Is my PAYG meter impacted by the RTS shutdown?

There are 2 switches next to the big heaters, one is off peak and one is boost, for the heater to work both need to be switched on, which they are, I was told also that the off peak should only be lit when charging, which isnt the case, its on all the time. 

On my meter I have 

A -£7.63

C- Time

D - Date

E-£29798 (total)

F - £4.42 weekly charge

Y - 70247.39

Z- 02330.38

H- 70247.41 Rate 1

I - 25.43 pence Rate 1

J - 00000.00 Rate 2

K- 0.00 Rate 2

L - 00000.00 Rate 3

M- 0.00 Rate 3

N - 02330.38 Rate 4

O- 21.32 Rate 4

P - 00000.00 Rate 5

Q - 0.00 Rate 5

R - £30 E.C

S & T are just debt but are at 0.00

Hope this helps!

I was told by dimplex that the panel heaters, bathroom heater and water immersion are all on 24 off peak supply? So any heat will be charged at off peak price regardless? My panel heaters are in the 3 bedrooms and are only on for a few hours before we go to bed and for a couple of hours before we get up in the morning to warm the bedrooms up. Same with the livingroom, kitchen and bathroom, few hours morning and night. I have two of the bigger heaters in my hall ways, upstairs and down and they were only on for a few hours in the evenings. My water heater only has one switch and a boost switch. It doesnt have a timer or anything for setting. But in the summer when no heating is on, the water heater doesnt use hardly any electric atall funnily enough. Its quite a small tank(especially for a 3 bed house with 4 people living in it) lucky to get 2 baths.

If the boosts and off peak switches are off at the wall then when i do turn them on will it not use peak energy because they havent charged during off peak time? Our house is very cold, our windows are absolutely shocking and due to it being council, they arent in a hurry to do anything. The drafts are unreal so the heating really needs to be on at the time i set them. The guy from dimplex said to have them all set to be on roughly as the same time, otherwise if say for instance the kitchen one is set to be off, but the livingroom in, the minute you open the door to the kitchen the cold draft comes into the livingroom. 

I have noticed that my off peak count on my heaters sits quite high, but my actual count is quite low. So maybe its charging in winter on the off peak times which could be anything from 5-12 hours and im only using my heaters for 4-5 hours each per day. This is why i thought if i set my heaters charge times to only charge for say 6-7 hours. Them maybe it would use far less, but with THTC you dont know when the off peak times are so its impossible to set. If it even is THTC. 

Iv spend the last 3 and a half years since moving here going round and round in circles, phoning dimplex, phoning other people for advice, asking OVO to have an electrician to come out to look at the wiring etc(they refused) and seem to be getting nowhere. 

The boost switches on the heaters need to be on along with the off peak switches otherwise they heaters wont turn on. 

Just did a bit of investigating..Surely that shouldnt be left like that too?

Likely to be old cables chopped off and left in the wall when the new fuseboard was done. 

I'll get back to you tomorrow hopefully with some tariff information

This would suggest that this house was at some stage set up for THTC. There can only be a 24-hour reduced price circuit with a second meter to control it. So when the ‘new’ meter was installed in 2007, when electricity was cheap, it looks like those panel heaters etc. were just wired in to the constant 24-hour circuit. Perhaps the national database never recorded the fact that the second meter had been removed. Any use of your (non-storage) heaters between 7 am and midnight will have been at the higher rate.
 

It looks like when the meter reached 99,999.99, it rolled over to start again at 0.00. Do you have any records of meter readings between March 2021 and today? 

That’s a period of about 1370 days. If the meter has rolled over, you might have used (100,000 - 71,942 + 2,326 =) 30,384 kWh off peak (that’s 30 MWh!) at a rate of 22 kWh per day. A single ordinary storage heater can easily consume that much energy every day in the heating season - the QM125 RF can store 19 kWh each night.

