Issues getting a replacement THTC Meter in Scottish Highlands

Thank you for your response and explanation Firedog. That has reassured me, I was panicking earlier as we’ve had no letter from OVO and today was the first time I had stumbled over the news about the change to the radio signal. Thanks again.

Hey @sproutygreenbean,

Welcome to the community! I’m happy to see that @Firedog has already stopped by to offer some great advice. 

One of our other volunteers @Blastoise186 has also written a guide on the RTS/THTC changes that you might find helpful which i’ll link below

• RTS (Radio Teleswitch Service) Shutdown Update F.A.Q.

I hope this helps 😊

Thank you Chris, just reading through that now 

An engineer has visited and said he cannot replace our RTS meter as planned due to the type of meter it is and it is technically complicated. He has taken photos to go back to OVO.

What support is there for people with these issues and what is the process. What if it can't be resolved before June 2025?

Why was there not a process to send photos in advance? What communication is OVO providing about these situations?

Also the advice about tariffs has been poor and organising an appointment was difficult.

Hi ​@CazS ,

I’ll need to see photos of what you’ve got to provide advice. Please post them to the Forum when you get chance. It may not be purely because you’re RTS.

There is a HUGE effort to get all these jobs done before the RTS Service is fully turned off. I suspect yours will be done by then.

Thanks

I would be interested in the responses to these questions, I had a failed installation on the 29th November and according to an OVO rep in a phone call from me a few days later they were aware of the issues and would be contacting me within 3 weeks, obviously I haven't heard anything 

Thank you Blastiose186.  Here are some clarifications of my questions.

Do you represent OVO energy and if so what department, what is the contact details for the department dealing with my issue?

I asked what is the support for this process. To clarify what communication will I receive from OVO once the engineer assessment is complete. What steps and customer support are provided for customers with technical issues.

You have said you suspect it will be resolved by the cut off but what if not. The messages are quite threatening for vulnerable customers who do not change in time.

What communication will OVO provide for all customers about technical set up difficulties. I see an Ofgem paper mentions this but couldn't find anything on OVO.

What benefit does providing photos on the forum add when the engineer and that department should manage the issue. That is additional work for me and I don't know what I'm looking for.

You say it may be not purely due to RTS issue. What are the multiple known issues and options. Can these be published?

I’m afraid it’s very difficult for anyone to give the sort of personal service you’re asking for. At the moment, there are teams of meter engineers working long hours often far away from home to try and help the hundreds of thousands of customers with RTS systems, from Portland to Fair Isle. They will be doing whatever they can to make sure your old meter(s) are exchanged for a smart one in time, but one thing they don’t have enough time for is contacting individual customers. 

You ask what ‘known issues’ there are which aren’t specifically related to RTS. There are dozens of them, but here’s a simple one: smart meters are a bit taller than many older ones, so it’s not uncommon for the engineer to discover that there just isn’t room on the meter backboard to fit the new one. Of course there are solutions to this 

• It may be possible to mount the two halves of the meter separately, but that requires a special kit that an engineer won’t normally have in his van. 
• It might be necessary to move the service head (the box at the end of the cable bringing power into the house), which can only be done by the electricity distributor (DNO) at the supplier’s request.

We might have been able to spot potential problems if you’d done as Blastoise suggested and posted some photos of your meter(s) and the cables connecting them. It would also be helpful to know where you are in the country - the first part of your postcode is enough.

You complained that “the advice about tariffs has been poor”. Most customers with storage heaters controlled by RTS will be offered a choice of Economy 7 or Economy 10, which allow for charging the heaters at offpeak rates for between seven and ten hours a day. It’s then up to you to decide which would be best for you. The prices for these tariffs are all given on OVO’s plans and prices page.

You may find that you get more help in this difficult period by asking here rather than contacting Support, whose staff may not be as well informed as some of those who answer questions in this forum. But in order to be able to make helpful suggestions, we have to know a lot more about your current arrangement. The more you tell us, the better placed we’ll be to help:

• Where are you?
• What tariff are you currently on (see a recent bill for its name)?
• How do you pay for electricity?
  °  Direct Debit
  °  On receipt of bill
  °  Prepayment
• What heating equipment is installed? 
  °  Storage heaters - number, size and type 
  °  Other space heaters ditto
  °  Water heaters
• How many people are 
  °  at home all day?
  °  away during the day?

… and so on. This sort of information will help work out which tariff may be best for you and suggest whether any changes need to be made to the house wiring.

It is also worth noting that the OVO Forum is primarily manned by Forum Volunteers such as ourselves. We don’t work for OVO (so we don’t get paid for our time here!) and we can’t access your account or internal systems - this is intentional for Security/GDPR reasons as well as keeping us independent. We’re managed by the Forum Moderators (who do work for OVO) for the purposes of Forum Moderation and having a link between us and OVO, but otherwise we’re just volunteers who do a cool thing because we can.

