Why is my Future Annual Consumption estimate so persistently high?

@Jeffus It’s only taken a whole year for me because of a fault: OVO has been making a mistake when submitting my meter readings to Elexon which arose from changes made to the meter configuration. This only became clear a few weeks ago.

Normally (if there is such a concept!) the EAC will start at a default figure based on TDCVs, ostensibly modulated by household conditions. It’s then adjusted each time new readings are submitted, so it should fairly rapidly approach a realistic value. I’m afraid the complexities of the calculations are quite overwhelming for me, so I couldn’t quantify ‘rapidly’. Each new EAC is then incorporated into OVO’s FAC calculation simply by taking the two quantities - meter advance and EAC - and adding them together pro rata. After n weeks, the FAC will be

• FAC = meter advance x n/52 +  EAC x (52-n)/52. 

So obviously at the end of a year, the EAC is no longer involved. Without knowing how the EAC varies with meter advance as notified, it’s impossible to say how quickly the FAC would approach the actual annualized meter advance. 

Just out of interest.

After sending a new gas meter reading yesterday my FAC for gas increased within minutes by 8 kWh.

Today, and all by itself, it has gone down again by the same 8 kWh.

I'm not even going to try figuring that one out, 8 kWh is nothing compared to some of the MWh ups (and downs) that I have seen

We recently had a smart meter fitted as our bills were showing we using a gas at the level of a medium size business.  They have informed us that our meter had a fault and billing our now dealing with the over payments.  But we have also been told that our debt to the Company has been reported to the credit reference agent and we are on a list relating to struggling to pay.  

We are paying what we use monthly which is £100 a month but there systems are still stating we should be paying £600 a month! They don’t communicate with us, we phone we get told something different every time and is now been 13 weeks since they started their investigation.  The last we were told they were resetting our balance to 0 as we owe nothing.  But we feel like we are being treated like criminals and this balance reset is at present taken 3 weeks and still the same.

Complaints are hopeless as well, the complaint we made was just closed and we were never told. 

What can we do as it’s unfair that a credit is being ruined for their errors and we are not struggling we are paying what we use and rest is invalid.  The untold stress this is putting on us is crazy.

Hi ​@Elwell1624 ,

​@Nukecad is more experienced than I am at this particular situation so I’ll give him a heads up.

Hi ​@Elwell1624 ,

As a customer myself then obviously I can't comment on what is happening with sorting your account balance out.

What I can comment on is tes situation with the Credit Score.

Being practical the credit scores are a bit of a marketing con.
They were originally meant to give loan companies an idea of if you could pay them back if they gave you a loan, nothing more than that.

The way the score works is that more credit you take out and pay back the higher your score gets.
That's right, you get a higher score for borrowing more and paying it back.
(That's how those 'Credit Builder' credit cards work, you borrow money on the card and pay it back, up goes your score).
So a millionaire who never uses credit will a very LOW credit score.

The problem is that people other than loan companies started using them for other things than just loans.
Nowadays having a low credit score can affect other things,  things like getting a mobile phone contract, a Broadband or TV Service deal.
At the more ridiculous end of the scale some private landlords use them to ‘judge’ if you can affort to rent a property. (Hard luck Mr millionire, your Credit Score isn’t good enough for you to to rent my flat).

Being Practical:
You should contact the Credit Score company/companies involved and raise a dispute about the alleged debt.

For how to do that see: https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/credit-education/faqs/how-to-dispute-credit-report-information/

and/or: https://help.clearscore.com/hc/en-us/articles/4410540829970-How-can-I-correct-information-in-my-credit-report

The Score company should mark that clearly so that anyone asking for and referring to your credit score can see that it's disputed.

Once the 'on paperwork' debt no longer exists then your dispute is over then the supplier should inform the Score company that the debt no longer exists and it will be removed from your score.

PS. I have been through that with my own Credit Score, which is how I know what to do.
I have to be honest though and say that if something simialr happend again I probably wouldn’t bother about the Credit Score. (There again I’m not expecting to be wanting any new loans or similar).

Hey ​@Elwell1624,
 

Really sorry to hear this, 

The financial support team should be able to put a hold on your account receiving these kind of communications. The number is 0800 069 9831. They’re open Monday to Friday 9am-5pm. If the meter is deemed faulty and once the faulty meter exchange has been completed we will be able to re-bill your account, factoring in the results of the MAT test. We do not recalculate the removal reading if the meter is confirmed as slow. 
 

