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Lost Connection - Smart Meters not sending meter readings and no data on In-Home Display (IHD) - Why?

  • 6 September 2017
  • 123 replies
  • 154792 views
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123 replies

M
Rank
Hi Tim_OVO,

In the end, I had a very helpful chap (Jim I think - it was a year ago!) who had several phone calls with me. (He has been the ONLY person from a utility company who has said he'd phone me back - and HE DID!!) In the end, it was all to do with the pairing of the IHD and the smart meter. The installation engineer hadn't paired the IHD and smart meter properly. For some reason, one isn't able to put the smart meter into "search mode" but that has to be done remotely from OVO. Jim, kept the search mode open for 24 hours and the meter eventually linked up. He also sent a relay plug for the IHD to talk to the wifi router ex gratis as well. Since then, it has worked all fine despite occasional local power cuts and a poor mobile signal. I occasionally get a drop in communication from the smart meter to OVO but it usually catches up in a day or two.
E
Rank
I have the same problem. Installed on Monday, lost connection on Wednesday.

The link posted about a year ago doesn't work for me.

Any advice please, thanks in advance.
Darran_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 7
Hey @enterpryse good spot re that link. We move the topic to a different area, so I have updated the link.

For ease, please see below for the correct link to the topic that should help :)

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/smart-meter-booking-and-installations-66/smart-meters-working-but-not-communicating-with-ovo-why-435

Darran
Did a reply solve your question? Then mark it as the correct answer!
J
Rank
My smart meters are recording ok, however they haven't sent any data to Ovo since February 2018. I've emailed several times about this and had 2 responses.

  1. My query has been sent to the meter team, I need to wait up to 10 weeks for replacement meters - adhoc appointment basis
  2. After 10 months (yes months not weeks!) Ovo have changed their supplier, my details will be referred over and guess what - another 10 week wait.
It is now 12 months and I am having to send my meter readings on the 17th of each month for an accurate bill. Not happy about the service.
H
Rank
I have had no problem with smart meter reading until the last couple of months when the WAN signal was lost.

last time it recovered after 6 days this time I have had no connection since 17th July.

my meters are in the same place and nothing has changed locally.

What can can be stopping the WAN signal. Faulty meter??

OVO support suggest leaving it for a few months to see if it recovers but in the mean time I have no meter readings

any sensible suggestions?
Amy_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 6
Hi Guys,

One thing you can check is the WAN light on the electricity meter.

If it is flashing then it is connected to the mobile phone network OK and should be sending readings back to OVO.

If it is on solidly or off completely that you have a problem.
Make sure you check the correct light as there is another red light that flashes every time you use a certain amount of electricity.



You will only find the WAN light on the Electricity meter as the Gas meter connects to the Electricity meter to send it's reading.

There is another topic on the forum here where people have similar problems:
https://forum.ovoenergy.com/smart-meter-booking-and-installations-66/smart-meters-working-but-not-communicating-with-ovo-why-435

Updated on 12/07/2019

Welcome to the forum @Hongkongandy, I've moved your post here, I think it'll be the best place for you to find handy info.

@Mw2870's best answer may be of some help too!

😀
OVO-Joyed to help!
R
Rank
Good afternoon. I'm facing this issue myself..

My main meter has a flashing light on all indicators, however my IHD is permanently attempting to establish a connection. i've tried to move it closer to the meter, i've tried to off/on it.. i don't really know what else to do about it..

Anyway i can get a PM with instructions on how to reset the connection so that readings are back to automatic reporting?

Thanks!
Amy_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 6

Welcome to the forum, @Rodolfo, it sounds like we may need to repair the IHD, please reach out to our team they'll be able to help.

You can send us a message on Facebook, Twitter, webchat via the Help Centre or give them a call. You can reach our Customer Care team 9-5 Monday-Friday on 0330 303 5063.

Hope this helps!

OVO-Joyed to help!
A
Rank

Lost Connection - Smart Meters and IHD not sending meter readings



Wan light is off, larger red light on left of meter flashes occasionally.
Assistance appreciated.

thanks
Amy_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 6

Welcome to the forum, @Al Pen, the WAN light should either be flashing or solid but not off more details here.

Please reach out to our team so that they can look into this.

You can send us a message on Facebook, Twitter, webchat via the Help Centre or give them a call. You can reach our Customer Care team 8-6 Monday-Friday on 0330 303 5063.

Thanks!

OVO-Joyed to help!
J
Rank
My electric meter has not been sending data since beginning of September. It was fine up till then. All lights flashing except for Mesh.
Gas however is okay. I have emailed Ovo twice about this and not heard back.
Nancy_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 5
Sorry to hear you haven't had a reply, @James L. Can you drop us a message as described above so we can chase it up for you.

Thanks,
Nancy
Your guiding light(bulb)
P
Rank
Userlevel 2
My SMART meter hasn't communicated since the beginning of August. Will OVO react to this problem automatically and fix it or do I have to do something ? I have tried emailing them but no response. This morinng I found a message telling someone else that they should send them a Facebook Message so I have tried that.
Anyone else having these sort of problems ? Did your problem get fixed ?
Not much point in having a SMART meter, if it's not being smart!!