That heater i sent a photo of, is the big one in my livingroom, the other 3 that are the same style are smaller. I dont grudge £4 per night for charging heaters..but i do grudge £5 for overnight on peak energy so sleep! Makes no sense why the panel heaters are wired up to peak. So there is clearly no RTS tellin them when to charge. As im presuming any set times for overnight are being charged at peak price. 

I thought I did have meter readings saved on my notes in my phone but i cant seem to find them. I kept a note of it for a while last winter because the cost was ridiculous then and are heading the same way again. 

Iv taken a note from last night until today at 5 past 3.

​@vreid92 I've got it. I've checked with paygo teams. You are THTC setup. You have a 24hr domestic supply and 24hr heating supply which is why everything is on all the time.

Your 24hr heating rate is slightly lower than the 24hr domestic supply but not by a lot. 

In terms of what needs to happen I'm unsure as to what to advise you. You have storage heaters which would benefit from an off peak supply. Your current tariff code is 145. I believe you should move to an off peak supply but you would need to liaise with OVO CS to decide the best tariff for yourself.

In short;

You have storage heaters

You have a THTC setup

Would it be cheaper to be on a off-peak tariff?

Hope this helps somewhat.

In what way do you mean an off peak tarriff? Do you mean an eco tariff? I really dont know what to do, when the time comes for switching, economy 10 or 7. I know economy 7 is good for charging over night, but im not benefiting from any off peak during the day, i work from home 4 days a week and at home most weekends so therefore, can do things like washing, cooking, cleaning etc during the day..but i know the peak and off peak prices are higher for eco 10. I know there also arent alot of suppliers who support economy 10. 

Can I also ask, should it cost to charge my heaters aswell as run them? 

Im just really confused why my peak usage is so high overnight when the only thing that is on is fridge/freezer. As heaters should all be charging on off peak. £4 is not alot to charge heaters, however £5 for peak energy which is getting used where, iv no idea!

Thanks

The main Off-Peak tariffs would indeed be Economy 7 and Economy 10. OVO now has full support for both as proper Economy 10 support launched earlier this year.

With most Storage Heaters, the bulk of the usage is during the Charging phase only so that MUST run during Off-Peak only - when the Charging stops, the unit switches to only using a very small amount of electricity to run the controls - we’re talking just a few pence per day worth - so the Release phase can happen during Peak hours without incurring cost.

Thanks! How does economy 10 work if RTS is shut down and smart meter cant be installed? How will it know when peak & off peak is? 

I have no idea why our peak is so high overnight. Its not going up a huge amount during the day so really confusing about overnight. 

I just want a credit meter or smart meter so I dont need to go to the shop in winter to constantly top up and a smart meter is out of the question so fingers crossed once energy ombudsman has finished investigating we will have a solution and save a little on fuel driving almost 8 miles there and back each time to top up🤞

All I can say is that once RTS is dead, we can’t make any promises that RTS Meters will work at all.

You’ll need to migrate to Smart Meters to get rid of THTC anyway, same applies for going to a Credit Meter.

I’d say get the Smart Meter first as you can then request to switch to Credit Mode via PAYG Support - they can discuss that with you.

I have been told by the complaints handler due to no WAN in the area I cant have a smart meter installed and they dont even know if it will be available by the time the RTS shuts down. He offered Economy 10 or 7 credit meter, but i told him I am not being panned off and not willing to just say yes for the sake of it for it to cost twice as much in the long run because the meter wont have a clue whats off peak and whats peak. 

There has been so many engineers out at the poles around ours this past week and wondered if maybe they were anything to do with sorting out the WAN in the area for smart meter installation. How there is no WAN in our area, i dont know, 2 neighbours in the street have smart meters and the cottage out the back. 🤷‍♀️. They said they couldnt even install a dummy smart meter due to it needing signal for programming.

As I understand it that ‘can’t install a smart meter (yet)’ is out of date information.
It was right, but things have been moving quickly with the RTS replacement rollout in the last several months and not everyone is up to speed with what has changed and what is happening now.

