Solar panels and Total Heat Total Control (THTC)- How do they work together?

I’m getting them through funding…and when I spoke to someone at OVO about the shutdown they had no idea when it was likely to happen because and what she said is they have literally nothing to replace them with at the moment…

An upgrade path for the meters is close to being ready. :)

Watch this space.

Ok…thank you for that…it’s tricky getting your head round it all :-)

Just one thing to reiterate @Hels24 , with your meter set up it’s doubtful you would be able to get an export tariff despite some of the info above. You would still benefit from the solar feed during decent generating days of course and if these have some additional funding for you it’s probably still worth going for. 

You’d probably be able to use it yourself but I can’t be 100% certain.

However, if you are on THTC then it’s possible that constraints from the DNO may prevent you from having Solar Exports at all.

With that being said, some THTC Meters can’t cope with exports very well. Proceed with caution.

Hey @ToSH67,

Keep us updated on your findings; you have a more complex setup than most. I have added a couple of badges to your profile to let others know you have solar panels and heat storage. 

It would be great to hear your feedback and thoughts on your journey!

Our solar panels provide power for our storage heaters, panel heaters, hot water and charge our car. Unfortunately we can't use the electricity for the rest of the household appliances.  They work very well and save a considerable amount of money. We try to use most of our production because we don't get anything when we send it to the grid. In the summer we do have to put a lot to the grid and it's painful to see how much we are giving away to OVO for nothing. They get it free and then sell itl!!  We had hoped to have a smart meter ages ago but the RTS switch off keeps being postponed. Hopefully we will be paid for exporting electricity when we eventually get a smart meter.

Thanks, Cassie511, that’s actually really encouraging as I doubt there’ll much for us to export and just charging the storage heaters would be good enough. Feeling more optimistic!🤞 

That’s not actually a good thing i.e. the meter going backwards. I’m concerned it’ll mess the bills up so I’d probably suggest reporting that as a meter fault if you’re able to.

Don’t expect to be able to quit that easily. OVO never created this problem, but merely inherited it from SSE - OVO is in fact one of only two major UK suppliers that never had anything to do with it in the first place, the other being Octopus.

I maintain my stance regarding your specific meter however. If you continue to let it run backwards, you WILL run the risk of messing up your bills and it could lead to a shockingly high bill down the road. Please don’t take that risk. It’s often associated with something known as Reverse Run Fraud, a type of meter tampering where the customer deliberately tries to make the meter run backwards to cut the bills. OVO has ways to detect that and iirc this stuff gets investigated every time. Please don’t run the risk of being flagged up.

They do however, have spare THTC Meters that can be swapped in for cases like this one. Not a huge stockpile, but a few still kicking around the inventory. They’re not exactly… Brand new… However, so you’ll still suffer from the same issue of their Certifications having already ticked down pretty hard even if it’s never been used before - the timer starts from the date of manufacture, not the date of (re)install.

Also, even on a Smart Meter, don’t expect to be able to nuke THTC immediately - there’s no guarantee of that. And given that 99% of suppliers won’t touch THTC accounts with a 100 foot bargepole, your options may well still be limited either way. And that really is a matter beyond OVO’s control.

Apologies if it confused you. My writing style is designed for a wide audience, since this stuff often stays up for several years after you’ve moved on. Given the wide range of folks who’ll likely read these things, I write it as a warning to those who might get tempted - it’s not intended to target any specific individual.

Hi @ToSH67 

Sorry to hear about the issues you’re having at the moment surrounding the meter set up.

I did reach out to one of our specialists to double check if a replacement meter would be possible at the moment but we’re currently unable to replace the meter as we don’t have an appropriate replacement for THTC just yet - this is due to be available in the next few months.

It’s fairly common with traditional meters to clock backwards when there’s a solar export systems connected, more so when there’s more energy being generated than imported, so this isn’t something the team haven’t seen or dealt with before, unfortunately the twin element (THTC setup) makes replacing the meter and fixing the issue more tricky than normal.

We’ll be in touch directly when we have meter replacements available.