Can I switch my smart meters to half hourly readings?

My son has his gas and electricity in his flat with OVO. When he first signed up, both the electricity meter and the gas meter only sent a reading once a month (the day after his DD is due in the middle of the month, which is inconvenient for various reasons).

At some point the electricity meter has started sending daily readings and it looks like it's now set to half hourly data. But the gas meter still only shows readings once a month, even though it's presumably sending via the same comms hub, and in fact on the Usage tab on his account he tells me he sees gas as well as electricity usage for each day. 

The gas meter is really high up on the wall (recently a meter reader visited and he only took a photo of the meter, without being able to reach the buttons to show the reading, to prove that he'd been unable to read it) so it would be handy if my son didn't need to take regular readings from it but the account always shows "we haven't had a reading from your meter recently" for the gas. 

I talked him through finding the bit on the account where you change your meter reading frequency but that only seems to refer to the electricity meter. 

Is there any way his account can show the daily readings from the gas meter it's presumably getting, if the Usage tab can show gas usage, and not feel he has to climb up a ladder whenever the price cap changes?

Hi ​@ClaireL ,

Probably an easy fix! Just ask the Support Team to reconfigure both meters to Half-Hourly Mode again and this should fix it.

If it doesn’t, try https://smart-meter-help.ovoenergy.com 

Hi ​@ClaireL 

Blastoise186 is assuming that the gas meter is Smart and sending readings monthly; however from what you say then I’m not so sure about that.

Is the gas meter actually smart and sending readings once a month, or are the monthly figuers for gas just estimates? It should tell you/your son on the billing if they are estimates.

From what you describe with the meter being high up then I think it’s a good possiblty that it is an older meter type that hasn’t been replaced with a SMETS2 meter yet because of the difficulty doing that at height.
eg. We have had posts here about meters being high up above staircases, which means special stair ladders and platforms to get up there and change them.

If it is possible to post some picture of the meter and it’s high-up location then we should be able to advise further about that.

In my ownexperience, for a while in my current flat I had a new SMETS2 electricity meter sending ½ hour readings daily, but my gas meter was still an older SMETS1 that wasn’t connecting/sending any readings at all, so I would get estimated billing for gas each month - unless I sent in readings.
My gas meter is ground level so I could send manual readings for my gas, but if your son can’t see his to send them in then his billing will just show an estimate each month for the gas.

​@ClaireL let us know how you get on following ​@Blastoise186’s advice - if Support can’t fix it we’ll have a deeper look into it.

​@Nukecad has raised a good point here, and the Support Team should be able to tell you whether the gas meter is a smart meter that’s in communication with us. From a background perspective, I can confirm that sometimes, when a read schedule change is put through, it gets stuck in the system called ‘BoL’ that we use to communicate with smart meters. When this happens, the workaround for our Support Team is to send another read schedule change via the BoL, which normally fixes things.

Let us know how you get on.

Cheers!

Hi ​@Blastoise186  and ​@Nukecad ,

The readings from the gas meter appear on the account on the 18th of every month labelled "smart". Sometimes my son can be bothered climbing the ladder (usually on a day the price cap changes when I've nagged him :) ) and then his manual reading also shows. But there is a consistent "smart" reading on the 18th every month.

The gas meter is a Liberty EG4v11. I have some photos but is there any info on it I should redact?

This really came to a head because I asked him to take a reading at the start of this month and we couldn't remember which button he'd pressed in July to get the right value. Everything he was pressing this month gave lower values than his latest smart reading (and the smart readings seem to rise at a sensible rate) so I suspect he was pressing the wrong button, possibly 9 instead of 6? But 6 is hard to reach so we gave up!

Edit: sorry ​@Ben_OVO I must have cross posted with you. Thank you, I'll get him to get in touch.

The Liberty EG4v11 is a SMETS1 (older type) smartmeter, and as you say that the bills say “smart” that tells you/us that it has been migrated to DCC and is communicating sucessfully.

So my possible concerns were unfounded and it should simply now be a question of getting the help of support to give it a remote ‘poke’ telling it to send readings daily.

Just for info a video showing how to take a reading (if you can reach it) as you say it should be button 6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0UNd98w3rI&t=4s

PS. As the meter is communicating then it’s probably not due for a replacement now until at least 2028

Hi ​@ClaireL, ​@Nukecad is right here, and if the Support Team have any issues they can follow the steps I’ve mentioned above about changing the read schedule twice in BoL, and this should fix things hopefully.

Let us know how you get on.

It took us a while to get round to phoning in, but my son spoke to a very helpful support person on the phone yesterday. The gas meter sent a smart reading overnight which is now showing on his account (3 days before its usual monthly reading) so it looks like it's sorted. Thanks everyone for the help!

Hey ​@ClaireL 

Thanks for coming back with that update, I’m really glad to see it sounds like things have been resolved for your son!

If there are any future issues or questions, please feel free for either of you to pop back any time.😊