High electricity usage - what could it be?

The smart meter display is showing the correct figures as your boiler will use 9kW when it starts up. The only option you have for reducing your heating costs is to use less heat. Lower the thermostat and TRV settings, reduce drafts, close curtains at night etc.

Electric boilers are really expensive to run. I'm sorry I can't offer any better suggestions.

@sinca123 you might also consider reaching out to the Centre for Sustainable Energy - advising households on changes they can make to their home to reduce usage is their area of expertise and it’s free!

For years our Electricity consumption has been around 8-12KWH average per day.

Our Smart meter has issues and hardly updates OVO - on the 4th of March it updated them and at the end of March after no more updates I updated them manually.

Now March is showing almost three times the daily KWH usage at around 27KWH!

I’ve contacted OVO who will email some meter test and was wondering what thoughts on this may be? BTW We have an original generation Smart Meter.

Thanks

Bryan

Hi @BGLUK presumably the meter readings do correspond to these kWh readings? Do you see a big jump from 3rd to 4th and onwards?

If there were no meter readings from early March these may well have been estimated. If you’ve supplied an actual reading late March they should update. 
 

Yes the meter readings when I checked on the 31st March are what were displayed. 
and the increase appears to have occurred directly after the last Smart meter update was sent. (4th March)
Some context  - two adults - one wfh one in the office, three bedroom end terrace, energy saving fridge freezer, washing machine, one TV, one computer two monitors, induction hob, smart led bulb, some smart speakers etc, gas boiler. No dishwasher or tumble dryer. In home activity has not changed in regard to electricity usage - so this electricity usage leap seems shocking (pun intended)

The tests on your meter should help. There are are few things you can check if you have an hour free. Switching off everything you can for a short while can check if the meter is ‘creeping’. Take a reading before and afterwards to see what it increments. Then if there’s a known load that you can switch in for a known time, checking before and afterwards again, that can check the increments are at the right level. 
If your meter readings agree with those used to bill, it looks like the power is being recorded/used somehow. Switching things off can help to show if there’s a faulty appliance or circuit but that takes longer to check. 
 

Also half way down this page https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/why-am-i-paying-more-than-i-expected-for-my-energy

Thanks for the replies, I contacted them by chat some hours ago and am awaiting an email with some guide for checks.. I was curious what others may think on here, unfortunately the meter is awkward to get at and we have no in home display so I’ll hang on for there email for now because this will be a pain to check.. 
If it email doesn’t arrive by Monday I’ll attempt to speak to a human.  

Ok, understand. The billing is directly from the meter readings so that’s why it’s important to check when you can. As you’ve already said that the meter reading does currently agree it suggests either a fault on your electrics or meter. Let us know how you get on. 

After taking electricity readings manually for the last two days, followed by a Smart reading being submitted that overwrote mine, it’s apparent that what is displayed is 500 greater than what the Smart reader submits. Rang Ovo and 45 days of waiting now for investigations. 

Hi All,

I have been with Ovo for years, during that time I have always been in credit.

With the cost of living crisis, of course energy costs have soared, but something outrageous is happening with my bill.

After being constantly harassed about installing a smart meter, I eventually did this a couple of years ago. But around half a year ago, the electricity meter broke, and Ovo took >40 days to request an engineer call-out...and that call-out never happened.

Fast forward, my estimated bill for January is £2200 for electricity alone, and now I  apparently need to increase my monthly payment from £250 to £750. This is absurd. There is no way that my 3 bed terrace house with two occupants is using restaurant levels of energy.

When I tried to submit a manual reading over the phone, the system would not accept the number, further validating the issue with the meter. 

Has anybody else experienced issues like this?

OVO’s Support Team can override the system for this. You’ll need to talk to them directly though. 0330 303 5063 or Chat via https://help.ovoenergy.com .

I’ve had a similar issue. My meter stopped sending reading and started sending “estimated readings” my usage apparantly went from £250 for December (Gas/Elec) to £2200 for electricity alone and now I owe £5000 to heat my 3 bedroom mid-terrace house. They offered after a 40 day wait to send out an engineer, but nobody came out. 

Thanks for your reply. It was a customer service agent who couldn’t enter the readings into the system.

I have to wait for the engineer and pray that they realise I haven’t increased my energy consumption by 10x than the past three years. 

Hi @Ter it sounds like your meter is not sending readings. What happens then is that your usage is estimated (not by the meter). 
You should be able to request a delay to any dd increase while the meter is sorted but once they get the proper readings onto the system it should sort itself out. 

Yep I agree.

@Ter what’s showing up in the ‘My plan’ section of your online account for the ‘Future Annual Consumption’ figure: https://account.ovoenergy.com/plan

With a bit more info we may be able to offer some advice. Please bear in mind that we can’t access your account so the Support team are best placed to offer account specific help. 

