption will fall by ~30% with the new boiler), so to talk in general terms about a user’s “energy” consumption, as @Jess_OVO did, is really to turn a blind eye to what can be a significant factor.

In my case, the figures were roughly:

annual electricity: 3000 kWh

annual gas (water heating): 3500 kWh

annual gas (space heating): 27500 kWh

and my consumption of gas was about 300 kWh per month throughout the summer months.

So, of my 34000 kWh “energy” consumption, the vast bulk of it was confined to the winter months.

Not paying attention to this kind of pattern really really should be a matter of some shame for Ovo.

Yes we joined OVO in February and have smart meter installed in March. We gave the annual kWh usage based on our last year with British Gas when joining OVO. So far, we are not far off what we used last year hence I don’t understand why OVO wants to double the DD

I think it’s for Ovo to offer a credible explanation. I haven’t seen one yet and, until one is offered, all we can do is speculate about the reasons...

I have downloaded the OVO app

i can see my usage, which is fairly low and cheap ..

From what I can work out is that it doesn’t include standing charges and vat, is this correct?

Why is it structured like this, surely it’s easier just to see what you owe for your gas and electric in total? 
 

It’s so confusing ! 
 

Or….. am I just doing something wrong?

Any help or suggestions appreciated 

Many thanks 

The app shows your account balance, which is the amount you owe or are in credit.

The homepage of the app just shows your balance. The Payments tab can reveal how you got there, especially under Payments > See Charges and Payments.

Hi @Alpinaman,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community,

Great to see our community members giving you some tip-top advice here! 

Your usage graphs will show your usage only. All other costs on your Online Account can be found under payments, your account balance and your monthly statements. 

Here is a great guide you might find useful:

• OVO Energy Live billing platform and monthly summaries - What do I need to know? F.A.Q.

Hope this helps. 

In OVO app usage graphs, what do the solid orange (electricity) and blue (gas) colours indicate? 

Depending on position of the slider Price or kWh the column on the right shows usage in numbers, the coloured bars indicate that in a pictorial form. Eg sat 5th I used most as I charged the car 

We moved over to ovo on 18th Nov. I provided a manual meter reading on same day and then a smart meter reading was taken the next which matched. Another reading was taken a month later all fine. Then 2 days after our December reading (17th dec) the usage went from around 7kw/h up to 20kw/h for electricity almost tripling the cost. I checked usage for every day from 18th Nov onwards and it was pretty much the same every day up until 18th December when overnight it massively increased, there have been no changes in appliances no extra christmas lights etc so extremely concerning. Any ideas? 

Can you see on the meter readings page if these use estimated readings? That might explain things

No they are all smart readings apart from my first manual one, but thanks ☺️ 

Do you have an immersion heater? 

It looks suspiciously like an immersion heater, or something along those lines, was switched on some time on the 19th and has been left on ever since.

No we have a combi boiler that has been on same setting since we moved in. Its very frustrating and obviously very concerning due to the massive cost increase 😑 

In that case, any suggestions I have descends to asking whether a slow cooker has been left on etc. 13 kWh limits the potential suspect appliances. … chargers for heavy duty tools, a powerful computer/games console on 24/7,  a large electric blanket, heated towel rail etc

If everything else can be ruled out and it is a 24 hours of the day problem, then I’d start to suspect a compressor, thermostat or seal issue with a fridge/freezer.

Do you have an in-home display? Can you see if the overnight load is also high? 

@Loubielou can you post the daily usage with 30min readings?

So we can see if the increase is at any particular time of day?

If you don't yet have 30min readings setup ask  OVO to do this. 

No slow cooker, all appliances have been the same since we moved in. Readings are actuals from smart meter and not estimates. No in home display as we didn't even know it was a smart meter until we saw that readings had been taken, previous occupier left no details etc. I've requested a monitor or an engineer to check because it is genuinely baffling. I spoke to ovo on chat on 31st and they've said they can swap to half hourly readings but this doesn't seem to have happened yet as on app it's only daily, and monthly usage I can see.

It can take up to five working days for changes to those settings to go through and data to start flowing, so we might need to come back to this thread later in the week.