Regards
PhilipJ
H
Rank
Hi. Mine stopped communicating middle of July. I emailed, phoned and all I get was we will send an engineer after 12 weeks as it might start agaiin on its own!
i had given up all hope when, yes you guessed it stated again last week with no intervention!!
Transparent
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +2
Hi @Hongkongandy - it is true that Smart Meters do experience some faults whereby they restart communications again on their own.

Last week I had an engineer here to install my third set of SMETS2 meters. He told me that there had been two recent "outages" from DCC, who handle all the communications with SMETS2 meters.

OVO will be aware of such instances and can monitor which areas of the country are being affected. So they're becoming more aware of which types of fault are best corrected by the various strategies available to them.

If you feel that what you're experiencing isn't being correctly assessed by OVO, then send them an email with a more accurate set of symptoms. If possible provide dates of what you've noticed and reported.

In my case OVO had been successfully restarting the link between my gas meter and Comms Hub by downloading software updates. But then the symptoms changed - two indicators on the Hub no longer flashed any of the three possible sequences.

It's those little bits of detail which the SMETS2 Team need in order to better understand what's happening. Remember, they can't see what's on your IHD, nor the indicator LEDs. They also see different displays from those you view on the OVO App and your MyOVO page.

Their difficulty is when customers simply report that their Smart Meters are "faulty", or "not working", or provide unclear information such as calling the IHD a "smart meter".

If you want help finding the right description for what you're seeing, then please post here and others of us can discuss the details with you.
Save energy... recycle electrons!
P
Rank
Userlevel 2
Hi,
I used the Facebook Messenger route and got a reply pretty quickly with a number of questions about what the meter was doing and where it was situated. After answering these I was told it would be passed to another team and they would reply to let me know what they would plan to fix it.
In case my first post was confusing, I wasn't meaning the communication between the meter unit and the display unit in my home, that has always been fine. I meant the communication from my meter unit back to OVO.
Anyway I'll post back here when I get further reposnse from this team about what they are going to do.
PhilipJ
E
Rank
I have the same problem. Installed on Monday, lost connection on Wednesday.

The link posted about a year ago doesn't work for me.

Any advice please, thanks in advance.

8 months on and still not working. I FB messaged a week or so ago to chase again and was told that there are no engineer slots available.

TBH I believe OVO have so many engineers out there doing installations to meet government targets that getting them working is a much lower priority and potentially less costly for them in the long run.
Nancy_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 5
Hi @enterpryse,

An appointment for resetting the connection and an installation are booked on separate platforms and have different timeframes, so I'm surprised to hear you were told there's no availability.

Can you drop me a PM so I can take a look into this?

Thanks
Your guiding light(bulb)
E
Rank
PM Sent
A
Rank
Good afternoon.
I think the fact that since having a smart meter installed on 8th August 2019 (3 months ago) you appear to be supplying me with free electricity (and possibly free gas) may kick your backsides into gear to sort something out.

I have rung twice, so far, asking you to sort out what the fix is for the IHD, which refuses to display correctly for either Gas or Electricity, only to be fobbed off with some platitude about the IHDs taking up to 3 months to settle down. The advisor told me not to worry because the “smart” meter would be sending you the readings even though the IHD was having a rest(🙄) before it decided to do any work.

This seemed like a load of tosh to me however, who am I to argue with your "experts". The IHD has slowly become more and more confusing - seeming to change it's mind on what sort of gas usage we have each day, even though our gas use habits are pretty fixed. The reading has leapt from 40p per day to over £1.00 per day, and even at the daily reset at midnight now shows 29p used in the first hour - what can you possibly think draws almost 30% of our usage in 1 hour in the middle of the night???

The IHD point blank refuses to show electricity usage at all no matter what I do to reset - following all of the advice given in your online forums.

Today, just for interest, I decided to see what the actual "supposed" smart meter was reading. Well, on the assumption that the meter should show the actual use no matter what the IHD shows, I was a touch surprised to find that the electricity meter still shows 000000 - just as it did on installation.

Now don't get me wrong, I am happy for you to give your product away for free - however as a model citizen I feel it is only fair to inform you that you have cocked up in a big way with this installation.

I have complained twice before, from the first week of it being suspect, - and due to your inability to come up with anything like a reasonable explanation I left it for you to sort out - but you haven't.

I have grave doubts the gas is reading correctly either because the display on that meter is actually blank - not even any zeros.

I will point out that you have zero chance of reclaiming any back dated fees for electricity (or gas for that matter) because I have made you aware of the problem from the start and was told that it wasn't a big deal that would sort itself. I have given you every chance to correct it from the off, and your inability to correct the fault will not result in me being "assessed" for use - I told you it was wrong and you just didn't care - so it is your loss not mine.

