Just to close out my contributions to this post. I had my appt this week to remove my THTC and RTS kit and to fit a new smart meter. The OVO contract metering engineer turned up as planned and was all done, including successful commissioning, in about 2 hours, very knowledgeable and helpful chap.

About 3 weeks ago we tore out the storage heaters and fitted an air to air heat pump. We've now had the 3 meter 2 mpan system and the RTS kit removed and we have a new smart meter, just waiting for the OVO system to update so we can select a tariff that works best for us. Will also keep chasing OVO too ensure the UK database is updated should we wish to consider other suppliers in the future. 

Also very impressed with the air to air heat pump heating, works very well, very controllable and cheap to keep the house warm, a major leap forward from storage heating.

Nice one! Thanks for letting us know.

Just so you know, please allow OVO a few weeks to sort things out - six weeks is about average for this stuff. :)

Hey @Infiltrator,

Happy to hear everything went smoothly for you! 

Congratulations on your new heat pump! I’ve added a badge to your profile to show you’re part of our heat pump community. How’re you finding the heat pump compared to your storage heaters? 

Heat pump (air 2 air) means almost instant heat when you want it, ran it for 2.5 hours last night, it's a small 2 bed semi detached, room temp was 17 Deg C, quickly achieved the target 21 Deg C, 3 wall mounted units, 2 x 2kw, 1 x 2.5kw, total elec used was 1.5kwh and the whole house was warm, very impressed.

The unit can be operated remotely using WiFi which is a real bonus for us as we're not at the house the whole time. Previously we just had to guess the storage input setting and it was always on whether it was needed or not! 

Installed cost was comparable to fitting new quantum storage heaters but I'd still rather have a heating system with real time control and monitoring - plus the fact that the heat pump uses a third of the energy that a direct electric heater uses

It would be great to see a photo of one of your a2a units @Infiltrator . What does it look like from outside ? Do they just have an inlet and an outlet grille on your exterior wall or is there more to it than that ?

I'll post photos tomorrow, on a ferry just now and the WiFi is pretty slow. The heat pump is outside, all that comes through the exterior wall is 12mm pipework that carries the refrigerant from the exterior unit to the wall mounted indoor units.

Hey @Infiltrator,

It sounds like the changes have made a huge impact on efficiency and quality of life. Did you do a lot of research when comparing installation vs. operation costs? You could even write and publish it as your own post if you like so you can share your journey from THTC to heat pump. I’m sure a lot of people on THTC who are having their meters changed may be interested to hear your story.

As @juliamc said if you could post some photos that would be amazing! 

Strangely I didn't take photos, odd as I've taken loads in the last few weeks! Anyhow the top photo of the outdoor unit is our unit but I've captured the photo from the installers Facebook page, the bottom picture of the wall mounted internal is from the installers Facebook page as well but it's not one of ours but we have 3 identical ones. 

The trunking is a bit misleading as each unit only needs a hole in the external wall to fit 2 x 12mm pipes (insulated) for the refrigerant flow and return plus power supply. On the photo of our external unit you can see the trunking leads to 2 external wall holes as we were able to feed 2 of the internal units through one hole, plus the power supply from the consumer unit to the external heat pump. Hope that helps.

That’s very interesting ! Much like mine on the outside; mine’s a split system with radiators, so I also have refrigerant piped from the outdoor unit. That means it’s never going to freeze (unless the Earth moves out of the suns orbit..!). Mine has an indoor unit with a heat exchanger to heat and pump water around the radiators. Yours looks much simpler  

Currently the BUS grant isn’t available for air to air heat pumps (unless that’s changed recently) but of course you were replacing an electrical heating system and BUS is for replacing gas.

Hi just got my new smart meter installed on 4th September. THTC to economy 10 They have made a complete mess of the installation. I only have one tariff rate now and according to customer services they can't get any readings from my meter and they don't know how to fix it. Have to book another appointment for another engineer to come out and see if it's a meter fault or if it's been wired properly. Scary stuff from ovo. Now I'm paying more for power than before. Incompantance springs to mind.

Hi @Noz1954,

I’m sorry to hear this. 

It may be worth raising this as a complaint if you haven’t done so already.

Hopefully this will be resolved at the next meter appointment. Please keep us updated with how you get on.

Last week I just had my old storage heaters ripped out and replaced with a shiny new heat pump, radiators and hot water tank.  And today an OVO engineer removed the redundant THTC meter and installed a new smart meter which to my surprise is communicating with the WAN just fine.

So, given I am not 100% off THTC, how long will it take for my account to update so that my address doesn’t show up as “complex meter” so I can start looking into comparing tariffs and potentially changing providers?  Should this just happen automagically or am I gong to have to go down the rabbit hole of calling support?

Hiya!

I’d say roughly six weeks to allow the entire industry to catch up with the Meter Exchange.

