Hi ​@Retroanaconda ,

That’s… Kinda the thing about estimated readings. There’ll pretty much always be a 100% Chance that they’ll be totally wrong and a 99% chance they’re over-estimated to some extent.

The only long-term fix is to get your Smart Meter communicating again - try https://smart-meter-help.ovoenergy.com for that. For the short-term, try submitting readings on a weekly basis so that the system gets more data - this will help to slowly make estimates a bit more realistic, but no promises.

Thanks, but there is no way to get the smart meter working until they roll out 4G comms hubs up here.

I do weekly readings, so will persist with that for now. 

These whacky estimates may result from an inaccurate figure for your Future Annual Consumption (FAC), which you can find on your Plan page. Sadly, the mechanism for calculating this number is less than ideal. It should be based on consumption for the previous twelve months, but any major change - like having a smart meter exchange - will result in setting the FAC to an ‘industry standard’ supposedly matched to your location and household. In practice, this matching doesn’t seem to happen. Your FAC should get closer to your actual usage as time goes by, but I know from bitter experience that it can take a whole year, even though my new meter was successfully sending readings and usage data every day.

You should be able to have your Direct Debit reduced a bit if you explain to Support why it’s too high and have them look at the evidence.

Yes, luckily the direct debit has started to come down again from a point where I was paying nearly three times the actual monthly bill.

I think the previous owners of the property had a huge consumption which won’t be helping things.

Yes, but as I wrote, “any major change - like having a smart meter exchange - will result in setting the FAC to an ‘industry standard’ supposedly matched to your location and household.” Any historical data, whether yours or previous occupants’, is ignored, so you were presumably put on a ‘typical’ FAC. Is yours wildly different from your consumption over the last 12 months?  

This article is quite a good guide, although it doesn’t cover the meter exchange scenario I’ve mentioned here: Estimated Annual Consumption (EAC) - What this means and how it affects your OVO Energy account? | The OVO Forum

The FAC should be your previous year’s usage, but if that’s no longer available, the EAC will be used instead, modified by your actual usage from time to time. The EAC should also reduce as readings are submitted, so it shouldn’t take a whole year for the FAC to come down to a realistic figure. Keep sending those weekly readings to help the process along!

Yes as previously said it is wildly different from my actual consumption. At the start of the contract the daily estimates were more than three times my actual usage.

If that is typical for a modern 4-bedroom house then it’s no wonder peoples electricity bills are so high.

When I moved in (before the meter exchange) I got an invitation letter from the previous supplier, their price estimate was based upon an annual consumption of 6,994 kWh - I’ll be lucky if I use 2,000 kWh in a year. That is what makes me think it’s based on the property history. Previous owners had two kids and a hot tub so must have been paying a fortune.

Sorry, I didn’t see that you’d mentioned the FAC being too high anywhere ...