I just had a message "Elec data unavailable" even though all 4 lights are on !

Strange (confused)

WAN, MESH and HAN lights:

WAN - Wide Area Network

Shows your communication hub’s ability to communicate with your supplier. Flashing indicated a connection. 

MESH - Mesh Communications Network

If you have a SK2 or SKU3 type of Communications Hub, then both WAN and MESH are active, and will display the slow-flash from these indicators if all is well.

If you have a SKU1 (85% of houses do), then the MESH indicator will always be off because that section of electronics isn’t present.

HAN - Home Area Network

This light shows the connection status of your electricity meter, gas meter and IHD with your communications hub on the HAN (Home Area Network).

See this topic for a complete guide on what each hub indicate light means

What the lights mean when there’s a fault:

Now let’s just separate out the different faults you’ve been seeing.

A; A solid WAN may indicate a lack of communication with OVO. the WAN and/or HAN indicator going off is very unusual. In the case of a fault on either of these networks, the correct flash rate should be “medium” (roughly once every 5 seconds).

It’s unlikely that you’ll ever actually see the “High” flash rate because this occurs when the Communications Hub is starting up and trying to find the networks.

An indicator that’s completely off means that this part of the code isn’t operational at all. Most customers have SKU1-type SMETS2 meters, in which case the Mesh indicator will be off. Ie there is no Mesh network for this model.

B; It isn’t unusual to have an IHD not displaying correct data but still have the HAN indicator showing the usual slow-flash. The indicator only shows that the Zigbee carrier frequency is alive. Frustratingly it doesn’t mean that any useful data is being transferred!

The same is true of the signal-strength bars on your Chameleon IHD. They will still be present even if the code receiving/interpreting data from the Comms Hub isn’t working.

C; In similar fashion, just because the WAN indicator is in slow-flash mode doesn’t mean that OVO are actually receiving your data. Since you’re in the Telefonica territory, the WAN merely informs you that the carrier between you and the mast is alive.

The only way to tell if OVO is successfully receiving data from your site is to login to your online account and view your Usage statistics.

So there’s some initial feedback on what you’ve carefully described to us. And you might also want to read this topic where a few of us have recently been discussing IHD-related errors, and this topic is a great one for the ‘Waiting for current data’ issue

How to confirm no communication from solid WAN 

If the WAN on your meter is solid, and you’ve confirmed no usage data on your online account,  you can test your mobile phone signal right next to the meter. If you have zero signal, that would explain it. Then test mobile signal a few feet away from the meter, above, or to the side. If signal improves, an aerial might fix your meter’s communication issue. Reach out to support to book in an aerial fitting. They’re on Facebook, Twitter and our Help Centre has online chat!

Thanks for the reply.

After reading your post I can see that I was mistaken in my interpretation of what the lights signify on the meter !

You are right about the Mesh indicator being permanently off. I was told it wasn't enabled by the installation engineer 10 months ago.

I haven't had my usage on the OVO app updated since 7th April so I had a feeling OVO weren't getting my meter readings.

I didn't know that we were being moved on to a new Billing system, that could explain the teething troubles !

Finally I can see it isn't just me that is having problems lol

Thanks.

Yes, it’s not just you having problems @Mikeovo - but you are one of the few who is able to articulate the symptoms you’re experiencing.

We have have had a considerable measure of success with correcting Smart Meter anomalies over the past six months. However, faults are still widespread. Too many “fixes” seem to occur by accident. But once the fault has gone away, we’ve then lost the ability to analyse what’s going wrong.

You can’t analyse something that’s no longer “broken”!

I feel we’ve reached the moment where we (customers and OVO engineers) need to see if there are patterns in the errors we’re reporting. I suspect there are some common causes.

Here’s my gas graph as of today (12th April):

This shows two obvious errors:

A; Unsuccessful data collection for the past 4 nights. (The electricity likewise).

B; Two consecutive days with identical usage of 40.61kWh (which I don’t believe).

It’s this sort of clear, accurate feedback which will enable OVO’s engineers and programmers to track down the origins of such faults.

You are more than welcome to post here with similar level of detail.

Don’t worry if you don’t know the correct technical term for something. We can soon work out what it is.

And finally, please complete your Profile page. That gives basic background info to help us here on the Forum. Thanks

For the past 3 days my smart meter has stopped showing my electric cost. It is showing the gas symbol and price but the electricity symbol/price has disappeared. I have tried restarting the smart meter several times but elec still not showing. Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks for replying.

Like you I don't have any usage data since 7th April on both gas and electricity:

You only have 2 days of consecutive daily usage. 

I have 21 days on both electricity and gas !

I will update my profile. No problem

By the way those 21 days of 'identical' usage were from February this year.

I have the same problem !

It started a few days ago when I had a "Elec data unavailable" message on my IHD.

Hi,
 

So My smart meter appears to be online and the WAN light i use to determine if it’s communicating is flashing away as normal.  I'm also seeing daily smart meter reads once a day, but my daily breakdowns stopped sending through on the 7th. I hoped it might be a short term issue, but still no 30 min breakdowns for nearly a week now. How come my Smart meter is online and sending meter reads normally, but my daily data is not coming though?

Cheers.

Mines exactly the same. Did you recently have communication from OVO to change over from their 'old' system to their 'new' system? 

No, I’ve had my smart meter for months, but only recently got everything working properly since the 7th March, and has since been sending daily data ever since for exactly a month and then stopped on the 7th April. 

Hi @MajorSqueeze and @stusm1th and thanks for posting to the Forum.

Have a look at what I’ve been discussing with another customer over here on another Topic last week. We’ve both been lacking Smart Meter reads after 7th.

Once they surface again tomorrow, I expect one of the Moderators will merge this Topic across ( @Nancy_OVO please!). The comments get sorted into date order, so feel free to discuss or ask further questions on either Thread.

Thank you. That’s no coincidence! Let’s see if it all sorts itself out when OVO get back in.  Cheers

Hi @Chissy23 … and many thanks for @Mikeovo responding before I got here!

So Chissy23, I suggest you hop across to the Topic which MikeOVO started here on the same subject a week ago!

And, Mike, if you don’t understand how I created that link:

• first write the word(s) to be used as the link. I used “here”
• in another Tab, find the Topic you want to link to and copy (Ctrl-C) the URL page-reference at the top of your browser-bar
• return to the original window, highlight the word “here” by selecting along it with your mouse pointer
• click the link icon next to the smiley face at the top of your Forum edit window
• copy (Ctrl-V) the URL into the dialogue box which has just opened

  

   

No, not just coincidence @MajorSqueeze … but it’s very useful that you’ve posted here. There might be just a few of us whose Smart Meters haven’t been read just after midnight on 9th April (which is the symptom we’re discussing).

OVO’s SMETS2 engineers can spot the pattern by joining the dots between us. It might be that:

• we’re all connected to OVO via the same telecoms mast
• we all received upgraded meter code of a particular version
• we all started our current contracts at the beginning of December

So every bit of feedback is useful.

… On which note, could you please revisit your Forum Profile and give us a clue as to whereabouts in the country you are! Many thanks.

Done.

Is this something I’ll need to phone OVO about tomorrow, or do they frequent these forums looking for these issues and take them away behind the scenes? 

No, you won’t be able to all OVO tomorrow @MajorSqueeze . They’ve closed their 4 call centres to all but emergencies.

But in any case, I think the current issues we have with SMETS2 meters are best discussed on the Forum. Here we can compare with what others are seeing, and attempt to clarify which symptoms each of us is reporting.

One of the Moderators, @Tim_OVO is trying to keep track of our Feedback, and I’m inserting inter-Topic links to help with this.

You’ll see that I posted here last week, a list of the mix of current “faults” which need analysing and testing.

Occasionally you’ll see me tag @BenS_OVO who is much more of a “techie”. But that’s just so he receives an alert that we’re discussing something relevant to the SMETS Engineering Team. Don’t expect him to pop up here on the Forum unless he’s needing to clarify something.

Thanks for merging the two Topics @Amy_OVO 

I’m hoping @Chissy23 will pop us again soon and let us know what still needs clarifying.

Hello again! Thanks for moving the thread. My smart meter is still only showing gas. The electricity symbol/price has disappeared. I am in Northamptonshire.

Hi, 

To add my problem to this list, I only had a smart meter installation on the 2nd March. My IHD seems to be working and shows real-time usage and the daily/weekly usage, however in my OVO app, and on the website, the usage section is missing data for both Gas & Elec. Any ideas? The elec is blank since 8th March and nothing in April, and Gas is missing since 7th April.  Thanks

To add some context to mine please see the below picture - gas seems to be working correctly but electricity has just disappeared. Had a look online and no reading showing for electricity for a few days.

Update:

Another thing that has never happened before is that my electricity usage now and daily, weekly and monthly usage is shown even though the rest of the display is blank !

Also the electricity icon has reappeared this morning.

Over the last few days only the gas icon was showing after I got a message "Elec data unavailable"

Thanks @Chissy23 - all useful feedback.

Can I point out that there’s quite a few of us who’ve had no meter readings (gas or electricity) online since 7th April. See the graph here in a my post above.

The meter data from your Communications Hub to your IHD operates across a local Home Area Network (HAN). This is quite separate from the Wide Area Network (WAN) which delivers your meter readings to OVO via the Data Communications Company (DCC).

So you are effectively reporting two separate “faults” to us here.

Don’t worry if this is too technical. So long as us customers keep providing accurate feedback, then it’s the role of OVO’s SMETS Engineering Team to analyse what’s happening.

Thanks too for your update @Mikeovo .

I don’t know what data is actually held within your Chameleon IHD as opposed to what it retrieves from your Comms Hub when you press a button.

But the SMETS Engineering Team will know what this means, so I’ll leave it for their diagnosis.

Thanks @Transparent

I do understand the difference between the 2 networks HAN and WAN.

You are right there are in effect 2 separate issues !

Quote:

I don’t know what data is actually held within your Chameleon IHD as opposed to what it retrieves from your Comms Hub when you press a button.

Well until this morning none of the buttons worked when I pressed them, I just got an error beep and a message "waiting for current data" !

On my screenshot (taken just over an hour ago) this error message is replaced by my electric kWh usage which, incidentally, updates.

It is now showing 18.61 kWh as opposed to the 18.13 kWh reading when I took the photo.

Edit:

Just thought that the 18.61 kWh must include gas as well as I would never have used 18 kWh of electric since midnight.

I was In bed until around 6.30 am this morning !