Why is my Future Annual Consumption estimate so persistently high?

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:

[I 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? [The 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.