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

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.

That tells us a lot. There has been so much publicity about the RTS switch-off over the past two or three years I’m surprised there are some customers who haven’t heard about it. Depending on the type of electricity meter, it’s often possible to see whether the RTS signal is getting through or not. The positively last final cut-off has been set for 27 June 2026.

Yes, this is a common scenario. As I said, I don’t think the attending engineer has the permissions required to alter the ‘ALCS Calendar’ in the meter. He can call up the smart team’s back office and ask them to do it - or you can ask Support to ask them to. It can only be done remotely, and it sometimes takes a couple of attempts to get the new settings to stick. Let’s hope for the best.

OVO sent an emergency engineer out to my neighbour yesterday, he said the guy was very good and helpful, but unable to solve the problem. He tells me the engineer said the new smart meter box was working fine, but both he and his supervisors said it sounded like OVO “have not set up the tariff correctly on the new meter”. So it’s back on to the complaints line tomorrow for him!

Firedog, I’d vaguely heard about the switch off but from what I’d read I thought our meter wouldn’t be affected - what I’d read said to look out for a black transmitter box near your meter, which ours doesn’t have, and showed photos of the really old analogue meters, so I’d thought our meter, being digital, was too new to be affected by it. Seems that’s not the case! Thankyou for all your help though, really appreciate it and our neighbour does too, it’s really helped him knowing what to tell the complaints handler they need to do!