It must be said that we can’t see any of the discussions you’ve had with either OVO or the Engineer - that stuff is locked up tight and far out of our reach.

Long story short on that part, OVO pays the bills and provides Forum Moderators to help keep the lights on, but the Forum Volunteers are the ones who get to run the show and we generally answer about 98% of all questions posted here. The other 2% are either from other community members or the Forum Moderators swinging by to cover the ones we’re not sure about - but in a handful of cases we might ask our industry contacts to stop by and give their thoughts too. Some of those contacts post directly, while others prefer to remain anonymous and ask us to post on their behalf. You’ll know when that’s the case because we usually drop a note to let you know.

Just so you know, if you wish to raise a complaint about a Forum Volunteer, or the something that happens on the Forum itself, the best place to do so is via email to forum@ovoenergy.com. Please don’t send those complaints via the Support Team or Complaints Team as they don’t manage us and it might get stuck. Just a heads up that malicious complaints (e.g. All Forum Volunteers are corrupt! without giving any evidence or explanation) won’t get a response so please make sure to add reasons for doing so as it helps to get things checked out. Only the Forum Moderators can access that inbox - Forum Volunteers can’t touch it and we can’t edit or delete anything that goes there so there’s no risk of us making it vanish into a black hole.

As for the letters and/or emails? I’ve seen examples of them so I know what you’re talking about there. The messages that have been going out do have to be strongly worded as I’m afraid it’s a necessary evil so that folks don’t just completely ignore them. It really IS a case of ignore them at your own risk because doing nothing means your heating and/or hot water will almost certainly break down in some way. Migrating to Smart Meters is the only way to resolve that - if we could tell you other solutions, we would - it’s literally part of the House Rules for us to give you all the options we can think of and the best possible advice we can muster - but in the case of RTS Shutdown stuff, there are no other options because the industry has determined that there is only one viable migration path.

Thanks for your replies.  Here is the set up. I would also be interested to hear from other customers who had been advised they have a complex set up and who have successfully had a proposal finalised and installed. Is there any advice you can give to support this process.

I would say that that looks like a well-organized orthodox RTS installation, but it might be daunting for any less-experienced meter engineer faced with trying to unravel all that wiring. I can’t tell from the photos which of those twin meters is which; I suppose that one is for anytime usage, the other for RTS-controlled heating. Your bills will tell you, giving the meter numbers and their associated readings. When you do find out, you might think of sticking a label on each to say what it’s measuring. The wiring for a single smart meter will be much less complicated.

The harvi monitor suggests that you have a renewable energy generator - solar PV panels, for example. This complicates the installation a bit, if that is the case. Are you currently being paid for any excess generated energy? What does the CT clamp do?

While OVO are trying to find someone to install your new meter, you might think of answering the questions I posed earlier - your response should help us help you. 

Thanks for your answer that sounds slightly more reassuring.

We are in Aberdeenshire 

Simpler energy THTC 01

Direct debit 

3 storage heaters and a water heater 

2 people at home in the day

We have an EV charger that may be something to do with the clamp and energy monitor set up when that was installed.

We do not yet have solar panels but may wish to in future.

Meter 15084 is standard and 15085 is heating rate.

Thank you - that’s helpful.

I’m surprised that there is no other heating than the storage heaters. Most Scottish customers we’ve heard from rely on various forms of direct heating (e.g. panel heaters or wood-burning stoves) to supplement the sometimes inadequate warmth provided by storage heaters, but of course modern ones, adequately sized, should do the job they’re supposed to. Most are designed to store enough heat overnight to warm the space all through the following day. If you think yours would do this, then Economy 7 might be your best choice, with its offpeak tariff 5.3p/kWh cheaper than you’re currently paying for heating. You’d be paying a bit (1.7p) more per kWh for other usage, but electrically-heated households typically use less than 42% of their total consumption for other things. 

Your EV charger adds another element into the mix. Depending on the make of charger and car, you might be eligible for Charge Anytime, where OVO decides when it’s best to charge - subject to a ‘ready by’ time) at a cost of only 7p/kWh - a far cry from whatever you’re currently paying. If this isn’t available to you, then again Economy 7 would allow you to charge overnight at the cheaper rate.

The water heater will normally be wired to the same circuit as the storage heaters, so it only gets power during offpeak periods. Many hot water tanks have two immersion heaters, one of them wired to the constant circuit and usually off unless you need a boost during the day - at peak prices.

The ex VAT rates that OVO publishes for your region are these:
  

You’ll have to dust off the slide rule, dig out your old bills to see how much electricity you use for heating and for everything else, then work out which is the best bet for you. 

