Are Economy 10 tariffs available yet?

Have you looked on the prices and plans page @IanC ? https://plans.ovoenergy.com/
It does depend on location but I can see a ‘Smart Economy 9’ for example. 
Be aware though that OVO can’t change some meters to multi rate due to their billing system 

We have now been told that OVO don't offer E10 on a Smart Meter & we should never have been offered it by SSE! It appears that we had a Smart Meter fitted on Economy 10 with SSE in March. When we migrated to OVO in August Economy 10 wasn't a tariff OVO offered But NOBODY TOLD US!! I think so we have been on E7 since.  The local setup still thinks we are on E10 and the heating etc. still boosts for 10 hours per day, but that means 5 hours at expensive heating! The charging pattern on Storage Radiators is still E10 but we have been losing 5 hours of cheap electricity a day!.

There's talk of compensation, well see! Disgraceful! We can't be the only customers affect by this.

It explains why it was so difficult to reconcile readings with usage!

My advice would be not accept a Smart Meter until you are certain that E10 is available on it!

E10 must be offered by all providers at the latest when the Rollout of Smart Meters is complete. OVO are saying March next year.

I am surprised to hear that.

For example here is a description of E9 with three off peak times on a smart meter

https://www.ovoenergy.com/help/article/electric-heating/economy-9

I am pretty sure SSE customers were meant to come across on exactly the same tariff under the ofgem regulations.

Yes this is also my understanding, @pegem. You should keep your smart meter settings so that your 10 hours of off peak usage remains. 

Are you aware when your eco-10 times are? If so, have a look at the meter readings for each register and see which one changes. I would expect it to be the off peak register...

I am the Unicorn here! I am a former SSE customer. I have been on Economy 10 tariff since I moved in June 2022. About a year ago I requested SSE install a smart meter. In May, I was migrated to Ovo. The tariff has been consistent throughout the time (well, consistently Eco 10, but a thrilling variable tariff rollercoaster🎢).

I do like the tariff. I have turned off the storage heater (for good) and using convection heating instead, but I am still spending less money than I would be using the equivalent single rate. 

I was going to add where I lived, but SSE has closed down completely, so everyone who was on Eco 10 with when their accounts were moved across, must have been moved to an equivalent tariff. West London, FWIW and I am on Simpler Energy - Economy 10.

Just spent a couple of hours reading all the frustration & incompetence going on regarding E10. Think I will postpone my change from Superdeal to E10 or E9 until proof of a smooth efficient knowledgable transfer is evident! As I understand it I have until next June until RTS disappears (if RTS switch off not postponed again!).

I would still recommend upgrading now if possible. The June 2025 date is absolutely 100% set in stone now and my industry contacts (THANK YOU!!!) have confirmed that it’s very unlikely to change again. Those contacts prefer to remain anonymous, but are extremely helpful when I summon them. They know who they are and I truly appreciate what they do for me.

They’ve also warned that there’s likely to be a massive rush towards the final part of the remaining time as people suddenly wake up and get things booked en masse, so I’d strongly recommend doing it now. The issues in this thread were from before OVO had everything finalised and this should now be fixed.

Ultimately, it’s your choice, but personally I wouldn’t leave it until last minute.

​​​Hey @johndebs, 

There’s no pressure from our end for you to upgrade so take your time and make the best decision for you. @Blastoise186 has made a good point that we still have a lot of customers that aren’t eligible and we may see appointments get busier the closer we get to the shut off date. 

You can contact us when you’re ready or if you have any questions give our dedicated Support Team a call. 

Well I have ‘bitten the bullet’ & booked an appointment for an E10 smart meter. Will be intensely interested to see how it all works out! Can you confirm that my existing Superdeal tariff that runs with 2 meters (one that gives 3 readings of day, night & stored heat (water) & the second meter that gives just one reading for stored heat (storage heaters)) will be able to be easily changed to E10? In other words 2 meters between them giving 4 readings transferred into one meter giving, I assume, 2 readings, peak & off-peak.

Yup, OVO has got that in hand. The change of tariff would do away with the other registers anyway.

Sorry Blastoise but what do you mean by other registers? Will I be able to distinguish as I can now, what is being used as heating/water & what is being used by everything else?

Yes, that’s possible. But the way you can do it will not be the same. With E10, ALL usage during Off-Peak will show on the same Off-Peak reading/register rather than being split off into different things.

If you set the meter to Half-Hourly Readings, the tools in MyOVO will let you see roughly what’s going on Heating and Hot Water under the usage data. You can request that either during the install or later via OVO Support.

Hey @johndebs,

Thanks for sharing with us that you’ve decided to go for the upgrade! I’d love for you to come back and update the thread with your findings and thoughts on the process from booking to install. This may help others in a similar position! 

Keep us posted 🙂

Still a little confused. I need to know that the storage heating & water comes on only during the 3 x E10 off-peak periods & is off for the remaining 14 hours. Really a completely  separate circuit from everything else, which should be on for the 10 hours off-peak & on for 14 hours peak. If that happens then surely I should be able to easily distinguish heat/water usage from everything else. My concern is because previously people have been charged for peak usage when it should have been at off-peak rates. (Thought they were on E10 when actually they were on E7). 

