Thanks, @ChristopherS_OVO. I wasn’t expecting any sort of authoritative statement, but I suppose I was just a bit peeved to discover that new customers are taken on their word when they say how much they used in the past year while loyal ones like me aren’t. Not to worry. As you’ll see, my FAC is inexorably pursuing its glacial path to a reasonable sum in a few months’ time. I’m just hoping that my chat with Support about my DD a few days ago will keep them off my back until that happens.

Just a wee update. After veering off-course for a week, my FAC is back on a new track. The total has resumed its gentle decline after its eye-catching side-step, while the peak/offpeak split has taken an altered path:
  

With the offpeak FAC is now down to less than a third of what it was in January, it’s still almost three times the meter advance. Any tariff comparison on the basis of these figures is meaningless, and the recommended DD is still £10 a month more than it needs to be.

Hey ho.

Well here we go again - Today my FAC for gas has suddenly rocketed up again.

This afternoon it was showing as 9503 kWh, I submitted a new gas meter reading (nothing unusual just a regular months usage) and this evening the gas FAC has jumped up to 14431 kWh.

So it's now at least 50% higher than it should be. (and in reality it's more like 75% too high).

My actual gas use for the last 12 months to the end of June 2024 was 8270 kWh.

Of course this error has also resulted in my recommended DD amount also rocketing up again, by an extra £27 a month.
So no doubt I’ll be getting an email saying that they will be increasing it even though it’s wrong.

It's getting a bit tiresome having the recommended Direct Debit amount increase itself to ridiculous levels again every 3 months or so, and then having to yet again explain to - read argue with - a support agent about why it’s too high and what it should be,

There are a couple of excuses I can think of that could be used to explain this sudden new FAC spike, but neither one very convincing as anything other than an excuse not to look for and fix the real problem.
Either way it shows they are still getting/using the wrong information in the FAC calculation.

PS. My FAC for electricity is in agreement with my actual electricity use, no issues there.
it’s just my gas FAC that keeps jumping up for no real reason.
I put that down to the electricity being smart metered, so it’s time for me to emulate a smart gas meter again by sending weekly or even daily gas readings to get the gas FAC down again.

Lucky you! Mine is still SNAFU.

While the FAC reported on my Plan page and used to calculate my recommended DD is still falling gently, it looks as if it might meet my actual annual consumption a few days before the anniversary of the meter installation - so much for ‘in three months’ or even ‘within six months’.

A couple of other things are slightly worrying:

• I had a look at some competitive tariffs. The sites that could be persuaded to use ‘data from trusted industry sources’ to find my FAC came up with a figure of 2786 kWh/year. Compare with my actual annual consumption, which to date is 1050 kWh. Consumption in 2023 had been 1180 kWh. Where are these ‘trusted sources’ getting their figures from?
• These sites used a day/night consumption ratio of 58/42, which is the Ofgem standard. My current ratio is of the order of 86/14, so any estimates of annual cost are miles out when comparing E7 tariffs.
• I used to be able to find the current FAC’s day/night figures on the Renewal page. That page is empty for me (“Sorry, there aren’t any plans available for you to renew at the moment”) and has been ever since I switched to a fixed-price tariff more than two months ago, so I’ve little idea what split my FAC is currently based on. I can estimate it from the reliable figures I had stored away before the renewal page packed up, but it’s so far out as to be of no use. Can you see alternative plans?  

The whole Future Annual Consumption / Estimated Annual Cost business was mandated by Ofgem many years ago so customers could make sensible decisions about competing tariffs. I’m sure it’s fine when it works, but it’s intensely frustrating when it doesn’t. I’m even wondering whether the updates OVO is sending to correct my EAC are going to the wrong place like yours were/are. I’ve forgotten - how did you find that out? 

Because you have fixed then you won’t now see any offers on the  renewals page until it’s 50 days or so before your plan end.

And of course if you use the quote webpage instead then, although it says OVO already supplies the property so can give a more accurate quote, it’s still not going to show your actual usage figures.

