Hey there @glassey ! Sorry for the wait. I noticed your question while I was out, but I couldn’t reply until just now since I’m home.

I can try to offer some advice, but I’ll need your help. Please could you confirm your supplier and tariff, and also provide some photos of your meter and (if you have one) IHD. This will help me a lot to see if I can figure this out. If you can make sure to include the display in at least one photo and have it lit up, that would be great.

I can’t promise anything, but I’ll see if I can help you to figure out whether you can get back on-supply on your own, or what you can do next.

Thanks

Thanks, just noticed there was a reply. OVO is my supplier, 2 Year Fixed Energy both E&G, 1 year in. The ‘smart’ gas meter outside can’t connect with the electric one inside so I have to do the gas meter readings manually. 

I’ll take a photo in the morning.

Thanks! I have some possible theories, but they can vary depending on exactly what meter you’ve got - along with what steps you can take to try and diagnose and restore supply (especially the buttons!).

Thanks, hopefully attaching some meter photos now

Thanks. That worked perfectly.

Uh oh... Looks like the meter has a fault. You see that question mark in the top left corner? That's not meant to happen, ever.

I recommend calling OVO first thing in the morning and requesting an Emergency Meter Exchange (EMEX for short). If you let the Support Team know that you have asked for help on the forum and had advice from me, that will speed things up. I'm well known to the team and my name is familiar to many agents. The photos you have shown me will definitely help as well.

Once reported, someone should arrive same day to investigate and fix this. Sorry for the trouble!

Thanks, I’ll call in the morning once they open. 

Do you think it could just be the known fault that it can’t connect to the smart electric meter that is inside, or would it be most likely to be something else?

I don't think it's comms related. These meters are designed to be able to run standalone if they have to.

Some other fault has probably either forced the valve closed or caused the meter to have to close the valve for unknown reasons. This is pretty rare to happen for such a new meter.

I do have some good news though. OVO has deployed a new phone system last week. You no longer need to press any buttons to reach the Support Team. Simply wait 20 seconds and the system will put you through. :)

 

 

Yes, @glassey as @Blastoise186 has correctly pointed out, that symbol at top left on the gas meter display shows the current position of the internal valve.

Here’s the display from my own earlier model of the SMETS2 Uniflo meter:

The O means that the valve is open, and the graphic depicts the gas as a cloud of particles flowing though an open pipe.

Customers on Direct Debit contracts have their meters programmed to always leave the gas valve open (for safety reasons).

Customers with OVO Boost have pre-payment meters. The valve closes if they fail to ‘top up’ their meter with credit.

We can’t tell if the symbol you have is due to a mechanically faulty valve, a duff sensor or a software logic error.

However, since this can’t be fixed on site, your meter will need to be exchanged via the Support Team. This is a bit more than just swapping out the meter itself. The engineer needs to pair the new meter with the Communications Hub above your electricity meter, and then have software and data downloaded into it. So he/she will remain on-site whilst this process takes place.

Here on the Forum we would be interested to know how this goes. Please ask the installation engineer if they have met this issue before and how common it is. Many thanks.

To be honest, as far as I know it’s extremely rare for a Flonidan UniFlo or Flonidan SciFlo to fail so soon after the installation - they’re really well built by Flonidan over in Denmark after all! It’s the Landis+Gyr junk that you have to really watch out for. Those things have been known to fail a LOT more often than others - I think it’s always been an issue with L+G gas meters, even before Smart Meters existed. That one in the video was a four year old S1 L+G G370 Ultrasonic which was installed by British Gas by the way, in case you wanted to look it up.

So yeah, I’m not concerned if the engineer says that they’ve had to replace loads of L+G G370 gas meters due to failures (we already know they’re really terrible!) - me and Transparent are more interested in the failure rate of the Flonidan UniFlo and Flonidan SciFlo than anything else.

On the plus side, Flonidan has launched a new hardware revision of the UniFlo with support for Dual-Band Comms Hubs. This is really good news, since it will help to solve the range issues. You might get lucky! And it seems they’ve also made it so that if there’s no WAN connection at the time of install, the meter will keep trying to connect and commission every 55 minutes for up to three months. Clearly the result of feedback I suspect - and a really nice feature too.

You’d need a Dual-Band Comms Hub to fully benefit from these two upgrades (and existing ones might not be replaced), but at the very least, it should provide more options going forward for new installs - and also for future installs where S1 meters are replaced with S2.

Thenks @Blastoise186 and @Transparent . The installation engineer has just been. He didn’t have any of the smart meters that could be fitted but installed a regular one and I’m back up and running again. He said it happens a lot that smart meters fail but wasn’t more specific about this model.

wrt the Dual band comms hub, is that part of the electricity smart meter? How would you tell if you have that already? There’s no point in me asking for another smart gas meter til it could connect.

No worries. At least your supply is up and running for now. OVO will be able to arrange a second visit later on to switch out that temporary meter with a new Smart Meter. The regular one that was fitted is usually just a sort of “emergency spare” that’s used in the short term until a replacement Smart Meter can be fitted. Even if it can’t be commissioned immediately, it can be done later, so it’s worth getting one back in again.

