Great question to ask about the possibility of installing a Smart meter if you’ve got an Economy 7 setup.  

We’re now able to fit Aclara SMETS 2smart meters for all Economy 7 set ups including those that use a 5th port/terminal connection, such as underfloor heating or storage heaters on economy 7 - More info here.

When they are installed the Smart Meter will match the function of your previous meter (ie a dual rate traditional meter will be replaced by a dual rate Smart Meter). If you’re currently Economy 7 but you’d like to be on a single rate tariff, reach out to our Support Team. While we can’t currently change the meter functionality, we can charge you the same rate for each register.  
 

There’s other great benefits to getting a smart meter installed - read more about this here!

Hello, I’ve just had a Smart meter fitted by Scottish Power and I have storage heaters. As I’m on a single rate tariff, can I switch to Economy 7 or 10?...Alan.

Hi @Alan 210 ,

Yup, that should indeed be possible. You’d need to request this change over the phone since it’s considered a change of contract and requires verbal agreement with most suppliers.

If you’re with OVO, you can contact the Support Team for this and they’ll sort this out for you. You can discuss which one would be best as well.

Fantastic, Thanks so much for your help.

Turns out OVO can’t move me to an economy 7 meter with the current smart meter I have which was installed by OVO so I would unfortunately need to move to another provider instead 

Thanks for your help. Alan.

Hi @Megha ,

That seems strange. Can you show me a photo of your electric meter and I can check that for you.

It’s in the common cupboards in the block of flats so haven’t been able to access it yet but the Serial No starts with 16P as per my account if that is of any help 

Thanks @Megha ,

That makes it sound like a SMETS1 Smart Meter to me. If it was installed by (or on behalf of) OVO, it’s probably also a Secure branded one as well, which is fully compatible with OVO’s systems.

I’m wondering if an agent just got confused here, because the Secure Liberty 100 family is definitely capable of being used in Economy 7 mode without needing a second meter installed.

I’d suggest contacting the Support Team again with a link to this thread. I’m well known to the support team now, so if you mention that you’ve spoken to me as well about this on the forum, that should make things easier.

Thanks @Blastoise186 i will try and contact the team next week and share this information with them

You’re welcome @Megha , glad I could help. :)

Probably the ONLY feature that might not work, would be the ability for the smart meter to automatically flip the storage heaters on and off at the appropriate times, in order to make sure they only ever run during the Off-Peak rate. However, if your storage heaters have timers anyway, you can probably just set the timers manually to match your tariff.

As long as you’re OK with that quirk, you should be good to go (to be fair, it’s not the most critical feature in the world for a smart meter to have).

Yep @Blastoise186 I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. 

@Megha it does sound like you’ve got an S1 Secure smart meter. See the guide here. There are two models: Liberty 100, and Liberty 110. 

The 110 is the 5th port meter. If you have a Liberty 100, you can have it set up in economy 7, but you won’t be able to have specific appliances connected to the off peak register only. 

Let us know a bit more info on the set up, meter type, and ideal arrangement and we can go from there! 

@Tim_OVO @Blastoise186 : thanks for the responses 

chatted with someone from the support team this morning and it appears that there is a software issue which isn’t allowing smart meters to use economy tariff currently and there is no timeline for when the issue will be rectified 

Thanks for the update, @Megha - that would explain it. 

We’ve not got this on our known issues on the billing platform list, which moderators and volunteers have access to. So I’ll do some digging on this issue and come back here with an update. 

So for now, where does this leave you, @Megha? 

If the issue is not likely to be fixed anytime soon then I would look to move to another provider who can offer me an economy 7 meter and tariff

Thanks @Megha ,

If you’re able to, could you snap a photo of your meter? I’m almost certain that the one you have should work fine, but knowing what you’ve got might help us to check.

Have tried to attach it do let me know if you can see the picture @Blastoise186 

Thanks @Megha , that came through nicely.

Your smart meter is a SMETS1 Secure Liberty 100, but is on the list of meter types which will get the SMETS2 upgrade. Even as a SMETS1, it’s fully supported by OVO as that’s what OVO were deploying when they were still doing SMETS1 meters.

@Tim_OVO should hopefully be able to dig deeper and see what’s going on. As it stands, the issue you describe isn’t on the list of known ones I have access to. But we’ll keep you posted with any news.

Seems like some software update for the smart old meter to allow Economy 7 tariff to be billed correctly.

although I’m not sure why it should be an issue if my Meter is sending readings every 30mins surely they can see the usuage per hour and Bill it that way 

so not sure what additional software needs to be fixed before it will work

thanks 

As far as I’m aware, the Economy 7 element is handled by the Metrology Firmware within the meter itself, rather than the Communications Hub firmware. Both parts are kept separated from each other to allow the Communications Hub Firmware to be updated without interfering with the Metrology Firmware - the latter of which never usually changes during the service life of a particular meter. I think it’s something to do with compliance or regulatory approvals which means the Metrology Firmware mustn’t be tampered with. Something along those lines.

As such, there shouldn’t be any firmware issues on your meter that would block Economy 7 which I know of. Economy 7 requires the meter to maintain two separate registers to track day (peak) and night (off-peak) usage independently and I don’t think having a smart meter can bypass that.

Tim’s on the case for you. :)

Perfect thank you for all the help! I’ll use this information when I give a call to OVO as the online chat advisors always give me the same response that it isn’t possible.

I can have a timer fit in if the meter doesn’t allow automatic turn on and off of the immersion heater

That could work.

I think the Secure Liberty 110 was the one that had five-terminals and could do the automagical timer switching tricks by itself, but the Secure Liberty 100 lacks this feature. Still, nothing you can’t fix with a simple timer switch on your heaters. 

Oh, and please let the agent know you’ve spoken to us here on the forum and provide a link to this thread! You’ll be amazed how much that helps.

If they’re still unsure, please give us a shout and I’ll ask @Tim_OVO to have a chat with the teams.

Hi @Megha yes I’ve just confirmed that it is a functionality limitation with the new billing platform. 

This means we’re unable to support remotely changing your smart meter from a single rate to a duel rate. 

This platform is under constant improvement, so I’d hope this function will be available in the future. But as you can imagine, I won’t try and provide a time frame for this improvement to be rolled out. 

Thanks @Tim_OVO 

will any communication be sent out when this is sorted or will I need to contact OVO again?

happy to hold off for a few weeks for an update if not I’ll try and move to another provider

thanks