I think that you should be able to see some split day/night FAC figures in the DD calculator API.
Mine shows each coming months predicted usage figures for both Electricity and Gas in seperate sections, (and then a secion for Bolt-ons), I would imagine it’s similar for your day/night split.
However you’ll only see the figures for the months remaining on your plan. (The months already past just show as 0).
Mine only shows the one combined total figure for predicted yearly, and TBH I haven’t checked. yet, if that a full year or just what’s left to my fix end date.
Note that they are shown in £ and not kWh, but you should be able to reverse calculate it using your tariff rates.

My incorrect gas MSN issue at Xoserve appears to have finally been sorted out now.
(Albeit with the added complication of that ficticious account switch which took a ‘Digital Resolver’ (Ben) to fix).

I was considering pushing now for a gas meter replacement to be tried again, my existing one was already too old over a year ago when they tried but the engineer couldn’t get the new one to connect (not sure if it was a HAN issue, or a WAN/DCC issue, I wasn’t as clued up then as I am now) and that’s when they messed up the meter serial numbers.
I’ll probably now try to get the FAC down again first, it’s already coming down following another submitted meter reading; after just 2-days it’s dropped by 646 kWh to 13785, so still a long way to go.

I honestly can’t remember, because it’s a long time since I was last on a fixed tariff. I wonder what the reasoning behind this refusal to offer alternatives on the website is -it’s again causing calls to Support that could have been averted. And it’s the only source of the day/night split I’ve come across.

Sadly, no. If I had different day/night rates, I could work it out from the figures the API reveals. As it is, with day and night set to the same rate, I can’t.  

I’m sure I’ve pointed this out before, but the different results for end-of-contract/whole-year are revealed by manipulating the URL for projected costs:

End-of-contract:
https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/pace/recommended-dds/v1/nnnnnnn/projected-costs?limitNextYear=false

Whole year:
https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/pace/recommended-dds/v1/nnnnnnn/projected-costs?limitNextYear=true

Here’s the bottom of my ?limitNextYear=false result:

2I tried to highlight the salient figures, the one for end-of-contract, the other for whole-year.]

You may have been looking at a different URL, perhaps 
https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/pace/recommended-dds/v1/nnnnnnn/recommended-direct-debit

but this also gives me both figures. Neither shows me the day/night split.

This is what I used to see at 
https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/orex/api/available-plans/nnnnnnn

(You’ll see that the day/night ratio is about 84/16.)

It’s infuriating not to be able to see it any longer 

Yes, I'm looking at:
https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/pace/recommended-dds/v1/nnnnnnn/projected-costs?

Adding limitNextYear=true/false does indeed toggle the "predictedenergycost" between full year and plan end.
(If you leave that condition off altogether, as per the link above, then it defaults to false if you are on a fixed plan).

However the entry for "yearlypredictedenergycost" always shows the 12 months cost prediction regardless of that condition seting.
 

Next - If I collapse the fields you can see that as well as the "recommendeddirectdebit" subsection I also have seperate subsections for Electricity and Gas usage (and boltons) which when expanded show predicted use cost by month for the months remaining on my plan and 0 for the months already gone.
Again those subsections, once expanded, always show the same data regardless of the true/false switch.
 

I was thinking that yours might have shown similar subsections for your day/night rates.
The information is no doubt there somewhere so that it can calculate your predicted cost, so it's probably just a case of knowing what options or URL to specify.
ie. maybe similar to the "recommended-direct-debit" subsection which can be called seperately?

When I try https://smartpaymapi.ovoenergy.com/orex/api/available-plans/nnnnnnn it just gives me a blank page.
The renewals page itself gives me this, with what I said about the 50 or so days:

Just looking through all of this (and history) and seeing the flaws in the system, I wonder if there’s something fundamentally wrong. 
With my own feed, I don’t see a predicted FAC and I don’t see a budget update suggested unless my balance is close to zero. This is partly due to my tariffs which themselves are ‘variable’ (Agile and Tracking). But one of the other things I’ve noted over time is that those using industry derived api feeds suggest that the forecast methodology (and therefore budgeting) is problematic. Many don’t even attempt to use and predict levels apart from looking directly at recent usage. 
I’m wondering if the OVO system, with its estimations being part of the daily cost design are the cause of these poor outcomes. 

