Smart meter Aclara SGM116B installed- Have lost my Economy 7

Just an update, my meter is an Aclara sgm1416b, and the customer service said that the meter is a single-rate. And should be changed for a multi-rate. Can someone help with this? Do I need to change the meter again?

Hey @TeresaSantos 

Sorry to hear about the issue you’re having. 

Was the new meter put in after being moved from to OVO? 

Would you also be able to clarify if you had an economy 7 tariff and meter prior to the new meter being fitted?

Hi @Abby_OVO

This is my new meter, which was changed last Monday. Was OVO by SMS who changed it. I called customer service and spoke on chat and they said that I have the standard tariff, and to request Economy 7 I have to change the meter again because this one is a single rate. But the engineer told me that is the right meter and can have the Economy 7. 

I have a storage heater and a water heater, that run during the night.

Below is the info that the customer service told me yesterday.

Unit Rate (anytime): £0.2859 kWh (£0.2723 excl. VAT)

Standing Charge: £0.6673 Daily (£0.6355 excl. VAT)

Usage Projection: 6520 kWh Exit Fee: £0

“I do apologize, however, these are the tariffs that you are on, I have even doubled checked on my system.

The tariff's that I provided are the one's on your contract and I cannot change them.”

I don't have the Economy7 tariff.

Thanks

Teresa

Hi @TeresaSantos , at the moment OVO can’t change your meter or supply to Economy 7 as their billing system can’t cope with it. I have a similar thing - my meter is quite similar to yours but although it can record 2 different sets of data, if you’re not currently on E7, then they can’t switch you to it. 

Here is some info on your model

• Which Aclara meter do I have? A guide to the ingenious and brilliant Aclara smart meter model numbers Tutorial

​​​​​​

• SGM1416-B - S2 Single Phase 5 Terminal meter with a 2A Auxiliary Relay for controlling storage heaters

You may find you need to switch suppliers due to limitations in the ovo IT system. 

Perhaps try contacting Octopus and see if they can help. They get the best reviews on Trustpilot and are currently the only supplier recommended by Which.

https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/octopus.energy

https://www.which.co.uk/reviews/energy-companies/article/energy-company-reviews/octopus-energy-aESDM2a8ISWP

I’m located in Larkhall.
Yes, this is a prepayment meter.
No, I never was on an Economy 7 (due to another mistake made by SSE).

So if the meter is incorrectly configured at installation, what I can do?

So, why do they have in this information on their website?

Because they do offer those tariffs it’s just that they can’t offer them on your current meter. I’m in the same situation. 

 Does mean this I will have to request a new smart meter?
Thanks for your answer.

Hey @TeresaSantos 

No you won’t need to get a new meter, this won’t change the ability of getting this at the moment. It’s just like BPLightlog said,

We don't currently offer customers who're on single rate to go to economy 7 however if you're economy 7, we can charge you a standard rate for each register. Instead of the peak and off peak.

@Abby_OVO I’m a bit confused by this. I am currently on a single-rate tariff, (Region 11, Direct Debit). When I visit my Renewal page, I see three options, all of them Economy 7:
  

These offers are directly contradictory to your statement that We don't currently offer customers who're on single rate to go to economy 7

However, if I visit the Switch page and plug in my address, I see first:

Then, only single-rate tariffs, one fixed and the other this:
  

So it’s entirely unclear what would happen if I were to opt to save about £4 a month and ‘Pick my new plan in 1 easy step’ by choosing the Simpler energy - Economy 7 offer. Can you guess? And can you explain why there is such a disconnect between the Renewal and Switch pages? 

I presume that Teresa won’t be able to see any offers at all for a pre-payment plan, even though she found a tariffs page. 

Hi @Firedog 

Thanks for flagging this. 

Yes if you’re currently on a single rate tariff, you should be seeing single rate plans on your renewal page. This is interesting, I seem to remember your smart meters went through enrollment and adoption to the national network of smart meters (E&A) with 2 rates being involved. Have you always had the one single rate and it was just that the register needing changing from rate 0 to rate 1 post E&A?

Hi @Tim_OVO 

Of course my set-up is an edge case - it always is. This is nothing to do with E&A (end of February); I’d already switched from dual- to single-rate as soon as my 2-year fixed tariff ended in early January. 

The MPAN makes it clear what type of supply is involved. The Switch page must query the MPAN database to be able to tell whether it’s one of OVO’s, and the Renewal page already knows it is, and also which tariff is currently active. The MPAN tells them what the profile class is (in my case 02: Domestic Economy meter of two or more rates). So it’s clear that the Renewal page hasn’t cottoned on to the fact that my two rates are the same, while the Switch page somehow has.

It’s the Renewal page that needs a bit of TLC to cover this edge case. I don’t think the R1/R2 peak/offpeak confusion is at all involved here.

PS (…!) The Plans page shows me a plethora of tariffs of every conceivable stripe. It’s frustrating that appealing tariffs exist that are apparently just not available to switch to.