Economy 7 not working through old meter - will smart meter work in apartment block?

Why smart meter wouldn’t work in the block of flats? It uses mobile phone network (unless you are in Scotland, it’s a bit different there) for sending data. It should be fine! I used to live in the high-rise building, and my smart meter worked perfectly. There could be some issues when you need your gas meter to send data to your electricity meter – sometimes they are too far away from each other. But even in that case there are some solutions found. But, if you are in the high-rise building, I’m sure you won’t have that kind problems! So, yeah, just book the replacement and let them do their job. 

P.S. My guess is that you were on Economy7 tariff, but when RTS was switched off, the cheap part of the tariff stopped working. 

The meter will work.

Whether it communicates by 3G/4G or by Long Range Radio the new meter should be able to communicate it’s readings to the Data Communications Company (DCC) and OVO picks them up from there.

If for any reason the new meter cannot communicate with DCC then you will have to send in readings to OVO, but that’s no different to what you do now with your non-smart meter.

However if your flat is too far from your meter then your In Home Display may be too far away from it to communicate properly.
It was/is a problem with blocks of flats, but there is something called ALT-HAN that should be able to help with that.

https://althanco.com/what-we-do/

https://althanco.com/how-it-works/

I just realised that when 3G signal will go off, smart meters will switch to 2G signal. Until their communication hubs (where possible) are replaced for 4G signal. Apparently this is one of the reasons why 2G signal is still being kept. Feels a bit strange to me.

It's not just smart meters that are keeping 2G going. smart bus stops and smart advertising signs also use, or can fall back on, 2G.

I'm not sure but think I read that some railway infrastructure also still uses 2.G

Thanks for the replies, they’ve been very helpful! Mobile signal is not great in our flat as we are on a lower floor, and I suppose there’s lots of steel etc in the way, but I bumped into a neighbour this afternoon and they said they have a smart meter through Eon and it works just fine, so fingers crossed all will be well. 
 

So should the economy 7 just start working again as before when the new meter goes in?

Very roughly - if you are North of a line from the Mersey to the Humber estuaries then you will be on Long Range Radio for smart metering. South of that it's the mobile phone signal.

Things are changing though, so while those sre the preferred methods they are not set in stone like they used to be. There is even smart metering over the internet coming for awkward cases.

Yes a smart meter can handle E7, but it needs to be a dual rate meter, and may need an auxiliary switch for the off-peak circuit.

 I assume you are already on E7 with OVO so that should happen automatically. But you may want to confirm with support that that is what the engineer will be fitting.

Yes we are an economy 7 tariff and haven’t been told when arranging the appointment that anything would change in that regard.

We have a bit of a development in the story though - another neighbour, also supplied by OVO, has exactly the same issue as us. Their meter box is also the same as ours. I had thought they wouldn’t be old enough to be affected by the RTS switch off though - they’re digital and don’t have any black transmitter box nearby

Hey ​@ConfusedJim 

I’m glad to see a couple of our community members have already stopped by with some helpful advice on this.

As they’ve already mentioned, everything should remain the same in terms of the tariff and the meter should work as intended and switch to the peak/off-peak times correctly. If any changes to contract had been required as a result of the meter change, the Support Team would have had to discuss this at the time of booking.

If the meter’s in a communal cupboard and you have concerns about whether there’ll be enough space or concerned about access, then it might be worth speaking with facilities management to make sure that they’re aware of the job if there’s anything that might prevent the job being completed. If it’s in a communal area, they may also know if others in the block have had smart meters fitted.

The following topic may also be helpful here:

I’ve lived in flats in various locations across Scotland over 10 years now, all with pretty poor mobile signal and I have to say I’ve had smart meters in all, and never had an issue so it’s not commonly an issue, or as a direct result of it just being in a block of flats.

I would be hopeful from what you’ve said here that everything should go ahead smoothly, and the E7 will begin to work again.🤞🏻

Do keep us updated with how you get on.

Will do - went to see the gent upstairs who’s had the identical problem, he’s been on to OVO today, he was a bit less relaxed with them about it than me! And they are sending someone to have a look at his meter today. So I will have the benefit of knowing whether it’s been successful for him or not

Please do let us know how the other gent's experience goes.

(And maybe point him to this forum if he has any questions about his own situation).

Well the neighbour upstairs had a smart meter put in yesterday, the engineer was sure it would fix the issue and said he’d checked everything - but the economy 7 still isn’t working, water heater and storage heaters still not getting any power. Not quite sure what we do next now. Nobody seems to have a handle on what the issue is

This isn’t an uncommon experience, and the solution is often quite simple if the meter is communicating properly as the engineer’s checks should have confirmed. It involves asking the supplier to send a command (called ECAUL) to the meter to configure the meter’s internal switch for the offpeak supply. The engineer can’t check this unless he happens to be on site in the middle of the night, and he can’t do the configuration himself. 

I’ve passed that on to him, Firedog, Thankyou - he is going to try calling them again to ask about what you suggested, I know he has already been on to them to complain again this morning

He has just been on the phone to OVO and the person he spoke to had never heard of an ECAUL… his complaint handler will be calling him back tomorrow 

Sadly, I’m not surprised. It’s not the sort of thing front-line support staff normally come across. Neighbour will have to be quite firm and ask his complaints handler to ask the Smart team to send the ECAUL request to configure his ALCS calendar to match the timings he’s expecting (something like offpeak every day 00:00 - 07:00, or whatever they’re supposed to be according to his tariff and region. The times probably haven’t made it on to the online account yet, but he probably knows what they should be.

This isn’t the engineer’s fault, because he can neither check that the switch has been properly configured (unless he specifically asks the mothership’s back office) nor do it himself. Sometimes, meters like this are pre-configured for Economy 7, but again the timings may not be right for the specific case. There’s no reason to suppose that the same will happen to you, but if it does you know what to do.

We’d be grateful for feedback on how he got on ... 

Hey ​@ConfusedJim 

Thanks for keeping us updated on that, I’m glad to see a couple of our members have already stopped by with the advice about ECAUL and you’ve already passed that on. Hopefully they have better luck getting that requested with their complaints handler.

Today’s update from upstairs - the neighbour told the complaints handler everything you’d suggested, so she put him on hold for about 15 mins while she got on to the emergency smart meter team. They told her that the engineer had put in the original ECAUL when setting it up, but they could see that it hadn’t worked. They are now “checking whether a new activation code can be sent directly to the meter, or if another emergency visit is required”. 
 

He said that when the engineer had arrived he informed him that it was indeed down to the RTS frequency no longer working, and my neighbour pointed out my meter (identical to his) and the engineer said that he could see (I’m not entirely sure what he saw to know this) that it wasn’t working either. But there are about a dozen more of the same meters still in the utility room, and yet the engineer said all the other ones are working - ours are the only two that aren’t. 
 

So there we have it - they’ve promised to get back to him with a course of action by the end of the day but as that is about an hour away it seems that’s about as far as we’ll get this week.

Hi ​@ConfusedJim

I think it might help if you could post some photos of your meter and anything around it.

I realise this may not be possible if it's in a meter cupboard or meter room.