I’m convinced there is, but only for some customers. It’s not easy to code for every eventuality, but it should be possible to introduce checks that either cause a reversion to some sensible default or to alert an operator when something’s out of whack. 

I haven’t been able to work out just how the system is supposed to work, and I wish someone would tell us. Then those of us who delve into these darker recesses might be able to spot which link(s) in the chain are broken. It seems clear, though, that the system was originally designed for irregular manual meter readings and not particularly well adapted to handling frequent smart readings. 

We’re told that the (Ofgem-mandated) EAC is updated each time OVO submits a meter reading. How that submission takes place is a mystery, but it looks as if a third-party data collector is involved. And I doubt that every new reading is submitted for those with smart meters reporting daily, so perhaps there’s a more leisurely procedure - weekly, say. 

Then OVO retrieve the updated EAC (from the official source, or from some ‘trusted source’ that in turn allegedly gets it from the official source?) and use it to calculate the FAC, which is again tempered by readings. The process is enormously - and unnecessarily - complex, and it’s not surprising that it doesn’t always work properly.

I’ve complained before in these forums about the apparent discrimination against existing customers in this respect. A new customer is asked to say how much he expects to use in the coming year, and the initial DD is based on that. A loyal customer like me who has a meter exchange has to start from an Ofgem estimate, which in my case is at best 100% too high and takes no account of historic consumption, which is all squirrelled away in my Orion account.

Anyway, knowing how much you love my natty graphics, here’s a simple chart showing how my FAC varies as the meter advances. I’ve only used figures since April, which was the last time OVO’s (or perhaps Kaluza’s) experts had a go at getting my FAC on track again. The blue blobs are the figures taken from my Plan page every Sunday morning. I’m fairly sure the curve they lie on isn’t precisely linear, although it’s not far off, so I’ve let Excel draw a parabolic curve through the blobs. The curves meet just about at the anniversary of the meter installation. The curve starts suspiciously close to the value ‘trusted sources’ provide to comparison sites, so it’s as if no movement has taken place at all since the meter was installed.
  

Yes there clearly is.
But I wouldn’t hold your breath waithing for a fix.

Over the months we have been looking at this now, and I’ve had the Forum Support team and Xoserve involved too, we have identified it to come down to a disconnect somewhere between what the supplier (OVO) is telling the Data Service Providers (Elexon and Xoserve) about actual usage, and then what EAC and AQ figure the respective Data Service Providers periodically send back to the supplier to use in their FAC and Direct Debit calculations.

We have also identified other/seperate issues with recommended DD’s as well, which muddy the waters somewhat.
However it’s that back and forth of the actual/predicted usage data that is the cause of these inflated FACs and that causes the sudden large increases that we see in them.

If you have Smart Meters, or send in regular readings to emulate what a Smart Meter does, then the incorrect, inflated, FAC will correct itself over time.

After all this investigation though nobody seems to be interested in actually tracking down and correcting just what is the root cause of the data disconnect.
I’ll concede that with multiple organisations and multiple systems involved that would not be an easy task.

Personally I suspect that it is endemic to the system and has been going on for years, - but it wouldn’t/doesn’t show up as much in traditional energy billing as it does in the ‘live’ balances that we now have.
Plus as said, with Smart Metering (or frequent manual readings) it will usually correct itself over time - it’s taken over a year up to now for Firedog’s to come down, and mine for gas comes down gradually and then spikes back up again overnight.
(And I’m pretty sure that I now know why it spikes and can now predict when it will next happen for me again - it should be the last week in October, my billing period end following an Ofgem rate change).

I believe those are the reasons why it isn’t seen as worth the time/cost to track it down.
I also believe that it would be a very different priority to correct if the FACs were persistently being calculated  too low rather than too high.

It’s so frustrating to hear you’re still having issues @Nukecad, do you have the contact details of the complaint hander that was assigned to your case? 

@Emmanuelle_OVO  This is not the recent issue that the complaint handler sucessfully resolved for me.

