Live Billing dead for everyone, or just me?

Is no-one else seeing unusual delays in retrieving meter data?

This is becoming worrying. I’m not bothered about the half-hourly usage data arriving later than expected, because third-party services like n3rgy and Bright can still retrieve them for me more-or-less on demand. But my latest meter readings are now 60 hours old, and I’m concerned that something’s gone wrong unless this is a general malaise affecting other customers too. Only the supplier is able to request readings.

Would anyone care to check their reading history and see how recent the latest is? 

Hey ​@Firedog, 

I haven't heard of any delays, and ​@Ben_OVO checked his and didn't find any issues. If you're still having trouble by the end of the day, please contact the Support Team, and they can try to pull the data manually for you.

Please keep us updated on your progress.

Does this mean that his readings are turning up on time (i.e. in the morning of the day they were logged in the meter) or at least within 24 hours?

This is what I’m seeing just now (2025-03-19T13:00:00):
  

 
The latest entries are from midnight  Sunday-Monday, so more than two days out of date. I know Support can grab an instantaneous reading, but I’m only interested in the midnight snapshots - the ones used for billing. They’re also used for the Direct Debit calculation* … It’s not that the data aren’t there, it’s just that OVO aren’t requesting them in a timely manner. 
 

[* If the balance is days out of date, the calculated DD will be too low.]

Hi Noel ​@Firedog, as at 1700 hours today (19th March) my “Energy Use Summary” table option on my OVO account “Usage” page shows data for the 18th, and back through March.  However, I did notice that at 1700 hours today when I went into the “View Reading History” page, which is the page you’re referring to in your post, it was indeed a day more up to date, as it already includes today, the 19th. Not sure what time of day the data appeared, though. 
 

Never previously noticed the different timings between the Summary page and the History page.
 

Hope you get it sorted OK, atb, Walt

EDIT Of course I’ve only just clicked that the Usage data (for billing calculations) would always necessarily have to be a day behind the Reading….doh!!  Anyway, it seems to be all working OK at my end, hope you get it sorted soon, regards.

Firedog.

I am getting the same as you.

Readings in website are not updating.

There is definitely something odd happening with the readings.

These were just taken from my online account at 18:15 on 19 March, I have half-hourly for gas an the 18th, but nothing for electricity.

Edit - checking further and going to the meter readings there is a smart reading showing for electricity for the 18th.
There is also a smart reading showing for the 19th - which seems somewhat strange as the 19th hasn’t ended yet? (The gas is also showing a smart reading for the 19th)

No, that’s the way it should be. The reading snapshot is taken precisely at midnight*, and the time stamp for the latest is 2025-03-19T00:00:00 - midnight between 18th and 19th. You’ll see a confusing difference between the latest date on the reading history page and on the current billing page, too. The latest reading is dated yesterday, to indicate that that day’s usage is included. They’re both right, because midnight belongs to both days. 
  

*   This is how it’s worded in the manual for my electricity meter:

Nope, my current billing page has the latest meter readings as the 18th not the 19th - and I’m pretty sure that the meter readings page is normally the same with the previous days date being the last one shown.

Anyway the reason I came back is to report that at about 20:30 my half-hourly electricity readings for the 18th turned up at last.

Progress, albeit a bit bumpy: some hours after posting that, I looked again and saw that the readings for today 19 March had turned up, so billing and the balance were again live and accurate. There was no sign of yesterday’s readings, though. I didn’t ask anyone to intervene, so I’m assuming the billing people ran some sort of mopping up operation: scroll forward another couple of hours and the readings for 18 March appeared as well. There are still no usage data for yesterday, though. 

I’ll keep an eagle eye on what happens over the next few days. The period between 29 March and 1 April will be particularly interesting, with changes to the time zone for everyone and to the tariff for many. Some customers may consider submitting a manual reading in the morning of 1 April just to circumvent the possibility of the old ‘no reading on the first day of the quarter’ syndrome cropping up again, if these delays haven’t been totally eliminated by then. 

​@kenko92 Any joy for you?

Interesting, compare the electricity meter reading in my screenshot in the post above this with the one previous.

3095.564 kWh on the 19th for the meter readings page - but:
3095.564 kWh on the 18th for the current billing page.

Don’t you just love such consistency on a website?

Crossed in the post ⚔️

It’s always (since the advent of Orion) been the way I described and your screenshots show: the latest figure on the reading history page is (normally) dated today, while the same figure on the billing page is dated yesterday. I commented on it years ago, but I’m blowed if I can find the reference. 

More overtime for the poor PM people again …
  

I’m going to try and ignore the end of March completely,

The change to BST and a change of tariff within days, I predict quite a bit of confusion.

(Avoiding that kind of thing being another good reason to fix your tariff perhaps?)

 I’m not at all convinced that the PM team don’t request their own set of figures from DCC,  separately of the billing team. (In fact I’ve just asked the OVO staff about that backstage).

DCC doesn’t keep any data. They just provide a secure channel for users (e.g. suppliers) to access smart meters. Any authorized user requesting, say, half-hourly usage data for a specific period from a specific meter will get exactly the same data. 

Morning ​@Firedog,

I was just catching up on the thread and seen that you said that the data’s pulled through. Let me know if you see any other discrepancies with it over the next few days but hopefully it was just a one off blip. 

Morning, Chris.
    

… for certain vales of ‘the data’! Yes, the meter readings turned up, one set 17 hours after their time stamp, the other 44 hours. Today’s haven’t arrived yet, but I’m now used to waiting until the evening. I still haven’t seen any half-hourly usage data since 17 March. As they say around here, summat’s up!

Just to note the my half hourly usage data for yesterday the 19th, both electricity and gas, was on the OVO portal when I first checked at just after 8 this morning.

Lucky you!

Now at 19:30 on 20 March, my half-hourly usage data for 18 and 19 March have turned up, but no sign yet of last night’s meter readings. The account balance hasn’t changed in 24 hours, so it’s still based on 18 days’ consumption and 19 days standing charge. Live billing it’s not.

PS Before submitting this, I just checked yet again. Last night’s meter readings are now in place, but billing isn’t reflecting them yet … 

I think I’ll pause posting until there’s some major change one way or the other. 

Hey ​@Firedog, 

I'm glad to see your usage data has appeared, even if it's a bit delayed. I recommend waiting a few more days; if you're still experiencing problems, please contact our Support Team. They can submit a case to our billing teams to investigate the delay.

I did ask ​@Ben_OVO to check his and found similar results so it could just be a delay in the information being available. 

Thanks, Chris.
 

It’s really not that important to me, but I was more interested in whether what seemed to be unprecedented delays in the retrieval of both usage data and meter readings was just another quirk of my blighted account, or whether i was seeing symptoms of a more general malaise.

I can understand that the shift to MHHS might cause some disruption until it all settles down, but again I don’t see why this should affect the retrieval of meter readings.