What is an Economy 7 meter?

As a normal user, not sure why I am on eco 7 ! Would it be more cost effective to go on a normal Tariff ? Tia

Hey there @Steveo !

I don’t think you’ll benefit from Economy 7 if you don’t have storage heaters or an electric vehicle, so switching back to a single-rate setup is probably a good idea. The Support Team can take care of this for you over the phone - it needs verbal confirmation so Live Chat and Email won’t work for this purpose (and neither will social media, sorry!).

There’s just one thing that I would like to double check first. Please can I see some photos of your meters? Ideally, please make sure at least one photo includes all the equipment in the meter cupboard and anything that’s directly wired into the electric meter. This will help me to figure out if there’s any potential snags you might encounter along the way.

Thanks!

Hey, thanks for your prompt reply, I will certainly do this asap

No worries. Glad to help. :)

In some cases, switching back from E7 to Single-Rate is as simple as having OVO agree to modify your contract, but in other cases it can involve a Meter Exchange - especially if some kind of Time Switch is currently installed which is controlling one or more circuits. Having a MEX in these cases to remove that from the equation is of course completely free of charge - but may require a Smart Meter upgrade. This is one of the reasons I like to help you to double check first, so that you have a better idea upfront.

Ok thanks. Pic's as follows.

Perfecto! Thanks for the snaps. :)

I have some very good news for you then. You’ve got an S1 Secure Liberty 100 Smart Meter - and these are fully compatible with OVO in both S1 and “S1+” configurations. You won’t need a MEX in this case so all that would need to happen, is for OVO to reconfigure it to Single-Rate Mode once you modify the contract. This can be done remotely with no need for an engineer visit, so you won’t have any disruption to your supply at all, not even for five seconds.

Pretty much the only significant differences that you’ll notice will be that your future bills and meter readings would be flattened to reflect the fact you’re no longer on E7 - and all your usage will be billed at the same rate regardless of when you use it. The meter will also only show a single meter reading in the future as well.

So yep, this is a pretty easy one that can be sorted out in a single phone call. OVO will discuss this with you before you commit, so you’ll have a chance to double check that it’s definitely the right move before you sign the dotted line.

I hope this helps. :)

Cheers, that's good to know. Thanks again for your help

Hi again, just spoke to cust services, and they said to they could change me to a single rate tariff, still receiving the both readings, but only use the one for billing. When asked if they need to reconfigure the meter, he came back after speaking to someone, and said we probably cant reconfigure the meter !! Not too sure if this is correct. what would your thought be please ?

No worries. It should be fine either way - OVO’s systems are capable of handling E7 meters being used for Single-Rate setups and will generally figure it out automatically.

From my understanding, reconfiguring that particular Smart Meter should be as simple as  OVO throwing a few SMETS Commands at the meter remotely, provided it’s communicating properly. But even if comms are down, you can always do manual readings and have the system run the numbers.

I’m wondering if it’s currently being migrated to DCC right now - this does cause a temporary WAN drop during the process, but it recovers once OVO is able to reconnect post-migration.

You should be fairly safe to switch to Single-Rate either way though and go from there. Feel free to mention this forum thread as it’ll help with context.

Hi @Steveo and welcome to the OVO online community!

Great to see you’ve already been given some great advice by our community volunteer, @Blastoise186. As you’ve advised without a high-energy consuming device active overnight (such as an EV or storage heaters), an Economy 7 tariff might not be the most cost-effective plan for you at the moment (we usually estimate that you’d need to be using at least 35% of energy at off-peak times to see a benefit).

Glad to hear the Support Team have already been able to update you on to a single-rate plan:

Just to chip in and explain the thinking behind this one - whilst the function to change your meter to a single-rate mode does exist, unfortunately we’re limited by the current function of our billing system to remove the extra register here.  This shouldn’t affect the management of your account whilst with OVO - you may notice that you’ll still be charged for day and night-time usage, but as we’ll use the same unit rate for each register your overall charges will be the same as they would be on a single register.

Let us know if that makes sense (it can be tricky to explain these background processes!) 

Makes sense thanks

I beg to disagree with the likely benefit of Economy 7 being only if you have heavy-consumption items such as Storage Radiators and EVs.  Also consider your personal choices.

We get benefit from Economy 7 because we choose to do our clothes washing and our dish washing overnight. That pushes enough consumption to make it worth while, and there’s only two of us not a family so we don’t need washes every day. Ours is a combined washer-drier, so on the rare occasions that we dry as well (rather than hanging on coat hangers or in the airing cupboard), that is even more effective use of cheaper power.

Since having solar panels, that has made the choice even more biased in favour of E7.  I’ve even dug out an old timer (that we had originally for Christmas tree lights) and use that for the phone and tablet chargers so that they charge overnight!

@Jess_OVO NB the table of when E7 night time rate applies by MPAN number has disappeared from the original post above.

I’d not realised till today that BST / SummerTime isn’t reflected by my make of meter, so I might benefit even more if I avoid the overlap hour.

The layout of the Economy 7 bills changed on 14 September.  Whereas my bill previously showed Day and Night, it now shows Offpeak and Peak.  Not only has it changed the names it uses, but it has changed the order of showing them. Change for the sake of change.

Do the times remain the same?

Great spot on the vanishing table there, @EverythingNeedsAUserName - not sure where that wandered off to!

Interesting points to make about the other use cases for Economy 7, particularly with Solar panels reducing your daytime grid consumption - How well to you think our suggestion of 35% off-peak usage lines up with your own consumption patterns?

 

The layout of the Economy 7 bills changed on 14 September.  Whereas my bill previously showed Day and Night, it now shows Offpeak and Peak.  Not only has it changed the names it uses, but it has changed the order of showing them. Change for the sake of change.

Do the times remain the same?

 

Looks like the change in how your day/night or peak/off-peak registers are labelled is merely an update on our billing platform - rather than a change to your meter times. Is it an OVO smart meter you’ve got installed there, @EverythingNeedsAUserName ?

I've got an S1 Secure Liberty 100 Smart Meter installed by OVO.

When I get time I'll post the % night rate electricity consumption from my spreadsheet and how it has changed before and after solar.