This is the ongoing issue with FAC’s being innacurate, inflated, and suddenly vastly increasing overnight  for no good reason.
Myself and Firedog have been studying this phenomenon for some months now.

I have been in PM contact with the forum suport team about it - (who did find and help resolve some different but related issues) - but on the core issue of FAC.s being innacurate, inflated, and suddenly vastly increasing overnight they have no real answers or explanation.

The best that forum support have been able come up with was:

I asked the team to take another look at the spike in February, and they have advised that they are still seeing a figure that is too high from the industry AQ. This has caused the spikes you're seeing, and they said it could happen again. They have said that as a workaround if you could supply readings weekly, you would avoid spikes as more data would be available to prevent them.

Sadly, there isn't anything else we can do at this stage, but I hope this information is helpful to you.

Given that answer from Forum Support I have given up on expecting any proper investigation of the root cause of FAC.s being innacurate, inflated, and suddenly vastly increasing overnight.
We know that it is a disconnect happening in the data exchanges somewhere, but nobody seems interested in investing resources to prevent it happening.

I will continue to report when it happens to me, as it did again the other day..

Hi @Nukecad,

I’m really sorry to hear that this hasn’t been resolved. I understand that this is frustrating.

It seems that we’re limited in how we can help as we’ve already raised this with the team who specialise in this. Unfortunately, this would be beyond our area of expertise and we’d have to agree with what the specialist team have advised.

I fully understand that @Shads_OVO 

But as you say it is frustrating for myself, firedog, and the customers that we see here reporting that their FAC is much too high  - or more usually that their recommended DD amount has suddenly increased and set much too high.

Personally I know that my direct debit amount will now be increased by OVOs computer based on my newly inflated FAC and that I will now have to, yet again, persuade a support agent that my DD amount has been increased to an incorrect (and unacceptable) amount based on an incorrect FAC calculation by the computer systems involved.

My knowing why that has happened does not make it any less frustrating, and for a customer who doesn't know why it must be doubly frustrating.

It is not the support agents fault, and they are limited in the actions that they can take -  other than putting the DD on a 3-month reduced Payment Plan there is not a lot that they can do to work around the computer/data error.

I’m not really expecting you to help, but I feel strongly that the way my FAC has been calculated may be in breach of the electricity SLC*. I don’t know how to handle that feeling. This business hasn’t caused me any hardship or loss, but other customers in the same situation might not be so fortunate, being required to pay a Direct Debit higher than necessary.

Having disregarded the clear directions in the SLC to take account of the customer’s annual consumption, those responsible have then based my FAC on an estimate which takes no account of available relevant information**, and compounded the indignity by not clearly setting out the basis for their estimate - which is simply one or other of Ofgem’s typical values.

Then - and I have this in writing - they go on to adjust the FAC at such a rate that parity with actual consumption will only be reached a year later, if then. Here’s a question you might be able to get an answer to: if ‘available information’ suggests that the customer’s annual consumption is much higher than Ofgem’s typical value, would the FAC still be set to that typical value? iThe result of this would of course be to set a Direct Debit below that required to keep the account ‘healthy’. And it would suggest that availability of data is a selective quality.] 

It’s wrong and it’s immoral to treat existing customers less favourably than new ones in this respect, and it’s probably illegal in any case. I wonder what Ofgem would say?
  

*   SLC Condition 1.3:
  
    Estimated annual costs: “a personalised and transparent calculation of the annual costs … based on the Domestic Customer’s Annual Consumption Details;
     
   Annual Consumption Details: “… where the Customer has held their Domestic Supply Contract … for at least 12 months and the licensee has obtained actual meter readings ... which can reasonably be considered to cover the whole of that 12 month period, the quantity of electricity which was treated as consumed at the Customer’s Domestic Premises ... during the previous 12 months on the basis of those meter readings;”
  

**   Just for reference, my actual annual consumption in the twelve months to 1 September 2023 - the month in which MEX took place - was 1318 kWh. Despite this, my FAC was set to 2903 kWh. It eventually fell to the 2022/23 figure in mid-July 2024, 10 months - 42 weeks - after MEX. By then, my actual annual consumption had fallen to 1050 kWh, so the FAC figure still 20% too high.  

