Smart Economy 10 - Just had new meter installed is it too early to worry if the tariffs are the right way round?

Hi ​@ClaireL ,

It usually takes up to six weeks to fully set everything up so I’d say try giving it more time. If it still doesn’t look right after that - definitely flag it up!

Hey ​@ClaireL 

Blastoise & Firedog are right here. 
 

This topic may be helpful:

 

You can find out more about Load Test’s on the website. 

​​​​​​​Hope this helps.

At the moment, I have 2 tabs (Anytime and Heating) on the Readings page. The last reading under Heating is the manual one I submitted the morning of the engineer's visit (so not yet the final reading taken by the engineer that I believe he was going to send in). Both sets of smart meter readings are showing up under the Anytime tab as below: 

The plan still shows as THTC on my account:

Plan name

Simpler Energy - THTC

My worry was that the tiers didn't match what I'm getting on the meter itself (ie TOU rate 1 on the meter is peak, by timings and by rate, but tier 1 is labelled offpeak, and TOU rate 2 on the meter is offpeak but tier 2 is labelled peak) but as you say, ​@Firedog , if the SSC is still an old one then presumably the tiers may not have been finalised either. I did check the API when it was still showing the single THTC meter but sadly didn't take a copy before it updated so I don't remember the values. It is still showing the smart meter and the old heating meter (which has one tier of null) so is obviously still in flux.

​@Emmanuelle_OVO I have read that topic and I hope I don't run into those problems! I was relieved that the storage heaters are coming on at the right times and the IHD agrees (within 5 mins) that they match to the offpeak times, so I guess if the billing is the only bit that turns out to be wrong at least we're warm this winter and we have a large credit on the account so that'll help buffer it while we try to sort it out. I was hoping to get out ahead of this problem if the experts felt I was already heading for trouble but I may just need to be patient! :)

One thing I've been struggling with - the IHD shows the tariff rate against each TOU rate at the time it's active but I haven't been able to persuade the meter to show me that. If I toggle through the screens with button A I can see the readings but not the tariff rates. The Button B screens don't seem to help either. I assume the IHD is getting those tariff rates from the meter but I wanted to get them from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Can anyone tell me how to view the tariff rates on the meter - or is that something else that isn't fully set up yet (even though the IHD shows them)?

Thanks all!

I’m sure the way your readings are being recorded and used for billing will come right sooner or later, but I know how frustrating it can be to have to wait weeks for things to fall into place, and then more time for any faults that come to light to be corrected. Just keep an eye on the account for the time being.

As regards finding stuff on your meter: it’s not easy to advise when you haven’t told us what kind of meter it is. You might fill in your Profile so we don’t have to ask 🙂 - all we have to do is point at your profile picture and select About to see it. You may have noticed that I put details of my stuff in my signature, so there’s not even any clicking involved.

That said, if you got an Aclara SGM 1400 series meter (e.g. SGM 1416-B), you might enjoy poring over its user manual. This doesn’t always help with navigating its display’s menus, though, because they’re configurable, so yours could be different from mine. The tariff ToU rates are bound to be there somewhere, and the active rate will normally be on Button A’s menu.

Good point that i didn't actually give the meter model! You hit the nail on the head though, it's an Aclara SGM1416-B. I'll need to read through the manual in more detail to try to figure things out. However, pressing A toggles through 4 screens:

TOU Rate 1 (reading in kWh)

TOU Rate 2 (reading in kWh)) 

Total active import 

Total active export 

Button B doesn't seem to modify the button A screens, it has its own 8 options:

The main screen with whatever button A is currently showing 

Mode of operation: credit mode 

R1BL1 kWh

Engineering menu (I haven't had the courage to look in here! :) )

Event log

Meter signal strength

Active TOU number

Privacy PIN menu

So the IHD seems to be the only source I can find of the tariff rates so far. When the prices change in the new year I assume I'll see updated info on the IHD?

Hey ​@ClaireL. Yes that’s right 😊

I’ve just spent a quarter of an hour pressing buttons on my meter, but while could at some stage see the daily standing charge, I couldn’t spot any tariff price details except for the active one. [I even entered the engineering menu by guessing that no PIN had been set for it 😉]. So there seems bizarrely to be no way of checking what the meter thinks unit prices other than the current one are. Sorry for misleading you! 

I did say that the menus are configurable, so even though you and I can’t find them, that’s not to say that someone else with exactly the same meter wouldn’t be able to.

As regards tariff changes, e.g. at the beginning of the quarter for those on SVT, I’d just say it won’t happen at midnight on the first. There are millions of meters that have to be updated; that’s an awful lot of data being pushed through DCC, and it might well take a couple of days before they’ve reached everyone.

Thanks for trying to find the option on your meter ​@Firedog :) No change on the info pulled by the api so far - I'll keep an eye on it into the new year and update here when I see movement. 

Thanks everyone, and hope you're all having a peaceful time!

The answer to my question about if the IHD would automatically update the tariff today appears to be: yes, but…

The updated unit price showing on the IHD now (at 10pm) is 22.58p, which looks like the new THTC offpeak rate showing on the tariff page for my area (with the VAT added). I'd expect the correct rate for E10 to be 20.14p + VAT so 21.15p showing on the IHD.

Obviously that's because the account still shows as THTC so that tariff is what was pushed out to the meter. Ah well, hopefully it'll all be sorted out eventually!

The SMETS Command Update Tariff Configuration usually fixes that. But you’ll want to wait out the six weeks first and for the account itself to update to your new tariff. :)

We're now at 9 weeks exactly and the account has just updated to Economy 10 today. The old heating meter has disappeared from the account and the daily meter readings are applied to the right tariff - yay!

