Identifying Smart Meter Issues on your online account or OVO app

Hey there @Haz !

That’s a little strange, but I have a few possible theories that could help to figure this one out. I’ll need to try and narrow them down a bit to eliminate a few of them though. As a forum volunteer, I can’t access your account but I can still give general advice that can help you out.

Could you post some photos of your meters and In-Home Display (if you have one) in your next reply please? If you don’t mind sharing who your previous supplier was, that will also be helpful too. I can use these to give me a few clues.

Thanks!

No worries, thanks for the photos!

I have some slightly bad news for you I’m afraid. But first, here’s a quick explainer as to part of the problem

You have the SMETS1 version of the L+G E470 electric meter installed by British Gas and also the same for the L+G G370 gas meter. They’re almost certainly still running on the proprietary Centrica WAN that only British Gas can access. As such, it won’t be possible for OVO to pair up an IHD right now as these meters probably aren’t communicating with OVO yet. They will eventually work with OVO once migrated to DCC, but it’ll probably take a while - you’ll be notified by OVO once there’s more progress on this. There’s got more details below.

The good news is that once OVO is able to connect to your meters, you should start to get proper smart meter readings and usage data through. This will also explain the discrepancies right now. OVO’s billing platform is currently estimating your usage - you’ll need to submit manual readings for the time being which will help to smooth this out.

I’ve also spotted a possible safety issue with your electric meter. It appears that some of the anti-tamper security seals are missing on your main service fuse below the meter - PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH ANY OF THIS otherwise you will risk a very nasty electric shock. Your local Distribution Network Operator will be happy to resolve that for you free of charge however, so I strongly recommend you give them a call as soon as possible. They’ll most likely arrange to visit within 48 hours after that. Here’s the full list and the areas they cover - you’ll want to speak to the one that covers your area.

I hope this helps. Feel free to reply back if you still need a hand with this issue - I’m subscribed to this thread and will be notified if you reply. If you need any help with anything else though, we’ll be happy to help you out on the forum anytime. :)

Great to see our resident Landis+Gyr expert, @Blastoise186 giving you some tip-top advice here, @Haz.

If you’re seeing estimated readings on the monthly summaries it does sound like we’re not currently in communication with the meters (the info shown on the usage pages is likely based on estimates too). In this case it’s worth reading the meter manually and submitting these readings via the ‘meter readings’ of your online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS) a few days before your monthly summary is issued to make sure your charges are up to date, before your meters get ‘enrolled and adopted’. We’ve got a great guide to taking a manual reading here:

 

Hope this helps - Keep us posted with how you get on! 

Sorry this one slipped through the net yesterday, @Jeffus.

Looks like we could be seeing some intermittent communication issues with the midnight meter readings received from your smart meters (side note - these are slightly different to the half-hourly usage data which we might still be getting for the most part). As we use the meter readings to calculate your charges this explains why you’ve noticed that your live billing has been paused for these days. We’d always recommend heading to the ‘meter readings’ page of your OVO app (download for Android or iOS) which should show the meter readings we’ve received from your meters over the past month.

Hopefully the signal will recover itself but if the meter readings are missed for more than 5 days you might want to take a look at our guide  above which helps you identify and investigate ongoing smart meter communication issues on your online account.
 

Keep us updated - it’s really helpful to others who might be seeing the same missing usage data issues.

Sorry to hear that you’ve been struggling to see your Smart meter usage data when logging in to your online account, @chrispr.

As you mention some smart readings have been received, I’m wondering whether there might be some intermittent communication issues with your electricity smart meter. If you haven’t already I’d really recommend checking out the guide above.

Have you managed to take a manual reading from the electricity meter before? If not we may be able to help advise how to access this reading so you can make sure your energy charges are correct and up-to date.

I’ve double-checked and whilst ordinarily we’d be able to get an In-Home Display (IHD) sent out for you in a few weeks, currently our stock of replacement devices is affected by supply chain issues. We should still be able to get a device requested for you and can send this out as soon as we get the devices back in stock.

Even without an IHD, you should be able to check your usage costs on the ‘usage’ pages of your online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS) so I’d recommend completing a smart meter health check and forwarding the results to our Support Team, if you do notice the communication issues are ongoing. We’ve got a guide to this smart meter health check for each meter type below:

 

I’m really hoping this information helps to ease your concerns over receiving an unexpected large bill. Do let us know if you need any more help diagnosing what’s up with that smart meter. 

You’re right in thinking that those flashing sequences don’t necessarily indicate an issue, @chrispr - however if you’ve noticed any estimated readings appearing on your monthly summary, it could be an intermittent issue. The best place to check this would be heading over to the ‘Meter readings’ page of the OVO app (download for Android or iOS) which will show  a history of all the readings we’ve received from both meter over the past month (any missing dates here means we may have lost communication on this date).

Forwarding the full Smart Meter Health Check results on to our Support Team is the best next step. Either via email (usual response time around 5 days) or via our Live Chat which you can access by clicking ‘Message Us’ on this page.

Hope this helps get to the bottom of things. 

Hi @Juli ,

Unfortunately, it looks like your comment got corrupted on save somehow. If you still need help, please could you post your comment again in this thread.

Thanks!

Hi @Philip93 and welcome to the OVO online community,

Great to hear about your new smart meters. As you mention you’re installation only happened in the last month, it sounds like things might still be in the process of getting fully set-up. As there’s quite a bit going on behind the scenes (check out this user-guide for more details) we’d recommend waiting at least 6 weeks, to see if the communication issues resolve themselves.

If you’re logging to your online account at this point and things still seem amiss, take a look at the guide at the top for the next trouble-shooting steps.

Once things are fully up and running you’ll be able to view your usage here too, which might be helpful if you’re not able to use an In-Home Display given your flats distance from the meter.

Hope this helps. 

Hi @garystokey and welcome back to the OVO online community,

Sorry to hear there’s some communication difficulties with your smart meters at the moment. In case it helps we’ve got a guide to help diagnose these at the top.

Usually we’d expect your OVO app to accept manual meter readings if we haven’t received an automatic reading in the past 5 days, so I’m wondering whether this might be a technical glitch. Have you tried logging in to the browser version of your online account to see if the readings can be entered here?

I dont use the app i had to get rid of it some months ago it kept telling me its time to go we are updating the app we use the web version?

That message usually comes up when your account is about to be migrated to the new billing platform, after which you’re able to continue using the app in “new mode”. From your screenshot, that process might have failed to run or not taken place.

thanks for the replies will will call ovo and see if it can be changed to send every 30 mins

still cannot get the app to work i have downloaded the latest app this evening to my iphone  but it still says use the web version

So once again the usage for gas not available on the app.  IHD is showing an amount but I suspect it is not sending readings as been sitting at that amount for a day or two.  Again!  Getting really fed up with this.  Works for a week or two and goes down again.  Electricity is fine because display is only about a foot away.  Gas meter however, is outside on a side wall.