Given that your gas meter was a 2020 install, I’m assuming that the electric meter was installed at the same time. The Comms Hub lives on top of the electric meter for S2 setups, but is actually a separate component - it simply gets powered by the electric meter but all connections are wireless. So I suspect your current setup doesn’t have a DBCH as these are only just starting to become available. However, it’s worth asking whether such an upgrade might be possible, on the basis it would probably be needed to get the gas meter working properly again. I don’t know what the rules are, but the worst that can happen is you get told you can’t.

@glasseywrote

wrt the Dual band comms hub, is that part of the electricity smart meter?

If your gas meter is already capable of connection to your existing Communications Hub using the standard ZigBee signal at 2.4GHz, then you don’t need a dual band system at your site.

Dual band Home Area Network connections are only required in those properties where there is serious disruption to the 2.4MHz band. That’s less than 1% of the Smart Meters installed in the Central and Southern territories.

Thanks @Transparent The original installation engineer couldn’t get the gas meter to connect to the HAN despite trying for a good bit of time so it does look like dual band imight be what s needed, if it is available in the NE.

In theory, it should be possible to get a DBCH for anywhere in the country.

While the Comms Hubs are different for the Northern Territory due to Long-Range Radio being used rather than Cellular or Cellular + Mesh, the HAN side of the hardware can in theory be made identical regardless of what the WAN side is doing, since they’re two different sides.

I don’t have the details on hand as to whether LRR DBCH units are available yet, but I’ll see if I can dig up some research if possible. No doubt someone on here might know, or someone who happens to be a friend of someone on here… 

Ok… Slight snag…

EDMI has a weird website and while it’s a piece of cake to get some information about their Wired Comms Hubs, the Wireless option simply tells me to call their sales department to discuss my needs. So I’ll just call a friendly salesman then, in the form of @Tim_OVO . 

I hadn’t realised that you lived in the Northern territory of the National Smart Meter Network. Please fill out your Forum Profile because that’s where we look for that information.

As @Blastoise186 indicates the Communications Hubs are different from those I pictured above. The approved supplier is EDMI and they use the 400MHz frequency to link to the Wide Area Network.

The dual-band solution to resolve the Home Area Network connection issues is one of a number of remedies being researched by the Alt-HAN Company.

Each time that an Alt-HAN remedy is accepted as satisfactory by the Data Communications Company (DCC), EDMI request financial assistance to re-engineer their electronics to accommodate it.

It’s not just a question of changing the chip-set for the HAN communications. The entire new circuit board must be put through a whole raft of tests, checking for radio emission standards, operational temperature-range parameters, software resilience and a host of security measures.

This costs £n00,000 each time, where n is the number that EDMI request in funding.

n/10 is the figure they get offered

… and time delays account for the difference.

 Thanks for this update, @glassey - can you let us know what gas meter make (and ideally model) was fitted? 

Thanks. The replacement non-smart meter says it’s an Elster BK-G4M

That Elster meter was one of the most commonly fitted in UK domestic premises. It was cheap (less than £50) and very reliable. The internal bellows system is still used by most gas meter manufacturers - the notable exception being Landis & Gyr who have developed a highly-accurate optical system with no moving parts.

Elster made its name for high quality engineering. It was taken over by the Honeywell conglomerate in 2015, since when I’ve found it very difficult to get product information.

@Tim_OVOI note that @glassey ‘s SMETS2 Gas Meter was installed with steel flexi pipes for both inlet and outlet.

Since when has that been permitted? Can you ask the S2 team please?

Thanks for the info, @glassey - sounds like the engineer fitted this non-smart meter to get your gas back on supply ASAP.

Understand you’d only look to get a smart meter replacement if the communication issues were resolved. It might be worth reaching out to the Support Team with this one.

They’re able to check the notes made when the engineer originally installed the smart meters and advise whether it’s worth making another gas-only smart meter booking. 

I contacted support and have now heard from part of the Account Management team. The reply doesn’t make sense in the context of the advice in this topic.

After looking into your account, I can see that you recently had a new gas meter installed. Your electricity meter is currently an S2 model meter, which is the newest meter type available. From the photographs you have sent, I can see that your new gas meter is an S1 gas meter, which is a Smart model, but one that will not work alongside the S2 electricity meter. In order for the meters to send automatic readings, they need to be the same model. As such, we have now added you to our waiting list for an S2 gas meter. Once we have availability in your area, we will be sure to get in touch and make a booking. Once the new gas meter is in, we would expect this to be able to send automatic readings.

But the meter was identified here (from the same photo) as a SMETS2 meter. Is that definite?

Yes @glassey  your G4SZV-2 meter is definitely a SMETS2. You can double-check this by looking at the list of meters on the excellent SmartMe site.

You are more likely to get technically accurate answers for these sorts of questions here on the Forum than you are from the hard-pressed staff in Customer Services.

Unlike us fellow-customers, they don’t get out and actually see meters being installed, commissioned or exchanged. OVO recruits bright young people for their CS team. They are extremely polite and helpful. But that doesn’t make up for the lack of hands-on experience which you can draw on here

Send a message back and point them to this Topic!

Sorry for the confusion, @glassey.

The photos posted at the top of the thread are indeed of a Flonidan SMETS2 gas meter. Re-reading the thread I was under the impression that this was your original meter which has since been replaced by an Elster gas meter (which is indeed SMETS1). In which case our helpful Support Team has already got your account added to our engineer’s revisit list to get another SMETS 2 gas meter installed.

Happy to be corrected on this one but think there might be a bit of a crossed-wire communication going on here!