I'm still seeing the old meter on the API output (and the same codes against the smart meter which look to be older codes) but presumably that will catch up. Certainly the OVO account and billing look fine now. 

Thanks ​@Blastoise186 , ​@Firedog and ​@Emmanuelle_OVO  for your input. This looks to be an example of a successful migration from THTC on RTS to Economy 10 on a smart meter :)

Sweet! That’s REALLY, REALLY good to hear!

Yeah, everything sounds like it’s doing the number crunching correctly then. I suspect the old meter won’t totally disappear from the account for a while as IIRC the system tends to remember what meters you’ve had previously. But as long as future billing is being done against the active meter I’d say that’s the most important thing.

Oops, I slightly jumped the gun. When I took a closer look at the bills, they were charging the wrong tariff for the wrong unit (even though the smart meter readings are correctly assigned). I suppose the good news there is that when that gets sorted out the bills will be less!

I've spoken to Customer Services and apparently there's a hold on my billing at the moment because of the discrepancy and it will need manually sorted out. So, we're not quite there but hopefully getting closer.

Something to keep an eye on :)

Sounds like someone’s already on the case. They’ll let you know when they have updates

Hey ​​​​​@ClaireL 

This feedback is super helpful to customers in a similar position thank you so much for the update. Seems mostly positive & I hope all is well once the billing hold is removed. 😊

I thought I'd give a final update on this thread, now that it's been sorted.

The billing discrepancy that had been noticed by OVO (which was why the billing was on hold) was a historical issue from a couple of years ago which I think affected a lot of people? We received a letter saying we owed something but that due to back billing rules we weren't being charged. At that point the billing was taken off hold and the bills continued to be wrong.

It's taken several chats, phone calls and emails, and unfortunately in the end a few emails to the Complaints address as we weren't getting any response or follow up as promised, but someone called Nathan phoned today to say he'd sorted the problem and the bills now look a lot better! 

So in this case, the smart meter has been doing the right thing all along and correctly tagging the 2 readings right from the start, which is great, and they are showing the right way round on the meter readings page. Unfortunately the billing system was then misattributing these readings to the wrong rates. 

Ah well, it's all sorted now. Just in time for us to get a heat pump installed in a couple of months' time and then I'll need to see if we can move tariffs to a single rate one...  😊

Morning ​@ClaireL,

Absolutely brilliant news that this is finally sorted - I’ve read back through this and it sounds like a really frustrating time indeed 😣. Keep an eye on the bills going forward just to be sure, but from what you’ve said it sounds like this is all going as it should do now.

On the subject of changing to a single rate tariff - this is easily done. You’ll just need to ask our Support Team to give you a quote for what we have available. In the office we’d call this a ‘P2 to P1’ plan - basically, we still take two reads from your meter, but we bill both sets of reads on the same single unit rate. This is something that needs to be put in place by the Support Team then, once it’s in place, you’ll be quoted single rate plans in future when your plan is up for renewal etc. Our Support Team will also be able to assess your peak / off-peak split to see whether a single rate plan is definitely the best option.

Let us know when you get your heat pump installed and we’ll add the relevant badge to your Forum account, so that other Forum members will be able to recognise you’ve got one. There’s also heaps of great information about heat pumps on the Forum:

• Heat pumps - What’s your experience of the benefits and downsides to an ASHP? SHARE YOUR EXPERIENCE

• Setting up a Heat Pump - ASHP

Have a great weekend!

​@ClaireL Great to see it all worked in the end. Thanks so much for keeping us updated.
  

One teeny little caveat here: unless something has changed recently, the change from dual-rate to single is irreversible - there’s no going back. Don’t ask why! Of course, when your heat pump’s up and running, you probably wouldn’t ever need to do that. I’m only putting this here just in case someone falls over Ben’s instructions in the future unaware of the potential pitfall.

Yes you are right ​@Firedog! Definitely worth pointing out. Of course, if anything changes in that regard we’ll update all relevant forum topics.

When you say 'final update'

I had a smart meter installed end August last year and installed an air to air heat pump, my account had a billing hold placed on it to review 57 periods, mostly I believe related to the smart meter settling down in the first few weeks, I've been calling every 2 weeks for an update and they seemed to resolve most of the issues except the last two. It's been stuck like this now for the last couple of months and they admitted they had no-one assigned to resolve this. I really despair with the back office OVO support. I thought I was at the final update point a couple of months ago! 

I'm just frustrated as part of my masterplan was to escape THTC and get a standard meter setup allowing me to move supplier smoothly should I wish, but I wouldn't even consider doing this with this billing hold sat on my account - it might be possible, but if I'm changing supplier I want it to be a clean break, and definitely no lingering issues back to the OVO billing dept.

I’m really sorry to hear this ​@Infiltrator, how frustrating. It might be worth raising a complaint if you haven’t already. We don’t have access to customer accounts on the forum so I’m not able to give an update on your account issues unfortunately. 

Thanks ​@Emmanuelle_OVO but if I raised another complaint this would be the 3rd, every time I call, the advisor is always surprised that no one has called me to give me an update. Like I said, I despair. I started my quest to get away from THTC just over a year ago, it's been a journey, and I'm just glad it's almost over! 

Hey ​@Infiltrator 

I completely understand your frustration.

Thanks ​@Emmanuelle_OVO , I started this whole journey to escape THTC with an ombudsman case, last March OVO couldn't tell me how to leave THTC to allow me to install a modern heating system to heat the house more efficiently. I was successful, and the timing of the introduction of the new smart meters meant I was an early adopter of the tech and the tech side went well. Since then it's just been downhill with OVO back office, I'm not going to bother the ombudsman with this minor issue, not yet anyway!