Great question to ask about the possibility of booking in a meter tail upgrade.

As our guide to ‘Who’s responsible for what’ in terms of your electricity set-up shows the meter tails are maintained by the current energy supplier:

If you’re looking to upgrade the meter tails from 16mm to 25mm our Support Team could arrange for an engineer to carry out this work. Check this guide for the current cost to get this scheduled in. 

Hope this helps in getting the work arranged!

Hi, both the cables going into the meter and out of the meter require upgrading to 25mm.  This will allow me to get the DNO to upgrade the main fuse from 160A to 100A.

Well since these two sets of tails both require the wire seals to be broken on the meter as well as the Service Fuse, it will certainly have to be OVO who do the work.

If you were upgrading from a traditional meter to a Smart Meter then one set of tails would be free of course. The ones to the Consumer Unit would very likely be at nominal additional cost.

However, it were my installation, then I’d certainly go for having a separate 100A double-pole isolator between the meter and the Consumer Unit, which is priced at £158 on the Price-list, here.

This isolator would in future allow a qualified electrician to work inside the Consumer Unit without needing to “pull the Service Fuse” and then get your regional Distribution Network Operator to test and re-instate it. I assume that this isolator cost would include the tails upgrade as part of the work.

Could you also please fill out your Forum Profile page? That’s where I look to see what type of meter you have and which DNO region you’re in. Thanks.

Niceeeee you really are the best in the business at this. 

@andyhadfield isolator switch time? 

OVO just quoted me £431 to change the 2 short wires from 16mm to 25mm

Hi @domantho ,

I think I can account for most of the cost, but this is just a guess. You’ll need to ask OVO for a proper breakdown as well. This is based on

• De-Energise AND Re-Energise - £212 for both
• Site Survey (Technical) - £106
• Fit Isolation Switch - £52.25

As for the rest, please check the quote.