I agree with all that Firedog says there,
Particularly that when a customer has been with OVO for over 12 months their actual consumption figures should be used for the FACs, not the (known and admitted to be too high) incorrect figures being supplied by Elexon/Xoserve.

My bigger beef is that having suddenly increased an FAC to a much inflated  incorrrect figure the Direct Debit calculator then uses that incorrect figure and OVO automatically increase the Direct Debit amount to more than it needs to be - With no easy way to prevent that happening, or to then get it corrected to what it should be.

As I say I am well aware that that is not the support agents fault - they only see the incorrect information that the computer shows them.
Then even if they accept your explantion/argument of why the DD has been set too high they are then constrained by the computer as to what action they can actually take to try and correct it.

It has become clear to me that these ongoing errors in the data and calculations are know about.
It's also become clear to me that no one is trying to fix them because: "Having frequent readings from a smart meter will correct them over time".

But of course not everyone has smart meters, and not everyone can provided regular manual readings.
(I was recently locked-out of my account for the best part of 2 months so couldn’t supply gas meter readings, which is probably what has resulted in my current gas FAC spike upwards.
Although the July tariff changes may have had a part to play in it by triggering a recalculation I’m on a fixed plan so my own rates haven’t changed).

Personally, as someone who is unable to work for health reasons, and so is on the bare subsistance level benefits that are paid, for me to pay more than I need to be paying each month becomes a hardship.
I could be spending that money on other needed essentials each month.

Quite. There’s no need for ‘industry’ or any other third party to be involved; it’s a matter between the licensee (the supplier) and the customer alone. OVO shouldn’t be sheltering behind third-parties’ faults, because in our cases it’s none of their business.

Of course OVO are bound to keep the industry informed of each customer’s details so that comparison sites and other suppliers can make sensible suggestions based on the same information. It’s wrong to be attributing failings in the FAC calculation to problems with submitting and retrieving data from the industry.

An electricity supplier is required to “take all reasonable steps to obtain a meter reading for each of its Customers at least once every year” (SLC 21B.4). I expect there’s a similar requirement in respect of gas customers. Those on the PSR can get more help with meter readings if they need it, presumably assessed on an individual basis.

Before OVO unilaterally increased my DD to match my once again incorrect gas FAC I decided to take action myself.

The FAC had come down a bit since the spike, but they were still asking for £148.

The online account was offering me a button to fix at 10% below their recommeneded DD amount for 3 months so I decided to see what it would do.

It did exactly what it said it would and came back with:

That’s not a reduction at all, it’s a £6 increase from the £128 that I was paying, better than a £20 increase though.
£134 is still too high, but I can live with it.
Plus it was much easier clicking a button than having the discussion, yet again, with a reluctant support agent.

Now to work on getting that inflated FAC down again so that it's at least more reasonable in 3 months time when they recalculate the DD.

This is all rather a chore in a busy world - something I guess many wouldn’t even look at but would certainly be unhappy with. I’d be interested what other suppliers have in this area. My own, don’t seem overly fussed with what level is set and being on a ‘smart tariff’ the normal suggestion route doesn’t work for me. 

@BPLightlog  From what I have found out over the months the issue of incorrect EACs (for electricity) and AQs (for gas) that are notified to the supplier is endemic, and can arise in various circumstances - a meter exchange being a common cause.

The problem is then how the supplier uses those figures provided (or not) to calculate their own FACs, and thus ‘required’ DD amount that arises as a result.