I have been trying to understand the exorbitant direct debit amount OVO are requesting, did some research on here to understand FAC/EAC and have come to the conlusion that something is seriously wrong.

Picking through the noise online about customer being asked for huge increases when they are on track and in credit at least shows I’m not alone.

I have a smart meter submitting readings every 30 minutes, I’m always in credit and have hit the £1000 limit twice because I use more in the summer than the winter and OVO can’t handle it.

At the start of the summer I upped my DD to £150 to cover the cost of my hot tub only to find OVO dropped it down to £70 3 days later.

I called and explained that would not be enough as my planned costs were going up and eventually they let me change it back to £150.

Summer is over, I’m still in credit, the hot tub is packed away for the winter and I’m ready to drop my DD back down to something sensible, but OVO are demanding £215. Best they would do over the phone was £183 - still 40% over actual cost.

Now I have found their Future annual consumption figure as listed in your “plan” shows a 20% increase in consumption from last year even though we’re all cutting back, fitting LED lights, using airfriers and my actual usage is down.

OK, summers over, my September consumption is much lower than June, July, August so I’m watching their Future annual consumption expecting it to start droping and low and behold - today it went up another 200kw

For the life of me I can think of no reason for this increase other than greed.

OVO - every person I have spoken to has been first class, helpful and understanding, but your underlying systems and algorithms are flawed.

I am not your personal cookie jar. 

 

The Direct Debit calculation is a simple one, designed to fit for most customers. It aims to even out payments over a longer period, precisely to avoid the scenario you seem to be trying to force it into: “At the start of the summer I upped my DD to £150”, then “Summer is over, I’m still in credit and …  I’m ready to drop my DD back down to something sensible”. Your usage pattern is not a normal one, but that doesn’t mean that even payments over a longer period wouldn’t make sense and help with budgeting.

Now, OVO’s DD calculator bases some of its figures on an assumed month-to-month usage pattern, which presumably matched a typical household’s at some stage. This determines the almost-sinusoidal shape of the Cost bar chart, with higher usage in the winter and lower in the summer. It expects almost 60% of a year’s electricity to be consumed in the period October-March, which could explain why the calculator now recommends a significant increase in your DD (a) to match the higher FAC, (b) to pay for 60% of the cost of this FAC between now and the end of March, and (c) to cover the recently-mandated enhanced credit balance required at that stage.   

The Future Annual Consumption figure isn’t so easy to tie down. For the first year after a meter exchange, it may be wildly inaccurate, because it isn’t based on any historical data. Once the meter has passed its first birthday, the FAC should approach the total consumption over the previous twelve months pretty closely.

You say that your FAC has just increased by 200 kWh. I’d like you to extract some meter readings from your online account:

1. on the day you noticed this increase; 
2. on the day when you last saw the figure 200 kWh lower;
3. on the same date as (1) a year earlier;
4. on the same date as (2) a year earlier.

(1) - (3) will give you a recent figure for annual consumption. (2)-(4) will give a different one, and the difference between the two annual figures should be close to the change in FAC.  Is it?

You’re missing the point.

“The Direct Debit calculation is a simple one, designed to fit for most customers”

“OVO’s DD calculator bases some of its figures on an assumed month-to-month usage pattern, which presumably matched a typical household’s at some stage. This determines the almost-sinusoidal shape of the Cost bar chart, with higher usage in the winter and lower in the summer.”

 

Summer = immersion for hot water plus the hot tub at around £2 a day.
Winter = solid fuel providing all the hot water I could ever need and the hot tub is packed away.

My usage is higher in the summer and lower in the winter so I do not fit the standard profile.

The algorithm is broken.

I quite understand that your usage pattern differs from that of most customers. The Cost bar chart I was referring to is the one on the DD Calculator page. If this shows a full year, it indicates the seasonal adjustment OVO makes to the figures. These are the underlying data:
  

This typical profile doesn’t affect the size of the recommended DD. That depends only on the FAC and the current balance (and known-cost bolt-ons, if any). 

What did your comparison of annual consumption figures before and after the 200 kWh increase reveal?