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Hi folks,

 

I am trying to have a redundant THTC meter removed from my house and OVO seem to be refusing to do this. Can anyone help explain what I should do? Some background info below:

 

We moved to a property in March last year in the west of Scotland. The property has two meters with a THTC setup running storage heaters. We are getting the storage heaters removed in February and an air source heat pump installed. 

 

Once this work has been carried out there will be nothing running from the RadioTelemeter (THTC) meter.

 

I have contacted OVO by phone yesterday to request that this meter be removed once it is no longer in use. The person I spoke with said that OVO would not do this because doing so would stop the other (ordinary) meter working. They weren’t able to explain why this would be the case. After some time on the phone I was told that if I emailed OVO with evidence that the THTC meter would not powering anything then they could arrange for it to be removed. This seemed like a positive outcome although it was not clear why we were initially told in the call that removal wasn’t possible.

 

I sent an email last night attaching the quotes from our electrician and heating engineer for removal of storage heaters and replacement with heat pump etc. I got a positive response this morning:

I am Stephen from account management at OVO energy after reading your email we can go ahead and do that for you but i am going to give you extra information so to proceed with this job there is a charge due to the nature of it I would like to clarify that your okay with that and if you are i can go ahead and get you a price and and book the job for you.

 

Again this seemed positive and I asked Stephen to go ahead and give us a cost. I then had response email from Nahim:

Apologies for the confusion form what Stephan said but as of right now, appointments for removing THTC meters aren't available. We appreciate you gave us confirmation the property's heating system is no longer dependant.

However we are working on a new meter type that'll basically replace the current two meters and you'll get one meter. The meter will reveal at Spring and you'll get an email when your free meter upgrade is ready

 

As far as I understand it the ‘new meter type’ mentioned has been in development for years and has been repeatedly delayed. I have little to no confidence that it will arrive in spring as promised above. It isn’t clear why we should be expected to wait for this.

 

Ontop of that our experience from speaking to neighbours and friends locally is that smart meters are useless in this (rural) area since they are not able to connect to a radio mast for communication. Any smart meters fitted simply operate as ‘dumb’ meters in this area.

 

Can anyone give us some hope that it is possible to get the redundant THTC meter removed as we have requested? Is there any technical reason why this wouldn’t be possible?

 

Failing that at least any good reason why we should have to wait for the new meter to be developed and rolled out? It seems in this instance that whilst waiting we’d have headaches if we wanted to switch supplier etc because we’d have a strange setup with a redundant meter and two MPAN numbers associated with the property. This could go on indefinitely since the new meters are not yet launched.

 

Below is a photograph of our current setup incase this is useful:

 

 

We’d really appreciate any help on this!

 

Thanks

 

 

 

Hi @Blastoise186 

Can I ask if you’re formally representing OVO on this forum? Or are you simply a well-informed forum member?
Thought I’d better check before quoting your advice.

🙂

Hiya! Sure thing, I can answer that for you.

I’m considered to be a Forum Volunteer here. All views and advice I give are my own personal answers. However, some of my answers may be supercharged from information OVO and/or an industry contact gives me directly - I usually tell folks when that’s the case.

As for quoting me, you’re more than welcome to do so. All I ask is that you credit me and link back to the original source.

Thanks @Blastoise186 
You’re advice is very welcome.

I am presently pulling my teeth out trying to get ANY meaningful response from OVO.

It’s been ~6 weeks since I first posed the question whereby if I don’t care about storage heaters, immersion heaters, cheap overnight tariffs, etc can I get a Smart Meter.

I wouldn’t have thought it was such a difficult question, but it seems to be beyond OVO’s abilities to answer.

However, the fight continues (now with my local MSP and the Minister for Net Zero being updated on “progress”).

And there you go… was just on Web Chat with the “Support Team” and they sent me the usual message that “We can’t update a THTC mater to a Smart Meter at the moment” and then killed the Chat - completely disregarding the fact I have mentioned on multiple occasions that I don’t want my THTC meter upgraded to a Smart THTC meter - I want to go to a Single Tariff with a Single Meter.

The incompetence and wilful negligence is truly world class.

The best thing to do is migrate to a THTC capable Smart Meter and then switch to single-rate afterwards. It’d be the least messy option in terms of wiring and would retain the drop-in replacement element.

Sadly, at the moment (*and for the foreseeable future), there is no such thing as a “THTC capable Smart Meter”

Sadly, at the moment (*and for the foreseeable future), there is no such thing as a “THTC capable Smart Meter”

It is coming soon however. OVO has been keeping me updated with the occasional update whenever something interesting has happened. However, I can’t always talk about them publicly.

The current plan is to get them out before the RTS Shutdown date. I’ll reveal more when I’m able to.

You’ll have to excuse my cynicism, but I was told in August 2022  (a year and a half ago) that they were “imminent”, so not holding my breath.

… and today, I’ve just been told that to simply replace my 2 meters with a single Smart Meter and to move to a non-THTC tariff would happen “hopefully this year”.


 

The Electric Heating Team will reach out when the time is right.

In the meantime, I’ll just carry on keeping busy with waiting and hoping.

Just joined this forum and read the posts. My new neighbours have bought the old Croft next door. Apparently Octopus are arriving tomorrow to install a new smart meter. Heating was previously THTC storage heaters, these were removed by new owners. It will be interesting to see if they can proceed! 
I also have THTC storage heaters and will follow this thread for updates. 

Octopus doesn’t support THTC very well - be prepared for a possible job abort.

They’re installing underfloor heating. No radiators and wood burning stove 

 

I’ve just received this reply today. 

It’s probably pointed back to one of the guides I’ve written, or one that a Forum Moderator wrote. Those guides are basically the best information currently available.

Just joined this forum and read the posts. My new neighbours have bought the old Croft next door. Apparently Octopus are arriving tomorrow to install a new smart meter. Heating was previously THTC storage heaters, these were removed by new owners. It will be interesting to see if they can proceed! 
I also have THTC storage heaters and will follow this thread for updates. 

Would be very interested to hear how they get on!!!

I would as well - I want to see the end of the legacy THTC Meters. But realistically, only OVO and Scottish Power are confirmed to have the ability to do anything with them - other suppliers might not.

Yes, I’m extremely interested in what Octopus will do tomorrow! New owners have informed them that the storage heaters are all in the local skip and the meter isn’t being used. 

So it’s SSEN that have turned up this morning to move cables. Apparently they were difficult to make any arrangements with to coordinate with Octopus. 
Appointment with Octopus to install new meter is in another few weeks. 

I thought that might happen...

I hope they manage to have it sorted. Meanwhile I’m still stuck on THTC with OVO on an expensive tariff. I have reduced the hot water thermostat to a whiff of heat, turned off storage heaters when possible and increased the use of log for my wood burner! Being a WASPI woman doesn’t help, there are many other women like me out there! Seems like the ombudsman is going to receive many more complaints!

The Energy Ombudsman can’t speed up the replacement of these meters. TBH all that’d do is just jam up their staff and slow down the case handling for everyone else.

So what can we do?

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