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

We’ve had a bit of a breakthrough, one of the flats upstairs managed to get the issue fixed (they were eight months without the economy 7 working so no storage heating and no main water tank all winter!). Finally an electrician noticed that there’s no timer clocks in these apartments, so by fitting one to the water heater and storage heaters he managed to get them going again. Thank God for him because about half a dozen electricians have been to a variety of different apartments in the block and none of them were on the right track. 
 

The man from OVO’s here right now, having heard the story he reckons the combination of the new meter and timer clocks will fix it too.

So it seems there was never anything wrong with my neighbours new meter (Dave from OVO just had a look at his too and said yeah looks like it’s all fine) it just needs a small rewire in the flat and fingers crossed we’ll be sorted 

Remember we’re talking about two completely different sorts of supply here. If I’ve understood the situation properly, flats in your block were fitted with RTS systems to control their heating (space- and water). Some occupants were unaware of this, or of the fact that RTS was going away. So now the RTS signal has finally been switched off, the problems for those who hadn’t acted to get an alternative set up in time are coming out to bite.

No one could predict what would happen to an individual household’s supply when the signal went off, because it would depend on the electrical installation inside the property. Some might see the heating working just as before; some might see no heating at all, while others might see the heating on all the time. Those who did have heating might well discover that their bills were much higher than before.

An electrician has managed to get the Economy 7 heating working in one flat by means of installing some timeswitches, but that’s no indication that other occupants would benefit from similar arrangements. We just don’t know enough about his system.

A modern meter is smart enough to be able to switch power to heating circuits on at offpeak times and off again at the end of offpeak periods. What might benefit from a timer in this situation is a water immersion heater, which for many households only needs to be on for a couple of hours a day.

If you have an OVO engineer on the job (and not one from SMS), you should get a good solution. Good luck!     

If there were a vote for the most interesting thread (question + all replies) of the month, I would vote for this one! Even for some months. I feel very invested! Fingers crossed it gets solved soon.

Good news! That was probably the meter’s Boost function, which allows you to override the internal time-switch that controls power to the heaters. The real test will come overnight, when your Economy 7 offpeak period is due. How did you tell that the heaters came on when the engineer did his test? 

Did you get an IHD? 

Congratulations on the new toy 🥂
  

OK. It would be good, though, to have a clear signal. That’s available at the meter itself, and probably also from an IHD - which brings us to ...

Providing an IHD isn’t optional, as far as I’m aware. It could show you exactly when the tariff changes from peak to offpeak, and also when power is turned on to storage and water heaters. It’s vital to make sure that those events are exactly synchronized, but sadly they often aren’t at installation.

What are your offpeak times?

And - surprise, surprise! - could we please have a nice clear photo of your shiny new meter?

I must admit I’m not entirely sure what the off-peak times are - just had a good hunt through the app but no clues to be found there. During the winter the big click used to come at 1am but of course the old meter never changed time for BST. 
 

Well it’d have been nice to see what an IHD could do, but to be fair I’ll be submitting my own readings in any case - don’t trust technology enough to let it go without scrutiny! Perhaps when all this is sorted out I’ll get on to OVO and get them to send one out

Will do you a photo tomorrow when we’ve ascertained if it’s any use or not!

Morning ​@ConfusedJim,

I’d just like to say a big thank you to you for creating this thread, and for keeping it going with such great updates. ​@costeek is right in what they’ve said about this being a really interesting thread, and it will become a great source of truth for others with the same issue. We really do appreciate it.

Now for the moment of truth - did your heating come on automatically last night? 

Once we see the photo of your meter we’ll be able to tell you what the correct peak / off-peak times are.

The storage heaters did indeed heat up! So they’re back in action. The hot water has heated up without us having to use the booster button in the kitchen today, but before all this happened it was instantly piping hot from the tap - now it’s warm at best and takes about 15/20 seconds before it runs warm at all. So we’ve still got a bit of work to be done on that side of things.

And furthermore we’ve still got to get to the bottom of why mine is working and why my neighbours aren’t! There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to what’s happening 

We heard the big click from the fuse box switching to economy 7 at 11:30 last night so that must be the start of our off-peak

The new meter doesn’t seem to be added to my OVO account yet, how long should it take to show up? I have the last meter readings for the old one here, but was told I don’t need to submit them