Can I switch from an Economy 7 plan to a single rate plan without a smart meter exchange?

Well, thanks for the standard response.

I don’t want a smart meter. I’m not obliged by law to have one.
Last year when I was considering switching away from Econ 7 one of your colleagues told me that I could switch to standard tariff and simply add the day & night rates together to give my monthly readings, which I ‘m happy to do.

If you insist that the meter needs to change from duel rate to single rate, I would be happy to buy my own meter which I can buy for under £40……..

Doing that opens up a HUGE can of worms to be honest. Even if OVO agrees to you doing that, you’ll have 50 years of red tape trying to get the thing approved for use. It’s not worth the hassle.

That’s all speculation and untrue. If smart meters affected your health, then so would pretty much every electrical and electronic device. You might want to check out https://smartme.co.uk 

Last year when I was considering switching to standard they told me that all I would need to do was add my day rate units and night rate units together and submit my reading monthly, as I do currently (separate of course).

As for your comments about health effects, none of your business really.

 

Health matters aside, there’s still the matter of getting permission to have your own meter installed, the fact you’d probably have to pay to de-energise and re-energise the supply, pay a qualified installer to swap the meters out… The money adds up massively. You’re talking at least £300 by the time you’ve done all that.

If OVO agrees to install a non-smart meter, it’d also be a Non-Standard Installation for which OVO reserves the right to charge you for the job even if OVO provides said meter - and they are legally entitled to do so. It’s at least £160 if memory serves.

Alternatively, all suppliers will happily offer smart meter upgrades for free as the supplier will cover the cost of such upgrades.

Ultimately it’s your choice, I’m just a messenger at the end of the day.

I don’t ‘want’ to do that. I just don’t want a smart meter, that’s all. I’ve really no idea why that’s such an issue. They are not compulsory, it’s just that all providers have been ‘told’ to offer them.
Sighs……….

Ultimately it comes down very heavily to supply and demand. Demand for non-smart meters has massively dwindled in recent years, so stocks of them have also been reduced to make way for smart meters. From my understanding, most of the remaining stock is for replacing faulty meters or other edge cases. But eventually they will run out. It’s a case of when, not if.

Suppliers can also force a smart meter on you under specific circumstances. I don’t have the list handy but setting an opt-out mostly just blocks marketing more than anything else.

As an alternative to replacing your meter our Support Team may be able to offer a single rate plan where both your registers are charged at the same rate, @Luminess 

We'd still recommend considering a smart meter upgrade to avoid having to submit multiple readings each month. However this could be a temporary solution if you're not interested in a smart meter.

Bear in mind that if you opt for this work-around you may be limited in terms of switching to another single rate plan with another supplier as you'll still be listed as a dual rate customer on the national database.

This is exactly what I was hoping for Jess, thank you.
 

Having spoken to customer support yesterday about tariffs, I am somewhat puzzled & I need clarification.

I have been in contract for 2 years with Economy 7. This ended this week and I have moved to a variable tariff with the new current rates:

Peak 30.48 p/kwh and off-peak 20.03 p/kwh.

I have also recently installed a PV system with a battery system

My query was, “what is the single tariff I would be offered if I came out of the Economy 7 scheme?”

I expected it to be lower than the peak, but larger than the off-peak and that I could then calculate whether or not my new usage pattern with solar generation would be better served to go to a single 24 hour tariff. The answer I was given was that the tariff would be the same as the peak for economy 7 - 30.48 p/kwh.

Is this correct and why? Obviously, if its correct, I will remain on Economy 7 and use the night time hours as much as possible again.

Hi @Naptonian the main thing that strikes me is that 30.48 definitely looks like the unit rate till end September.…

Perhaps wait till you get an email from OVO about your 1st October rates, then ask OVO again.

I got my email tonight, but am not on E7. 

Your E7 rates are very close (but not exactly the same, probably in different regions) to mine. As Jeffus said, it's probably best to just wait until the October rates are sent out, but I would say that "standard" electric unit rates are always between the day and night rates  so they might have given you the flat rate after October. Another source of cost confusion is VAT, some figures have them added, some don't.  The MSE site figures include VAT, OVO generally don't (not in the app at least), so there's plenty of scope for confusion there, as I have found for myself 🙂.