And then how strictly they adhere to what that calculated FAC says the required DD should be set at.

~~~

OVO currently appear to prefer using that (somtimes incorrect) Elexon/Xoserve provided EAC/AQ over the customers actual metered 12 month usage when it comes to calculating their FAC.
(Or possibly OVO prefer using whichever is higher?)

Then OVOs computer system currently treats that OVO calculated FAC as sacrosanct, whether it is correct or not, sets the minimum DD accordingly, and will then subsequently automatically increase a customers DD payment to suit.

You then have the problem of trying to persuade a support agent that it is wrong and should be changed, with the added problem that even when you do manage that the support agent is constrained by what the computer will (won't) allow them to change.

The classic “Computer says no” situation.

It's frustrating enough when you understand what is going on. It must be doubly frustrating if all you know is that your DD has rocketed up for no real reason that anyone can explain to you.

One more bizarre development in this ongoing saga: my FAC has been inexorably decreasing since the last time an expert looked at it back in April. It was neatly on course to meet the actual annual consumption figure on my meter’s first anniversary. Then, after having learned that another expert was investigating, the wretched number has suddenly taken a left turn towards the stratosphere:
  

If it stays on that sort of course, the twain will never meet. The system is broken.

Moral: if the boat is sinking, don’t rock it.

I think it’s time to wrap this up until it all goes wrong again.

A week ago, it was my meter’s first birthday . By any reckoning, my FAC should then match that year’s consumption, given that the system that calculates it refuses (illegally!) to take any notice of household consumption recorded earlier. 

The first year’s consumption (366 days because leap year) was 1018.377kWh. The FAC updated on Sunday to 1015.2 kWh, so we got there in the end and even overshot a bit. I’m hopeful that next Sunday’s figure will correspond to a meter reading sometime between now and then. I’ve not managed to pin down precisely when the reading is taken to use for the FAC, but the figure of 1015.2 is almost exactly what I would expect the reading to have been at noon GMT on Friday, so I’ll be keeping an eye out for similar behaviour in the future.

I hope that this welcome relief won’t deter the boffins in their efforts to have my EAC brought into line as it should be. I’ve yet to find a reliable and legal way of finding out how it’s faring. 

You mean that you don’t have faith in the FAC system? I wonder why not?

Good to hear that your own FAC seems to have finally settled back to where it should be.

My FAC for gas has also been behaving itself for the last couple of months.
It's stil higher that it should be, but that will be because my gas account had to be reset some months ago due to an incorrect meter serial number at Xoserve.
That was effectivly the same as a new meter install, so back to square one with 'industry standard' figures instead of actual readings.

Mine is creeping up slightly when I supply new meter readings, but very slightly, that will be due to winter gas usage replacing the 'industry standard' figures currently in my last FAC re- calculation.
PS. When my gas FAC changes due to a newly supplied reading it's often within minutes.

However the big test of whether mine is finally behaving itself will come later this month.
Looking back at the previous occasions when my gas FAC had shot up (even doubled, or trebled, overnight) I noticed that they had happened at or near to the end of my billing period following an Ofgem tariff/cap change.
(eg. The last spike, an overnight increase of 4,928 kWh, happened at my billing period end in July.ie the first one following an Ofgem rate change).
I'm fairly sure now that new 'industry standard' figures from Xoserve were/are calculated in at that point, which is what was causing the FAC to rocket up.
That's a few weeks off so we will see what happens this time.

And then I have another, actual, gas meter exchanged booked for November, which will reset my usage figures again - so start from scratch again.
(IF the exchange actually happens this time).
Hopefully having a new gas Smart Meter fitted will then mitigate things with my gas FAC, but if your experience with your electricity MEX is anything to go by then that may take another 12 months from the exchange.

It is good to know it is sorted and useful to know it has taken a year. That is useful when giving feedback to posters given the typical shorter time quoted by ovo when I use to regularly post. OVO always seemed optimistic during the SSE migration for example.

I don't now what timescales ovo typically quote these days?

Well, I wish you all the best with your gas MEX when it happens.

It’s unfortunate we have no way of checking what data ‘industry’ is keeping for us. Since things could go wrong (as we’ve both discovered) in the data flow from supplier via their data service provider to Elexon/Xoserve, we’re reliant on hard-to-find staff within OVO to detect faults and correct them. As we know, that won’t happen without the customer nagging about it. My EAC is probably still as far out as your AQ, but I won’t find out until I try to make a tariff comparison at one of the sites that uses the EAC for the purpose for which it was intended. Ho hum.