That coincides with the end of my fixed rate plan so that’s good.  I’ll try and be patient

I now have the date for my smart meter install - 10th October.  Phone call with Tina was thorough and she talked me through the options available to me with E7, E9 and E10 being offered. I have agreed to E10 but I will be at cost disadvantage for my Quantum panel heaters where with THTC at present you get 24 hours at the cheap rate but my bedroom heaters dont fit in with the E10 cheap rates in the morning so this will be more expensive. On the plus side all my electricity usage during the reduced rate times will be at the cheaper rate so may be a case of swings and roundabouts. Tina did say that I could come back after a few months usage and if things were not working out for me cost wise, I should get back to OVO and discuss an alternative.  She was very professional and for the first time I felt as though I was speaking to someone who knew what they were talking about.
I talked to a neighbour of mine who has an identical system to mine and OVO installed his smartmeter last week.  The engineer came from SW England (I live in Aberdeenshire) and was up for a couple of weeks. I wanted to see how the engineer had installed the meter and the tails to the special switch disconnector for THTC systems in our estate (the disconnector has inputs for storeage, domestic, 24hour heat and water) and I noted that the new wiring from the meter exactly mimics our present setup so I was very happy that nothing required changing from the switch disconnector to our 2 consumer units.  So far so good. Hope I can get the same engineer.

Hey @metalsman, 

Glad to hear that you’ve got a date in for your install! I know the teams been working really hard to make this happen and we’ve had some challenges along the way. I know this has been a hot topic on our Forum for a while now and I’m really happy to see some progress for our RTS/THTC customers. Thanks for sharing an update and the detail around your journey 

I know our engineers are travelling the length of the country to support this so you may find you’re visited by someone new to the area 

Funny enough, I was talking to an engineer in person the other day (crazy right?!). He mentioned that the plan seems to be to get as many engineers as possible trained up for THTC so hopefully that’s already cooking in the background. :)

Hi just an update, today another OVO engineer came but could not fix the problem.

He told me the reason he can’t fix it but I have to get back in touch with customer services to inform them what they have to do. 
OVO should have put me on Economy 10 contract prior to smart meter fitting, and the first engineer commissioned the meter with 1 rate.

This was escalated to the Resolution team on the 5th Sept and I still stuck with Simpler Energy tariff on 1 rate with 3 storage heaters. 
They are now looking to see what can be done to fix this. 
Don’t trust anything OVO are telling me now. 

I have to admit - just got my email inviting me to change to smart from THTC. 

E10 is probably the way i will go as I know that this works with quantums (although i will now have to programme the heaters rather then allow it to happen through the switched off peak circuit. 

However my concern is what will be lost and not everyone will have storage heating that can be controlled like the quantums can be.

As others have said, the bedroom heaters (currently my home office) on THTC are 24 hours off peak.  Currently I only heat the room that i use as my home office when i’m working in it - i never heat bedrooms overnight as it means i cannot sleep. so additional costs as most of my working day is outhwith the E10 times.

Also will lose the 24 hour off peak on the shower, feature fire and boost on the hot water.  I don't use a great deal of hot water and having the tank automatically heat up during off peak times was a total waste of money (due to having the electric shower and i can use a kettle full of water for dishes).

However the tank was needed at some points.  So this is likely to be full price rather than off peaks rates.  Unless I’m really savvy and try to use things during the whole house off peak time.  However life does not dictate when that may be.

I also lose 2 hours worth of off peak supply in winter as THTC gave a total of 12 hours during the winter.  Now this shouldn’t be a huge issue with quantums as they shoudl in theory fully charge off of 7 hours off peak but not everyone with THTC will have quantum heaters.

I’m annoyed at this as SSE / OVO have had years to come up with a THTC solution and I’m sure that there was a request from Ofgem to ensure that all tariff types could be covered by smart.  We were also told in this forum that a THTC type meter was being trialled - i see nothing has come from this?

However with a 25 year old (probably older) meter, i feel like I am being backed into a corner to take something that could ultimately be more work and less benefit.

We will see how this works but ultimately whilst benefitting ovo (smart is more use to suppliers i feel than consumers - purchasing power etc) I still feel that consumers are being disadvantaged and short changed,

Also still don't know if I will need any internal alterations to electrics in the property which I feel that suppliers should bear some of the brunt off as this is being enforced through the RTS switch off.  

If it were a possibility to put in a manual timeswitch and replace with a 2 rate meter then I would potentially keep the benefits and have less hassle?

You’ll get stuck in 10,000 years worth of red tape if you try to use your own Meter and/or Timeswitch. It almost never happens on Domestic supplies because the paperwork is too much of a headache and we don’t recommend trying it. And there’s a 99% chance it wouldn’t let you keep THTC anyway if we’re being brutally honest - THTC is impossible to support without the RTS Service as it cannot possibly run with static time switches.

The meter and timeswitch are property of the Supplier - everything beyond that is your responsibility, so if you need to re-wire the house, you’ll need to pay an electrician to do that. OVO will cover the costs of re-wiring the meter itself though, which does resolve everything you’re asking about in 99.9999% of cases. This would also let the new meter control your storage heaters regardless of what you’ve got.