TBH this forum often seems to be much more up to date with it than Customer Support are, let alone a complaints handler in a back office.

It’s also my understanding that the meters that they are currently fitting to replace RTS meters have the Economy tariff switching times pre-programmed into them.
(Depending on which tariff the customer has chosen).

So even if they cannot connect to WAN they will still switch between peak and off-peak at those pre-programmed times.

Having no WAN just means that>

1. They can’t report the usage directly and you would have to send in meter readings,
2. They can’t be reprogrammed remotely, so if a timing change (or other change) was wanted/needed that could normally be done over WAN then an engineer would have to come out and do it at the meter instead.

Meters configured for Economy 7 (E7) or Economy 10 (E10) will usually feed a separate circuit for heating and hot water. This circuit will only be live at the offpeak hours corresponding to the tariff. A smart meter will change tariff at the same times, so that all electricity consumed in offpeak hours is charged at offpeak rates. 

You will have to find out how your heating equipment is wired from the consumer unit. Ideally, storage heaters and the main immersion water heater are on one circuit  separate from everything else. 

With E7, any use of power-hungry equipment like your panel heaters during the day will be charged at peak rate. With E10, you only get 3 hours overnight but 7 more during the afternoon and evening. The overnight hours may not be enough to charge your storage heaters up fully, but the daytime slots will help. Panel heaters (and cookers and washers and dryers and hoovers ...) used in the daytime offpeak hours will be running at the offpeak rate. This may be enough to ensure that you stay warm all day. The E10 offpeak hours are 04:30-0730, 13:30-16:30 and 20:30-00:30, while for E7 they’re 00:00-07:00.
     

That’s not likely. Most of the antennae used for the WAN are mounted on the big television masts, so it’s possible the one your meter would be trying to connect to is on either the Knockmore or the Durris transmission tower. Your TV aerial may tell you which one. 

It could just be something very local. If you can work out the direction towards your TV mast, is there anything close by between your meter and the mast? Like your house, if the meter’s on the wrong side, or a neighbour’s house?

There’s no such animal, I’m afraid, despite what you may have read. However, the ‘programming’ you mention can be done beforehand, as Nukecad mentioned. The meter engineer would have to know which settings you want so he can order a specially pre-programmed meter for you. That’s why you have to sit down and work out whether E7 or E10 would be better for you; it wouldn’t be trivial to change later (unless your meter suddenly started calling home, of course). 
  

Hi, I am back again, no further on with my complaint with the ombudsman and dealing is the 19th of January to come up with a decision. I dont understand why I have received this email, i topped up £75 on 30th December, then another £100 on 2nd January and anothrt £50 yesterday, Monday 6th. I have topped up £225 in a week. So how they can say this is ridiculous. I top up every few days. I see they have increased the peak price from 25.43p to 26.40p and offpeak from 21.32p to 21.39p and the standing charge has only went down by 1p A WEEK. I cant sustain this and I have heard nothing back from OVO. No help atall and its very unfair. £225 a week for 4 weeks, is almost my wages all gone on electric alone. How do they expect people to live! 

Best to post this kind of image with acc number obscured 

I dont know how to remove it🙈

I hope you’ve replied to that email explaining that yes, you are still in the property, and giving the details of the top-ups you’ve made recently. It’s obvious that there’s some disconnect between the top-up mechanism and your account; the sooner you give them the information they need, the sooner it will be sorted out.

Be sure to reply using the email address OVO have for you, which I suppose is the one the email in your screenshot was sent to.
 

Don’t panic! The RoboMop 3000 has been summoned. It’ll show up once it’s finished charging. :)

Yes, i replied instantly with the amounts and dates i topped up. I unfortunately dont keep the receipts after i know its went in my meter. I have never had this before so it is very strange. I did do the live chat last night but was told, the department i need to deal with close at 6pm. So I was too late. 

​@Vreid92 Just an FYI - managed to edit your image to remove your account number from public view 😎

Thanks so much!