Thank you so far for everyone’s advice.

I see that additional information has been provided about the possibility of dual mode devices, but I don’t think the signal is the issue in this case.

We have since contacted OVO support direct.  Initially we were told that the engineer had not done his job properly and were advised to get another appointment.  After speaking to another advisor we clarified with them that was probably not the case and we may be a little further forward. 

The record of the engineer visit was visible to the advisor which was reassuring and the advisor was able to speak to someone with engineering knowledge.

The engineer report had said additional work was required but not what work.  The person we spoke to concluded because the meters were outside and the THTC unit inside that a smart meter would not work, and we may need a time switch solution.  We were advised that Economy 10 may be best, but that decision could be made when an engineering solution is confirmed.  At that point I am also interested to find out whether Charge Anytime works with this solution.

At this point there was no possibility to find out when an engineer is available who could set up something appropriate.  The request has been escalated with the engineer team and we will be advised when that will be available.

I am interested to see that this thread has been solved and ownership taken by Sproutygreenbean with some new questions and answers added.  Some of the earlier questions I have asked are still open and have not yet been answered by OVO support:

What are the process and communication routes when a smart meter initially could not be installed so customers are not left unsure when this happens to them?  

What will happen if it cannot be resolved before the cut off and what reassurance can OVO provide customers they will not face loss of heating or higher bills if they have engaged with the process?

What kinds of technical issues may customers be likely to expect in advance and which can be resolved quickly or which may be slower? What kinds of solutions may be available? Following more information it appears it could be size of kit, signal problems, smart meter not compatible.

These were my main concerns and I would still welcome any updates on these points. 

​@sproutygreenbean

​@CazS 

I hope you have more success than me in regards to updated information with smart meters in no signal areas, I had a failed installation on 29th November due to no signal in Dundee DD2 area and haven't been offered any further information on new processes being looked at, am basically still in limbo with what's happening or not happening as  it seems  

Hi there, I have not received any further information, reading through the volunteer responses on here though, about the work going on in the background to find us all solutions, does reassure me, so I am not worrying too much until we maybe get past Easter!

​@sproutygreenbean 

Same here, now that the temperature has dropped and snow and ice forecast across the UK I am in no rush to have my electricity shut down for a meter installation, hopefully someone from OVO will contact me at some point with an update on what's happening. 

Might be worth mentioning that while the “Stage 1” Sunset is set for June this year, the “Stage 2” Sunset which is also the final kill switch is set for September this year. This allows for cleaning up remaining jobs and stragglers who can’t migrate before the “main” Shutdown.

However, DO NOT hold out until the Stage 2 Sunset unless you absolutely have to. It’s intended for genuinely difficult cases, not for those who are just being lazy.

​@Blastoise186 

The only thing I am holding out for at present is a solution for which OVO have still to contact me about, it's been 6 weeks since my failed installation and as a common courtesy it would have been nice of them to at least inform me of any upcoming issues/ developments in my area , as it is I watch this Forum with baited breath

For all three of you, I think it’s time I pulled out the Joker Card.

​@janie ​@CazS and ​@sproutygreenbean please bear with me while I flag this to the Forum Moderators. ​@Bradley_OVO ​@Chris_OVO you got a sec for these?

I also think it’s time to deploy the ​@Lukepeniket_OVO card. Hang in there for a bit - Luke might still be on holiday until Monday but we’ll see!

Hey ​@Blastoise186, ​@janie, ​@CazS & ​@sproutygreenbean! 

I’ve asked internally for any news or updates and i’ll come back and update the thread when I have more to share! 

Hey ​@Blastoise186, ​@janie, ​@CazS & ​@sproutygreenbean,

I asked the team if we have any updates to share and this was the response they gave below. 

“If a customer is RTS and will have a single rate or E7 tariff with their smart meter install then we will be leaving the smart meter on site functioning in 'dumb mode' with a preconfigured tariff (& switch time for economy 7 if required).

If a customer is RTS and will have a any of the other available tariffs with their smart meter install (Domestic Economy, E9, E10) then we would replace their meter with a heritage meter which will be configured to match their chosen tariff. This would be wired the same way as if we were installing a smart meter, and would therefore reduce 2 MPAN sites to 1 MPAN and remove the reliance on the RTS signal for off-peak switching.”

The team have said however they’re still working on solutions so once they know for sure what the plans are we’ll have a complete update to share. 

Hopefully this helps! 

​@Chris_OVO 

Thanks for that, if I am absolutely honest a lot of it went over my head, am not a technical person and have no idea what a heritage meter is, I requested Economy 10 tariff on PAYG for budgeting reasons so does a heritage meter do all that?

​@Chris_OVO 

Thank you for the update 😀