Economy 7 tariff changes on SMETS2 meter but fifth terminal not activating at all!

Thanks for the post, @SteveBee - lots of helpful information and images to work with which is great. 

Sorry to hear about your experience when calling in. You’re correct in saying this stuff can get a bit technical, but that’s from the customer perspective. We should be pro’s with this stuff. A few more questions to help us narrow this down:

• You’ve just had the meter fitted. So your online account won’t be updated with new details yet I’m assuming? 
• Was it the installer of the smart meter that you contacted?
• The heating system connected to the meter’s 5th port: has it never worked since the meter install? From your topic title, I’m going to assume no.
• Is this the only thing connect to the 5th port?

Thank you Tim, great news.

I'll be back tomorrow so will be able to report on Wednesday morning as to what happens overnight.

Oh dear, the remote tweak has managed to switch the 2A auxiliary load control relay on at 00:30, but the secondary contactor / fifth port remains inactive (photo below, symbol LC1 is 2A relay).  Good news is though that these changes can seem to be done remotely, so remain hopeful that a fix can be found.

The smart monitor should be showing over 3kW load at this point were the secondary contactor to be closed and supplying the bottom element of the water heater.  Photo below is general set-up for info, showing dedicated fifth port/terminal feed to right side of consumer unit for the E7 bottom element.

The installer has not come back to me when I texted him about the ECAUL request.  I remember him saying that he was sure the ALCS request got the green light on his system, so thought it might be a faulty meter?

Some useful info following, extracted from the Smart Meter User Manual (with some highlighting/annotation by me), might help as background.

Oops, sorry Tim, meant to include @Tim_OVO so you would be notified.

@cwebster17 also looking to have similar problem post-install.

Fantastic, smart meter timings for secondary contactor / fifth port look to be working correctly now, hope yours is sorted soon @cwebster17.

Saw (and heard) it switch off this morning at 07:30 so presume it switched on at 00:30.  Smart monitor is showing around 1.5kWh for the 00:00-01:00 window - equating to half hour of 3kW bottom element in cylinder - which makes sense.  Will stay up tonight just to be sure.

@Tim_OVO, are you able to let me know if this was further work on your part (or @Blastoise186) as I did also recently send a letter to Smart Customer Services in Havant to investigate, which they might have also acted on.

Not mentioned here before, but I did also highlight in the letter that the installer seems to have taken the wrong final readings from the old meter, taking the ‘total’ and one of the ‘day’ or ‘night’ readings, rather than the usual ‘day’ and ‘night’ readings - obviously can work out the missing number if you have either of the other two - but did seem a bit odd and not sure if the installer training covers enough of the Economy 7 systems to ensure near-faultless install - might be worth the installation department circulating a memo to highlight recent installation issues?

Also, still puzzled why my smart monitor is not showing the standing charge - still stating 0.000p 😶?  Not a major issue though, it still seems to include the standing charge in the overall totals.

Thanks to all in getting this resolved!

That’s great news @SteveBee! Fingers crossed they can fix mine too. I stayed up last night to see if that second circuit closes when on the off peak tarrif and it does not - I have the same as you in your first post.  At least it sounds like it is the same problem as you had so I am hopeful it can be fixed easily! 

Thanks for reporting back, @SteveBee.

The team have just sent another message to that meter which we're fairly confident should get the correct ALCS triggering. Without going in to too much technical detail, there's a chance what we've sent might not have worked (and we're also working on resolving that issue too), but would you be able to check and let us know if it's worked tomorrow?

Please bear in mind that randomised offset is a thing too. What this means is that whilst your switch time might be 00:30, the meter will switch up to 10 minutes after that scheduled time (e.g. times set are 00:30 to 07:30 but meter actually switches at 00:36 to 07:36).

Thanks @Tim_OVO, all seems to be working ok so far.

Will report back end of next week, to be doubly sure.

Hi @Tim_OVO, after a week of observation, I can happily confirm that the smart meter is now operating as wished, with the secondary contactor switching on (and off) for 7 hours overnight.

I can also confirm that the dual tariff and the secondary contactor timings have also stayed synchronised since moving to BST, so now switching on at 01:30 at the same time as the change to the night tariff, and switching off at 08:30 when the tariff changes back to the day rate.

Many thanks for all your help, and hope that the main OVO/SSE support channels are now more switched on (pardon the pun) to this install issue on E7 smart meters and ALCS requests so to help others like myself and @cwebster17 get it sorted without such a fuss - I couldn’t believe it when on first raising it with them they told me to first get a written report from an electrician to confirm that it’s nothing to do with my (consumer side) installation - fancy getting an electrician out at one o’clock in the morning?!