Daily usage on the Online Account now updates later in the day. Why?

seems as ifs OVO has more problems with its daily usage it has now not transmitted gas usage for 14/10.2022. OVO appears to always blame the smart meter for problems but wants everyone to be on it and when it doesn't get all the information even though it says it is getting half hourly updates  and been in for several years refuses to believe it is their end that is at fault, surely someone in OVO can sort the problem and not ask me to download some other app to find them not getting the problem sorted. 

There are 3rd party smartphone apps (e.g. Bright/Hildebrand, Loop Energy) that can show usage data for the day before it’s over. Loop Energy explicitly say they try to fetch data every 2 hours and that it is normally delivered on the first or second attempt.

Once upon a time the Bright app display could be updated every 30 minutes (with the most recent values) but in recent months the interval between updates is more typically several hours. However it does make multiple attempts, and yesterday’s data is usually complete before too many hours of data from today have arrived.

I can only assume that the infrastructure for managing and accessing smart meter data has not been able to rise to the challenge of the increased interest in reducing energy consumption. I’m not inclined to blame Ovo (*) - as far as I know, energy suppliers typically use outside specialists to get customer meter data for them.

N3rgy does the data fetching for Loop Energy, for example. N3rgy doesn’t offer a friendly smart phone app like Loop but, unlike Loop and Hildebrand, they do offer an api that enables consumers to download their own data.

(*) However Ovo’s habitual blaming of smart meter communication problems has NEVER seemed well-founded to me. The ability of those third parties to show data that Ovo were missing, in almost all cases I looked at, undermines this claim. But note that there are two kinds of data here: usage (consumption) data can be accessed by anyone with appropriate authorisation, but meter readings (cumulative consumption) are only available to your supplier. As far as I understand things. Missing usage data can be hard to estimate, missing meter readings should be easier to estimate (so long as there are actual readings before and after whatever is missing)…

… not that Ovo’s ability to estimate anything ever impressed me.

is there any way to get smart meter changed from smet1 to smet2 does anybody know, it seems from when I asked about daily use on 14/10/2022 my gas reading daily use stopped strange that it seems to be ok on my sons one so unsure what has happened it does say getting updates from smart meter to ovo but think if I need to change to another supplier if it was set2 it would be easier. 

It doesn’t work that way. You can only have an S1 meter replaced with an S2 under certain circumstances such as a failed migration or a non-compliant S1.

In this instance, I don’t believe OVO is at fault. I suspect another issue such as failed comms or a dead battery.

For me they are continuing to take daily gas (and electricity) meter readings as recently as today (16th), but have given up presenting gas usage figures after the 13th.  Of course they still haven't filled in the missing meter readings earlier in October, but now they can't even calculate usage when they do take meter readings.

Is Liz Truss running OVO now, I wonder.

@Blastoise186  Sure, I understand that meter readings will instantly be "caught up" just soon as the meter is read, even if readings are a week, a month or a year apart.

My problem is that I want access to accurate daily and half hourly USAGE data, so that I can review the effectiveness of changes I make to operation of my heating system (Tado controlled) and other measures such as insulation or ventilation day to day, month to month etc..

They have my September billing wrong because they failed to take a meter (or usage) reading on 1st October and didn't bother including 30th September in the bill. Then they have falsified usage data for that period and again when they missed another reading on 3rd October. Now they are taking meter readings but not showing daily/half hourly usage. It's a complete shambles.

I'm generally very positive about OVO, now in my sixth consecutive year as a customer, but there sure is a lot of ball dropping going on lately. They need to get their act sorted out.

I do have the data from my OVO IHD, my Glow IHD/CAD, Bright and Loop. What baffles me is the mess that OVO is making of gathering and presenting the same data. I want it all on one page for easy comparison. OVO used to make it easy to do that, and I was a happy camper. Now  - just fake data or missing data, with the occasional false hope when I get the correct numbers for a few days.

Thanks Blastoise for your reply I have now logged into Loop to see if that will work but they are saying if pre 2019 may not be compatible my one is 2018 waiting to see if this works as OVO is not fulfilling my needs. It has worked perfectly up until 13/10/2022 so unable to see it being different from the thread before I just wish it can be sorted sooner than later. Nothing has changed inside the premises only since I put on thread of cannot we have data earlier and all of a sudden it has gone funny. 

It’s not quite as simple as that.

The daily total usage values, as in the 2nd screenshot, are derived from the daily meter readings in the 1st screenshot (the daily calorific value needs to be downloaded from the National grid and then combined with the increment in the meter reading in m^3 and a gas density correction included to get kWh, as per the formula on Ovo’s monthly statement). Given that Ovo have smart meter readings for every day 12-16 Oct inclusive, there is simply no reason Ovo can’t provide daily total usage values in kWh for 12-15 Oct inclusive. There is no need to invoke comms issues because the needed information has already been obtained from the meter.

The values for 14-15 Oct may be missing only because Ovo haven’t got round to calculating them yet.

[Technical detail - it turns out that for gas, and only if the half-hourly usage data are complete, then those numbers on one web page do add up to the daily usage values given on the other web page. That doesn’t work out exactly for electricity because the metering works slightly differently. It’s related to the fact that the local IHD updates electricity values every 10 seconds, but the gas values can only change every 30 minutes.]

Ah yes - sorry, I’d forgotten about that detail. I remember that Bright/Hildebrand couldn’t show me my usage when I lived somewhere that had the older SMETS1 meters. They suggested buying their Glow hardware to get around this, but I wasn’t that desperate.

Simon

eezytiger wrote:

For me they are continuing to take daily gas (and electricity) meter readings as recently as today (16th), but have given up presenting gas usage figures after the 13th.  Of course they still haven't filled in the missing meter readings earlier in October, but now they can't even calculate usage when they do take meter readings.

Is Liz Truss running OVO now, I wonder.

 

 

 

 

Ours is exactly the same. We are getting half hourly usage figures, though, but only the kWh, not the cost. Running total in October bill has not changed since 13th October. Seems a bit unlikely, therefore, that this is a problem with our individual meters as the problem appears to be the same. 

Seems that several people are having problems getting their gas readings so to say it is possibly the smart meter is a get out of jail free by OVO seems more that it is a software or programming error that needs to get sorted PLEASE OVO do it for the consumer. 

Mine looks fine this morning. Seems to have been fixed (for now, at least)

same here long may it continue, perhaps it was one small blip but it is extremely annoying when you can't get full sight of it and have to go onto another app share your data to find out what is going on. 

My most recent readings/usage have appeared, but I still have missing daily/half hourly numbers for 30th September and October 2nd and 4th, with corresponding inaccuracy in nearby dates as a knock on effect of missing correct data for the dates in question and just making up numbers across the dates.

If banks were as casual with customer data as OVO appears to be I doubt they'd stay in business long. You can't just skip a few transactions and massage the figures elsewhere to make the numbers add up. This data shouldn't be a game of hide and seek.