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

That should have been checked on day 1, not ten days later! I wonder what the engineer meant when he said he’d checked everything.
     

No, a smart meter properly set up for Economy 7 can do everything it needs to do to control the heating equipment and power everything else even if it can’t communicate with the mothership. It does mean that it will have to be read manually once a month to make sure that bills are as accurate as they can be.

Have read elsewhere that sometimes to get the economy 7 working with a smart meter some changes need to be made to the wiring connecting the meter with the flat - this kind of tallies with the engineers saying that the way it was connected up was odd. But the same comment said that the meter engineers aren’t allowed to touch that, and the landlords will have to sort that out. 
 

The engineer on Saturday apparently pointed out another smart meter (an octopus-installed one) and said one like that would be your best hope, as it has a button on it allowing the engineer to send commands back to the network too. Neighbour is hoping that’s what they’re bringing this time.

Had a good nose around in the meter room myself this morning, another flat has had a meter installed by Octopus in the last couple of weeks which shows both day time and night time rates working, so clearly it is possible here - it’s just that OVO can’t get it right.

I’ve also had a closer look at the one they put in for my neighbour (that will be removed tomorrow apparently) - it doesn’t appear to have two separate rates on it. It shows only IMPRT, which as I understand it is power used by the customer, and EXPRT - which my research suggests is the amount of power sent back to the grid by customers who have solar panels etc. and can do so. Obviously that reads 00000 because nobody has that capability here. So as far as I can see, there’s no way to physically read separate daytime and nighttime rates off it. Surely this must be wrong? There’s no way anyone should accept having a meter they can’t physically take a proper reading off themselves

If the meter is configured for peak and offpeak usage, there will be a sequence of button presses to see the contents of the two registers. We’d have to know the precise type of meter to be able to help with that - a photo would help a lot. That would also tell us what sort of communication it’s set up for, and the cables connected to it would tell us how it’s operating.  It’s good to know that at least one recently-installed meter in the room is apparently working properly - although you can’t tell from looking at it whether it’s sending data back to HQ.  

There it is

Unfortunate that we can't see the tails (the wires coming out of the the bottom of the meter) to see if there are 4 or 5 of them.

However is that your meter, the bloke upstairs meter, or the Octopus customers?

I ask because you said that yours was an old meter, but the one in the image has a brand new 4G communications hub and the card says it was fitted a week ago on the 27th May.

​@Nukecad That’s the neighbour’s, I think, that is scheduled for replacement because ‘it doesn’t work’. It has a 2A ALCS on board, wired to (one or other of the) 100A Proteus contactors alongside the meter. Don’t ask me how that works ...

​@ConfusedJim Thanks for the photo! We won’t go into details about this meter since it sounds like it’s about to be replaced anyway. As I remarked earlier, there is a complicated sequence of button presses to get to the peak and offpeak register readings. If you (plural) want to play with it, try this:

1. Press the right-hand button and hold for a second. The display should change to Main Billing or similar;
2. (I think) Do the same again, and again. This should take you to a screen headed Bill | My bills;
3. Press the right hand button twice - with any luck, you’ll get to Bill Advancd;
4. Press and hold the right hand button for a second. This will with any luck take you to Adv TOUMtrx.
5. Press and hold again. You should now begin to see the register readings, headed RATE1 and RATE2. RATE1 should be the peak reading, RATE2 the offpeak one. Use the buttons to go up and down the list.

I said it’s complicated! It doesn’t matter much if you lose your way - just wait a bit and you’ll return automatically to the beginning again. If you get the same sort of meter, you’ll have had some useful practice.

PS The instructions are in this document, if you can make sense of it.

Yes it’s the neighbours soon-to-be-removed one. Yeah having had a crack at that nighttime rate still showing 00000. Let’s see what tomorrow brings…

Congratulations on finding your way through that quagmire! If R2 is showing zero, that’s clear evidence that the tariff switching isn’t working, regardless of whether the ALCS is doing its job or not. Since neighbour doesn’t have any power to his heating equipment, it’s fairly obvious that the ALCS isn’t working either. Both of those are remotely configurable, so it sounds as if exchanging the meter is a good idea. 

Did you notice any flashing green lights on the Communications Hub? They tell you whether the meter is in communication with the network or not. If things are as they should be, at least two of them (WAN and HAN) should flash at 5-second intervals. Anything else and something’s not right. 

You might also spot a red light flashing occasionally just outside the top left-hand corner of the display screen. That just shows that current is flowing through the meter; the shorter the interval between flashes, the more power (kW) is being drawn.