I have now gone into my online account on my telephone and discovered you are actually telling me the damn thing isn't working and you want readings manually - well I am sorry, apart from there being nothing on the meters to read, I have no intention of giving manual readings - that was the whole point of have a "Smart????" meter installed – I didn’t have to worry about getting readings to you in a timely manner – you just took them.
So far the "smart???" meter has been anything but smart - it has only resulted in more grief for both me and you.

Please sort this debacle out ASAP please.
A
Rank
Made my day.....good luck
E
Rank
Hi Nancy, I've dropped you two PM's but no reply?
Tim_OVO
Rank
Userlevel 7

I have now gone into my online account on my telephone and discovered you are actually telling me the damn thing isn't working and you want readings manually - well I am sorry, apart from there being nothing on the meters to read, I have no intention of giving manual readings - that was the whole point of have a "Smart????"

@alan54 not a good experience you've outlined here, to say the least!

Getting straight to the point, we can't offer much account specific advice here, but if there is communication issues, between the meters and us, or between the meters and the IHD, they will need to be read manually, like your old ones.

It's likely that the situation on site is the issue, otherwise we should be able to sort out with an engineer visit. With poor phone signal areas, the only hope of getting a smart meter to act smart is the hope that, in time, all areas of the country get good phone signal in place.

Other on site issues might be a thick stone wall blocking signal. Again, not much we can do about that.

Of course, if this is something that an engineer can fix, we need to get on that pronto: 0330 303 5063.
Carbon neutral - we need a community to get there! My green tech: Aclara SGM 1411-B smart meter, Chameleon IHD6
E
Rank
Good afternoon.
I think the fact that since having a smart meter installed on 8th August 2019 (3 months ago) you appear to be supplying me with free electricity (and possibly free gas) may kick your backsides into gear to sort something out.

I have rung twice, so far, asking you to sort out what the fix is for the IHD, which refuses to display correctly for either Gas or Electricity, only to be fobbed off with some platitude about the IHDs taking up to 3 months to settle down. The advisor told me not to worry because the “smart” meter would be sending you the readings even though the IHD was having a rest(🙄) before it decided to do any work.

This seemed like a load of tosh to me however, who am I to argue with your "experts". The IHD has slowly become more and more confusing - seeming to change it's mind on what sort of gas usage we have each day, even though our gas use habits are pretty fixed. The reading has leapt from 40p per day to over £1.00 per day, and even at the daily reset at midnight now shows 29p used in the first hour - what can you possibly think draws almost 30% of our usage in 1 hour in the middle of the night???

The IHD point blank refuses to show electricity usage at all no matter what I do to reset - following all of the advice given in your online forums.

Today, just for interest, I decided to see what the actual "supposed" smart meter was reading. Well, on the assumption that the meter should show the actual use no matter what the IHD shows, I was a touch surprised to find that the electricity meter still shows 000000 - just as it did on installation.

Now don't get me wrong, I am happy for you to give your product away for free - however as a model citizen I feel it is only fair to inform you that you have cocked up in a big way with this installation.

I have complained twice before, from the first week of it being suspect, - and due to your inability to come up with anything like a reasonable explanation I left it for you to sort out - but you haven't.

I have grave doubts the gas is reading correctly either because the display on that meter is actually blank - not even any zeros.

I will point out that you have zero chance of reclaiming any back dated fees for electricity (or gas for that matter) because I have made you aware of the problem from the start and was told that it wasn't a big deal that would sort itself. I have given you every chance to correct it from the off, and your inability to correct the fault will not result in me being "assessed" for use - I told you it was wrong and you just didn't care - so it is your loss not mine.

I have now gone into my online account on my telephone and discovered you are actually telling me the damn thing isn't working and you want readings manually - well I am sorry, apart from there being nothing on the meters to read, I have no intention of giving manual readings - that was the whole point of have a "Smart????" meter installed – I didn’t have to worry about getting readings to you in a timely manner – you just took them.
So far the "smart???" meter has been anything but smart - it has only resulted in more grief for both me and you.

Please sort this debacle out ASAP please.

Join the queue .....
A
Rank
Tim_OVO - you seem to have missed the point here - the meter hasn't registered even 1Kw since you installed it - not the IHD - that is another problem (possibly linked - but not the main problem from your (that is OVO not you personally) point of view).

I can't manually read a reading that isn't there, unless of course you want me to send you 000000 every time, which I am happy to do as you can then charge me £00:00 for my usage.

As for thick stone walls - I live in a house not a cave - if a smart meter can't transmit through a 3 inch house brick then your IT staff need to go back to the drawing board.

Phone signals ------- we have full coverage here - I am not in a backwater of the Hebridean Highlands here - my mobile signal is so strong it almost burns my ears when I use the phone.

All I am getting from OVO is excuses that simply don't hold water (or gas and electricity in this case).

If you wish to resolve this then I suggest you sort out a site visit - or pass it on to someone who can. I will only respond to any further communication when that is going to be the outcome - otherwise please feel free to keep supplying me with free products

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