Unlike THTC, E7 and E10 let you use ANYTHING and everything you want at the cheap rate during Off-Peak hours, not just certain stuff. It may work out better than THTC if you play the game the right way.

The decision to terminate support for THTC - and tons of other exotic tariffs - was not one OVO made by itself. This is/was an industrywide decision with a lot of hands in the pie. OVO is merely one piece of the puzzle. THTC Support will only continue on Smart Meters in very specific parts of the UK - and only if it’s mandated to do so. For everyone else, you’ll be kicked off of THTC permanently as part of the migration and there’s no going back.

The THTC Smart Meters being tested by OVO are regular Smart Meters like any other. They’re just running special configs tuned for THTC and that’s about it really.

Its almost 4 weeks since my smart meter was installed and the RTS kit and THTC meters were removed and a new smart meter installed - the meter config data with OVO has just updated and I’m now on the smarter single tariff. I’m happy to stick with OVO till we get some experience with the air to air heating, but I checked with USwitch and they still think the property has multiple meters so they can’t do a supplier tariff compare yet, hopefully this’ll be sorted shortly. 

HI @Infiltrator,

I’m glad to hear this. Thanks for giving us an update on this.

It can take around 6 week after a new meter is installed for all systems to be updated. This may be why you’re still seeing that you have multiple meters on Uswitch. Hopefully this will be updated soon.

I never mentioned using my own meter or time switch. However I find it impossible to believe that a non rts timeswitch is impossible. Having spoken to engineers who are fully competent around THTC they says it is indeed possible. 
 

also knowing people in the industry, the main problem with THTC is getting things connected to the DCC rather than anything else. 
 

The point still remains is that I shouldn’t have to play the game with a meter.  Yea the whole house going off peak will be a benefit for those times but im still to be convinced that it will benefit me. 
 

We will see. 
 

the point still remains is that SSE and OVO both had years to come up with a solution that meant people did not lose out. I still firmly believe that people will lose out. People who need 24 hour heat as an example. Especially if they are ill, no longer have access to that in bedrooms. If a lot of hot water is required, then anytime off peak boosts to hot water are gone. People with medical issues who need regular showers won’t be able to wait until off peak times. 

The point I’m making is that it’s NOT just OVO that had to develop solutions - the entire industry did. I don’t see this as “playing games with meters” - it’s more just a case of getting rid of legacy stuff. Whether you use your own meter or not, the rules are clear - you cannot configure it for THTC if your tariff is not THTC. There’s no way OVO - or indeed any supplier - would sign that off. But I will repeat my advice once again - it is almost never worth trying to use your own meter on a Domestic supply unless you REALLY want to deal with 50,000 years of red tape…

There’s now also a 0% chance you’d convince any supplier to install a manual timeswitch now either...

I’m also going to remind you that other suppliers have THTC customers on their books - they too have had to figure this out. This is not a simple Dump N Go solution - it really does take time to do Research and Development.

There are ways to cut your bills too regardless of tariff. One would assume you’ve heard of them by now? After all, spending time with your pets and putting on an extra jumper seem like good options… In actual fact, the Fire Service in some areas even has Winter Warmer packs these days that they give out for FREE to those who need them - I know of at least one FRS that does that but I suspect others do too. Just ask for a Home Fire Safety Visit during the winter months and they’ll probably have some in the vehicle.

At the end of the day, RTS is shutting down whether you want it to or not. You have two choices - upgrade to Smart Meters or not upgrade and take the risk your heating/hot water potentially completely fails. It’s up to you, but we make zero promises about what’d happen if you choose the latter - because no-one knows for sure. Likewise, we will not be able to assist you via the Forum post-shutdown if you choose not to upgrade, because we’d have no options other than to tell you to just upgrade the meters at that point. I’m sorry, but once the BBC pulls the plug, that’s it - there’s nothing more we can do here.

Ultimately, at the end of the day if you have a problem with this, take it up with OVO, not me: https://ovoenergy.com/feedback .

That is very possible, but I’d like to know what evidence you have. It would be helpful, for example, to see a recent electricity bill showing your usage and its resulting charges. If you had the bill for the same period last year for comparison, we could see what your annual consumption is at the various rates. Only then would we be able to quantify the degree of potential ‘losing out’ that you believe you’d suffer.

Have you been told what the E10 offpeak hours will be, if you’re not able to make use of the THTC tariff? 

There are so many different tariffs apparently available to customers in the Scottish Hydro region (Region 17) that it’s a real jungle. Which ones are available to an individual customer depends on several factors which I’m quite unable to fathom. Seeing a recent bill will at least tell us which tariff you’re currently enjoying (or being subjected to, depending on your POV!).

Last, the demise of RTS has been dictated by the BBC’s decision no longer to maintain the archaic 198kHz transmitters it depends on. Sometimes, we just have to accept change that leaves us worse off than before; it’s not OVO’s or SSEN’s fault, and while they will do what they can to mitigate the effects, some people will just have to grin and bear it.