Following this with interest as I am currently on a 2 meter THTC set up and will need to make a decision soon too.

I can’t decide if I would manage with Economy 7 or would perhaps also be better with Economy 10 to give the storage heaters another boost during the day up here in chilly Scotland.

Also, would Economy 7 maybe be more conducive to being able to move to other suppliers as several still offer Economy 7 but I don’t think many offer Economy 10?  

Another query is, if I opted for Economy 7 and my meter was set up for this but decided later Economy 10 would be better, would it require an engineer to come out and alter the meter, or could it be done remotely?

I certainly will Chris but please see my question posted a short time ago. I am worried about the whole thing!

I dismissed E7 many years ago as I too need that storage heater boost even in Gloucestershire! I therefore went for SSE Superdeal & migrated to Ovo & it has always worked pretty well. We have a couple of wood burners too so that is a good addition. I am opting for E10 as that gives an extra option with an additional evening boost although will try & not use it too much due to cost. My concern is that the smart meter will not switch off the storage heaters/water at the end of the off-peak periods & will leave them on to run @ peak rates.

Past postings suggest people have suffered this, hence my concern. With Superdeal we have had to have 2 meters giving a total of 4 readings (day, night, water & heating). E10 needs to separate the heating/water with everything else as everything else goes cycles from peak to off-peak. Heating/water only required off-peak!

Waiting to be convinced or will cancel smart meter & review later.

Thread trawl in progress. Please wait for updates while we catch up.

Thanks for understanding.

Ok, I think I’ve caught up with some of this so that I can make an initial response. Please bear with me as the Thread Trawl continues, further posts will be added shortly.

@Mo59 in that case Economy 10 is probably better so you get the extra boost. The last thing you want is to run out early in the afternoon and have nothing for the evening! IMO Economy 7 is of less benefit if you get freezing cold Scottish weather more often than not. You should consider your welfare as well as your wallet.

Switching between the two is possible and WOULD NOT require an engineer visit, but I would personally recommend going with one and sticking with it if possible.

@johndebs The advantage of a Smart Meter is that it keeps a copy of ALL billing data locally - this can be used to repair billing issues later if needed - including fixing Peak/Off-Peak timing issues. The meter knows exactly when power was used, which means that if E7/E10 got crossed, OVO could use the meter data to fix it and correct the bills. This cannot be done with any RTS Meter and it’s a massive advantage that works in your favour.

The meter will control the heating/hot water directly so that it operates only during Off-Peak hours unless you manually hit the Boost button to let it run on a temporary one-time override during Peak hours at Peak rates - but that’d be solely at your discretion as to whether and if/when you hit the Boost button or not. Otherwise, it will NOT permit them to run outside of Off-Peak hours without your explicit instruction to do so. It’ll have a dedicated circuit to run that stuff on so that it has 100% control over preventing unwanted Peak usage.

If it doesn’t do that, it’s an easy fix - one SMETS Command to update ECAUL/ALCS Configs can instantly reprogram it with the right hours and force it to do what you expect without an engineer visit. You can’t do that with RTS.

Everything at your property will otherwise work exactly as it does now.

Thanks Blastoise186 , some reassurance that all will be well. Have a good weekend.

You haven’t actually said so, but I assume that your heating equipment is on a separate circuit switched on and off according to the tariff timings. This is exactly what a five-wire smart meter would do, too. The fifth contactor feeds the heaters, and it is turned on and off by a switch within the meter. It has been a bit hit-and-miss whether this works as intended straight after the new meter has been installed, but it can usually be configured correctly in a few days. 

I take it you’ve done your sums to find out the relative costs of Economy 10 v. Economy 7. You would need to know just how much electricity you use over a year at peak and offpeak rates. If the heating usage has been metered separately, there may be some extra benefit with E10 because power-hungry appliances (e.g. tumble dryers, cookers, washing- and washing-up machines) can be run during the daytime E10 offpeak periods at a cost of something like 7.5p/unit less than they would cost to run on an Economy 7 tariff.  The rates depend on which region you’re in, and I think there are bits of Gloucestershire in three different regions. The differences between regional rates may be more than you imagine. 

You can see the basic current and future rates (to December) in these tables, which will give an idea of how much prices for you might go up on 1 October. OVO then has some leeway when determining how to make the split between peak and offpeak rates.

Yes our heating/water are on a separate circuit switching on & off as you say hence having to have 2 meters to give the 4 separate readings.

E7 has never been an option for us due to having to have a pm boost to the storage heaters. Superdeal has achieved this quite well for nearly 30 years with SSE despite their customer service of good diminishing to awful over the years! Don’t ask! We have been given the choice by Ovo to switch to E7, E9 or E10 & hope that by choosing E10 we shall get a reasonable result & similar if not slightly better results than Superdeal. No other options exist so we have to go with it.