Thanks Tim.

Future annual consumption Electricity 

14057 kWh

Future annual consumption

16591 kWh

Hi @Ter

Welcome to the customer forum, i am just a customer like you. 

Obviously we don't know all the details but the electricity value in particular looks very high. 

When you see figures in the press for a typical bill of £2500 a year these are based on

2900kWh electricity 

12000kWh gas

So that electricity Future Annual Consumption estimate that OVO calculate doesn't look correct. 

The Future Annual Consumption drives the DDs. 

Hopefully OVO will freeze the DD payments while this is sorted out. 

If they haven't already done this try calling collections and asking them to freeze the DDs. They should do this for 3 months. 

0800 0699 831

Thanks Jeffus.

I agree it doesn’t look correct. And I hope it’s resolved with a new meter installation.

What is concerning me is that the customer service agent couldn’t accept a manual reading earlier this week, since the number was not within an accepted range for a reading.

This leads me to think that the broken meter giving faulty values, could be the reason for my high estimated charges.

Here is a screenshot of my meter readings, I believe the February manual reading could be a faulty reading, inflating the estimated costs:

Certainly the couple of day smart readings and all the manual readings up to sept 2022 look like they may be correct and the Feb 2023 manual reading may be incorrect

Did you provide the Feb manual reading? Does it look like the reading you gave?

OVO should really be able to overwrite that Feb reading even without visiting you. It may be they can't do that normally via the normal Support channel given it is a large difference. 

While you are waiting for OVO, you could see if any of the regulated 3rd party apps can see any data. I suspect not but it would be interesting to see. They access slightly different data from suppliers when attempting to read smart meters 

https://hugoenergyapp.co.uk/

It really isn't great OVO didn’t come out earlier.

If you don't have any luck with the collections number i gave to freeze the DD and sort that Feb reading, i would be tempted to put in a complaint, with the current readings on an email, if it drags on. 

complaints@ovoenergy.com

https://www.ovoenergy.com/feedback

Then it shouldn't get lost in any OVO internal process. 

You could always ask for compensation for this taking over 2 years to sort out a broken smart meter connection.... That may be the longest wait we have seen on the forum.... 

In update - last month after an hour on the phone (two hang ups and webchat being ended abruptly by Ovo)

Ovo agreed to replace the smart meter and arranged a date for the 14th June. 

Having no confirmation I asked them in chat about this and their colleague made a mistake and didn’t book it correctly. 

After back and forwards explaining the same issues again and how it was agreed by their colleague / Mgr a replacement was required.. it’s not happening as I’m told my meter has never lost communication. 

Explaining the smart readings appear and update retrospectively after months of nothing, my only option was to ask they note the issue on my account and stop taking/submitting incorrectly displayed readings. 
 

When I get the please submit your readings I’ll refer them to the account note and that my meter doesn’t lose connection. 
 

I’ll also be looking at other providers as this whole experience had been dreadful from a support perspective. 
 

I’m asking some very clever smart meter experts about this, @BGLUK. I’ll be back here later this week. 

I've been living in a studio flat since October 2023 and there have been a mixture of manual readings by me and automatic readings from the meter. I'm concerned that the readings have increased every single time, yet I'm not using more and more electricity every month. Lately I haven't been putting the heating on so my readings should be lower. I'm wondering if there is a fault with the meter. I also don't have an IHD, the one that was here when I moved in isn't linked to the meter, it's an SSEN one so I'm assuming it was for an older meter, as it doesn't connect when turned on. Wondering if anyone else has had the same issue and how to resolve it.

While it’s not impossible, it’s very unlikely that the meter is faulty. Meters are precision instruments manufactured to very high tolerances, and they are certified to be accurate.

When you say ‘the readings have increased every single time’, that’s what they’re supposed to do! The meter counts the number of kWh passing through it, so of course its reading increases every time you use electricity or gas.

Perhaps you’re referring to the usage (the amount of energy you use in a particular period) or to the cost of the energy you’re using. If you showed us some figures illustrating what you’re referring to, we might be better able to help. For example, a screenshot of your meter readings history from Meter readings - OVO Energy would be a good start. 

 If you could post a photo of your meter(s) in your reply, that would help, too.

Are you sure you have a Smart Meter? SSEN isn’t an Energy Supplier and they don’t deploy Smart Meters if memory serves.

The emergency fix options that DNOs have also don’t generally involve replacing the meter either. I know what the options are, but the DNOs have asked me to keep that information confidential.

Hi @Jojo9072, 

I’m sorry to hear this.

I can see some good points have already been made by our volunteers. If you’re able to provide a bit more information and some pictures of your meter set up we can try to give as much help as possible. 

We’re unable to access your account here so it may be worth reaching out to our Support Team who would be able to look into your account in more detail and possibly also order an IHD for you.

This article may also help: