Insufficient Weekday readings for Power Move, even though my meter is sending readings

Hi @Johnchisholm,

How odd. How are you confirming the 18 weekdays of half hourly readings? Does it specify there when a reading is estimated vs actual like it does via this page of the online account?

@waltyboy has something similar in October… 

Yes, well remembered @Tim_OVO you’re absolutely right: I lost my electricity readings in their entirety (not just half-hourly, even the daily electricity ones too) for the whole of October from my online account. Then the half-hourly readings magically started up again on 1st November!

Sounds though as if the OP can see half-hourly readings for all but 4 of his October weekdays? The automated system for calculating his October percentage is obviously unhappy for some reason.  Perhaps (if you haven’t already?)  @Johnchisholm you could sit down with a pencil and paper and manually add up the relevant 4-7 slots for the 18 October weekdays out of the 22 for which you (and OVO) can see all the half-hour slots throughout the entire 24 hours for each of those days, and work out the peak-hours percentage for your own satisfaction? It might not be accurate to three places of decimals, but it’ll give you a fair idea of the figures involved. 
 

Good luck…and of course it’ll also give you a good idea of how you might be placed for the Nov and Dec incentives…

Hi

There is no indication that any of the readings have estimated.

Given that the bars are all over the place I can see no evidence of a consistent estimating process.

However no half hourly data available for the 16, 19, 26 and 29 October

Any of the pages I have looked at suggest that the information has been sent to Ovo

Hi @Johnchisholm 

Am not sure that the half hourly consumption data on the usage page  is ever estimated by OVO from memory but I can't be sure.

The daily register readings and hence daily data on the monthly page are estimated if missing. 

I have asked if this can be double checked. 

On the daily tab of 30min readings, for those days with data, does it look like some of the 30min slots may be wrong or are blank? Basically do any of those days with data look incomplete or potentially incorrect. It may be difficult to know.

If you haven't already you could try pulling the 30 min consumption data from one of the regulated 3rd parties and compare it to what you see with Ovo 

https://www.n3rgy.com/

Interesting. Never heard of n3ergy so took a punt and signed up. Downloaded my data and, like in Ivie, all my half hourly usage is there up to noon on 5th November at which point even these companies lose the data. However in my OVO online account they aren't showing any usage info at all for the last week or so of October onwards up to today. I really don't know why we bother with these things. They seem completely unreliable.

Ivie is a third party app, like Loop if you've heard of that one, that monitors your smart meters and gives you handy graphical breakdowns of your usage. Ivie will also tell you if your usage for a day is higher or lower than expected. If you buy Ivie's In Home Display it will even show you current live electric usage wherever you are, and your low/high draws of the day up to that point. Since OVO are still giving out outdated, basic, IHDs (I got an old IHD3 when they changed my meters and I think they're on IHD7 now) I'm glad I've got the Ivie IHD.

@waltyboy the irony of that photo above is it's from a day where OVO say there is no electricity use data available 🤷🤷

Thank you so much @Jeffus for that kind information, I shall investigate…and thank you too for the explanation about the differing ways in which smart meter data can be accessed by various third parties.  It’s a lot to take in at first, but it’s beginning to make sense!  
 

I shall investigate…and I recall I did get a very helpful and extremely swift reply from the glowmrkt technical people last month when I asked whether they could help me see my missing October data. They couldn’t, as it happens, because I was locked out of giving them permissions, but it was an impressively helpful, clear and swift response, not automated, but a very friendly personal reply. To my shame, I’d since forgotten about the nice glowmrkt folk…

Hah, @GrumpyTrucker indeed I didn’t miss the irony…I noticed immediately the date on your example! Hope you get it all sorted soon, but at any rate from my own understanding of my experience last month,  it seems that your data won’t actually have disappeared off into the ether but will eventually be visible again. It would be nice to have access to, and an understanding of, any error codes on the smart meter, but that definitely does sound way above my pay grade!!  Possibly from the meter’s viewpoint, there is no error?!

Ok, thanks for the explanation.

can I make it clear I have no axe to grind, I am just interested in the process. This is what happens when you are retired with time to spare!

How do I know the meter is not communicating with you by the appropriate cut off time and how is that fixe?
 

thank you

A fair question. 

I suspect a delay in getting the previous day’s half hourly usage is related to ‘Wide area network’ (WAN) drop outs. My understanding is that sometime in the morning the meter tries to connect to the supplier. If for any reason there is no signal this will fail and will be re-attempted. 

At this point before I say too much nonsense, let me ask the opinion of @Blastoise186 and @Firedog to affirm me so far.

Typically Energy Suppliers and 3rd parties use slightly different mechanisms and timing for getting the 30 min consumption data.

N3ergy call for data every couple of hours. That is why you see in day data on Loop for example. Hence if the data doesn't get to them for whatever reason, they often but not always get it soon after.

Suppliers typically schedule to get data sometime close after midnight, then if they don't get it after a period will often call for data again. This mechanism of noticing and then getting missing data is potentially an area for improvement for OVO.

OVO say this

"We receive readings in bulk at the end of each day, and each reading is timestamped"

For whatever reasons this means we regularly see posters, including me in the past, every month saying they can see 30 min consumption data on the 3rd party websites but not with OVO. OVO currently can't often match the 3rd parties in terms of timeliness as we have seen every month.

It probably means ovo could do with reviewing their process if they want to match N3ergy etc. Just depends on how high a priority it is for them, i am sure OVO have a long list of priorities.

As a starter it would help if ovo allowed more time for 30min  consumption figures to appear in customers accounts for the Power Move product.

I think it will be even more important when all suppliers have to offer Octopus Agile type tariff. I think it is debatable at least whether OVO could launch an Agile type tariff without further work.

As a snapshot the government said circa 9% of smart meters had some sort of permanent or temporary communication issue at the end of March 2023. 

Sorry, I’ve not got much to add.

There are two different problems, and this is my guess at the two scenarios:

1. OVO requests usage data from DCC sometime after midnight each day. Sometimes, those data will be incomplete (missing the figure for one or more Hh slots), in which case OVO’s automated systems will try again to retrieve the data. This will in most cases succeed.
2. On occasion, OVO fails to request usage data, e.g. because there is a hold on the account for some other reason - meter readings are missing, or billing has gone awry, for example. 

We have seen periods when many customers are missing usage data for days at a time. It happened in October 2022, and it happened again this year. I can’t imagine why this happens, but back-filling those consumers’ usage tables seems to involve manual intervention. I suspect that it’s only those who complain and persist that eventually benefit from manual intervention, while those who remain silent may be left with holes in their records. Manual intervention is expensive in terms of the resources available to undertake it.

Bottom line: if you’re in scenario (2), squeak if you really need some grease.
 

PS

It’s my experience that third-party data collectors - specifically n3rgy.com - won’t rest until they have all the usage data that DCC holds. They even tell me if there are holes: 

The ‘first period’ is a date in July 2022, while the ‘last period’ was a couple of hours ago. The table shows only a two-hour period when my supply was disconnected while a new meter was installed. Otherwise, there are data for every half-hour in the past 15 months. If this organization (actually part of our friends SMS, who own many of the smart meters we use) can do it, OVO should also be able to do it.

Each month I receive an email to say that my smart meter is not sending in readings.  I have phone OVO and they say the smart meter is sending readings every 30 mins.  So I am confused.