Can someone advise me about how to get an Economy 7/10 meter?

Hi,

I'm an existing OVO user (for a few months now).
I've been told that I can get cheaper evening bills if I install an economy 7 or economy 10 meter.
But the help documentation says:

Is it easy to switch?
It’s not completely straightforward because you’ll need to have a new meter installed, and you may have to pay for this service. Get in touch with your energy supplier to ask them how long it would take and what you’d have to pay

https://www.ovoenergy.com/guides/energy-guides/economy-7.html

Confused...OVO are my supplier...?

Thanks.

Hi @barryb001 welcome to the forum and thanks for posting.

I'm sorry you haven't found the webpage much use! There's topics already going with a discussion underway, you can check these out here:
economy 7

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/pay-monthly-21/can-ovo-energy-fit-a-smart-meter-if-i-have-an-economy-7-meter-36/index1.html

economy 10
https://forum.ovoenergy.com/pay-monthly-21/can-my-smart-meter-be-set-up-with-economy-10-331/index1.html

In short it all depends on your current meters and whether they have engineer availability in your region. It's worth noting that ovo can't offer the economy 10 tariff with smart meters.

My advice would be to Reach out to the ovo customer care team, if you reach out to them using an online platform please include your full name, address, ovo acc number & date of birth to help speed up a resolution for you

Hope the above helps

Thanks, I'll contact the OVO customer care team to find out how to get a smart metre or economy 7 meter.

Awesome stuff @barryb001 do let us know how you get on,

FYI OVO use the same smart meter for the economy 7 tariff - just ask about it when you call 🆒

Hi @barryb001

I'm glad to hear you can have an economy 7 tariff with smart meters.

this is the first time I've heard of a charge to have a smart meter installed - @Tim_OVO are you able to advise on this please so other users know the score?!

Wow, thank you very much for that answer. I'll need to dig a bit deeper to find out exactly what they want to charge for. I THINK they mean if I don't want a smart meter - if I want to change my "traditional" single rate meter for a "traditional" e7 meter. If it doesn't cost anything to switch to a smart meter that does E7, then perhaps it's a no-brainer...

My reason for wanting this is clear: I'm getting an EV, so I need 7-8 hours overnight which I can schedule whenever via my smartphone. It costs up to £3 in electricity to charge an EV, so if I can get a lower rate overnight (every day), it will save me a lot of money over a year.

Thanks, looks like it might be a while though :(

"Good news, our smart meters will work in your property
However, we're experiencing high demand in your area, so we don't have any appointments right now. We'll send you an email as soon as we have engineers free in your area."

I've been looking for an OVO economy 7 tariff for ages, but there's nothing on the website, so I stupidly thought they don't do one. Now reading EV forums I've discovered all tariffs can be economy 7, if we ask. Bit peeved really, as this seemed to be kept below the radar by OVO. I shouldn't really have to go to the forums to find this.

Anyway, we are half way through the fixed 2 year EV tariff and I've been told we can convert to economy 7. We also have solar panels, so it makes a lot of sense to go to economy 7, since our daytime use from the grid is reduced by the solar generation. However, it turns out that if we do this, our whole account and use will be recalculated back to Oct 2017 on the econ 7 tariff.

It makes prefect sense going forward. No brainer. We will also hopefully be getting a smart charger installed soon, so even better. It's the past year that's the issue. We obviously have been charging the car at anytime as the cost was the same. We reckon the car would have be fully charged after a work day before midnight. Therefore the recalculation on the econ 7 for the last 12 months may not be in our favour.

Being exactly half way through means it's hard to decide which way to go. Has anyone else had this recalculation and how did it compare?

It's really annoying that OVO don't really make it easy to find econ 7 on the website. I know I was daft to not realise there would be something, but we are also supposed to fully service our account online. Turns out I did need to phone in order to get this done. If OVO want online self service, then they need to allow all options to be available on the Web site. Oh well, we live and learn.