 Hey @Naptonian,

Welcome to the OVO Online Community.

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

As this is account specific and unit rates vary depending on region I am unable to answer this question. You are best placed to go to Support with a query like this. 

@Jeffus and @TiminSurrey are right, you’re probably best off waiting for confirmation of the unit rates in October. When you do compare rates between Economy 7 and Single Rate, I'd advise ensuring they are giving you the variable rate for both and make sure they are both with VAT. This will mean you get an accurate comparison. 

Hope this helps.

Hello. I am on a ‘fixed price plan’ with OVO till August 23 and have recently brought an electric car.

Can I have an ‘ economy 7’ plan running at the same time so I could charge the car ar a cheaper rate?

Thank you

@tonyx1302 OVO do have the ‘Drive’ tariff option although I’m not sure if you’d be able to change from your current fixed tariff 

https://www.ovoenergy.com/electric-cars/ev-tariff/

I am currently on Economy 7 but my circumstances have now changed and I do not use much night time electricity, I believe I'll be financially better off reverting to a standard non Economy 7 plan. Can anyone please help me as I can't find any info on the OVO website to do this. 

I’m in the same situation, although in my case the fixed-price E7 contract is coming to an end (today!) and I wanted to switch to single-rate. I used the web chat option at https://help.ovoenergy.com (open weekdays between 8am - 6pm, 9am to 1pm on Saturdays) to make the request. The advisor said he’d made a note on my account recording the request and gave me a case number. Now it’s a bit of a waiting game; I’ll be surprised and delighted tomorrow if I discover that I’ve been migrated to the standard variable single-rate tariff, but I’m admittedly not holding my breath. You will see another reply here from me in the fullness of time. 

When you get through to the webchat, the topic you need is ‘metering’. You’ll also need to know your account number (shown at the top of your bill).

Alternative contact methods are available, but apparently the telephone option is frustrating, with long waiting times and unsatisfactory outcomes being reported daily in this forum - and of course you have no record of the conversation unless you are able to create one yourself. 

Hey @Ernest G ,

Does this actually affect the Meter Readings as well, or just usage data?

The actual Meter Readings are in line with those quoted by OVO but the usage data they produced on 5 January bears no resemblance to what we use. For example, Gas use that day is said to have been 513kwh, whereas our normal use is about 100kwh, or a bit less.

So, the faulty Meter Reading seems to have caused the problem.

The change over can happen instantly if you have a smart meter. Other way is itwill be overnight. Call them and watch your meter change over.

WATCH out if you do they do it right. 

Actually, because of how OVO’s billing platform currently works… The changeover from E7 → Flat Rate takes about the same amount of time regardless of smart meter or not.

That’s correct: for a change like this, my understanding is that these two rate (peak / off peak, day / night) accounts will remain two rate, but have the same (single rate) prices attached to both registers. It’s for this reason that it takes a bit of time for someone in OVO’s back-office to pick up the request and make the change on your account. 

I wonder how long ‘a bit of time’ is 😉

Here’s a little caveat: I made this request via webchat a couple of weeks ago, in the (forlorn) hope that it would be actioned on the date of my fixed > variable switch. I spent a few hours on webchat again yesterday. The advisor told me that my earlier ticket had been submitted as ‘feedback’, which wouldn’t ever be actioned. It should, she said, have been directed to ‘billing’, which she then did for me because there’s no way for me to contact the appropriate team myself. So now we start on another stretch of that piece of string.

[We spent a long time trying to nail down the correct rates that apply for my region. She was apparently referring to a rate table whose figures varied significantly from the ones available to me. It took a lot of consultation with her colleagues (who seemed to have the same information) and her supervisor to get her equipped with the correct current rate table. I wonder how many customers have been misled since the Jan-Mar 2023 rates came into effect.]

@Firedog another supplier is quoting up to 6 weeks to adjust meter two rate tariffs