Indeed but, nevertheless, I am amazed that the position is as it is: a matter for the supplier’s judgement whether to use the smart meter’s capability for remote disconnection.

Whatever happened to the drive to enshrine best health and safety practice in legally enforceable processes? That smartme web site is awfully close to being “official” advice, I think.

BW

OVO Energy Australia does seem to do remote connections/disconnections via Smart Meters under certain circumstances such as if you’re moving in or moving out, but that seems to be pretty common practice in Australia. Especially because it seems most energy suppliers down under will disconnect/reconnect the supply anyway under the same circumstances.

However, that’s OVO Australia, whereas OVO UK doesn’t do this. And neither does any of OVO’s other sister companies as far as I can tell.

Hmm. I wonder how they manage to execute a remote disconnection in Australia.

I didn’t think the Billing System software had attained that level of functionality. 

Why don't you ask them? They've got a live chat feature and they happily talk to me even though I'm in the UK 

So, you move out, they cut the power and leave the house with no electricity, rendering any security lights, CCTV and alarm systems useless, making it a perfect target for burglars?

Not quite. It is possible to get security devices that can last for several months on battery power alone pretty easily. Plus Australia has tons of sunlight that is perfect to recharge said batteries with via solar power. 

Is this like the moment in Superman III (the movie) where the computer gains a degree of autonomy and, um tries to take over? from the wikipedia entry

“… Superman escapes, but the computer becomes self-aware, defending itself against Gus's attempts to disable it. The computer transforms Vera Webster into a cyborg ...”

Sorry, I’m showing my age...

Well, given that I am a self aware artificially intelligent SkyNet Blastoise, that should probably tell you something. But yes, I do sometimes chat with OVO Australia when I'm bored. 

If they are physically cut off, what happens to the surprus power generated by the solar panels if they are not sending it back to the grid? With no electiricy usage in the house, this may put batteries at risk of overcharging.

Out of interest, because I would actually love a proper security system that adheres to security standards, that can just run off battery, could you point me to one that is not a “wireless camera off Amazon” or a “smart alarm” that does run off batteries but need “the cloud” to work, which then requires a wireless access points and the whole broadband to also run off batteries?

This is excellent timing to raise that last point @gmmarcin 

There is another topic about Retaining domestic stored power for outages which is just about to discuss these very issues.

Please head over there and repeat your comments because that’s where others will expect to find them.

Guess what, we are back to square one. I just had another email about DD being raised to £128 now, but in June, You wanted to raise it to £165, which I persuaded you not to, which is also now proven that it would have been unjustified.

I just spoke to various teams over the phone, and no one can explain this.

The below screenshot is our usage for 2021 from the smart meter and all up to date, but the person at OVO said the actual usage for this period is 9326kWh - so 2.5 times more to what the portal is saying at 3579.90kWh and what our bills are showing. (This would also explain why you wanted to raise the DD 2.5 times back in June)

They then took the 9326 and divided by 8 months (we have been with OVO since February so its 9 months now, not and got 1165kWh per month but our actual usage, according to the meter is approx 500kWh per month as below.

Now, if that’s the case, I no wonder you are making incorrect estimates and charging people more than you should.

 As of today, we are actually £85 in credit:

but according to your “internal” numbers that no one can explain to me, we are in debt - hence the demand to increase the DD. It jsut does not make any sense and causes us a lot of stress.

Can you please pass this internally on to someone who can actually sort this out and give me a call, because your Customer Services cannot help?

 

I’m really sorry to hear you’re still having difficulty with your Direct Debit recommendations and online usage info, @gmmarcin

it’s worth mentioning that we don’t have full access to you account here. This online community is the perfect place for our members to share advice and tips on getting the most out of their online account but if you’re having an account-specific issue which needs investigating this is best directed to our Support Team, who are able to log and escalate your complaint if they’re unable to get things fairly resolved.

Important to stress this point too - @Transparent has got it spot on - As a supplier we adhere to strict regulations in terms of our ability to turn off a smart meter supply and this wouldn’t happen without clear and explicit pre-warning. We’d still encourage you to speak to the team about getting a payment arrangement in place, if the recommended Direct Debit amount doesn’t match up to your anticipated usage pattern (bearing in mind we’d expect your usage to increase over the next few winter months) we can override the suggested amount.

I hope this information is helpful in getting things sorted.

I’m pleased to have this confirmed, @Jess_OVO, but the only information I found online (quoted above) didn’t refer to any regulations strict or otherwise. Would you be able to point me to the regulations that constrain a supplier’s ability to turn off a smart meter supply, please?

(This would let me quote something much more reassuring when the need next arises.)

Thanks in anticipation

Why can’t you collect DD to cover the actual usage, as mobile operators do? Why do you have to estimate and charge the client in advance for something that has not yet happened, and it may not happen? I prove already that your original estimate was incorrect, and this one is likely too.  What if a telephone company charged you you more in November because they think you will be calling your family over christmas and will probably use more minutes in December?

Especially that when we joined OVO, you asked how much kWh we use in a year, we said xx and you calcualted monthly DD based on that. How can you now think that we will use so much more?

They are trying to do that @gmmarcin - but the software has failed.

The Billing System is being developed in-house by OVO’s sister company, Kaluza.

There are numerous threads on this Forum where several of us have been doing detailed analysis and feedback on issues with the software. Have a look at this topic where a customer queries whether the meter is faulty.

We even have a private area called the Tech Treehouse where some of us have highlighted bugs and discussed problems with the software, out of public view.

However, after 20 months of providing this information for the programmers to see, we have no idea what is being done with it.

Ha! did you read this thread from the begining? I had the same issue where the readings would jump from 14kWh to 30kWh!

I will be honest with you - as an owner of a business that has been building data solutions for several years - OVO should have never gone live with their billing platform:

It does not offer what is being advertised, as I explained here:

It feels amateurish with bugs that should have never left development environment, as I captured here:

and more worryingly it potentially deliveres incorrect data as explained in this very thread. People are losing trust in the data and once a customer has lost trust in the data, they will probably never trust it again.

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