Moving to OVO Economy 10 (with or without storage heaters)

Many thanks, Firedog. At least I am not alone!

As you will be aware, there are two supplies coming from the meter - a 24 hour ‘domestic’ which is feeding the NHS controls and thankfully a boost service to my immersion (otherwise I would have no hot water) and an OP supply for the NHS bricks and water. The NHS 24 hour controls supply is OK and, according to my IHD, is using the Economy 10 tariff.

I have verified that the OP supply is only live between 1.00 and 8.00 (almost opposite of Economy 10 times). It took a night shift and observing the NHS heaters in action to verify that theory.

I don’t think photos would help. The meter itself and the comms device seem standard.

My first problem is that I do not get an OP supply during the Economy 10 OP times.

My other problem is that OVO support do not seem to understand the situation. I am trying to shout loudly and clearly that OVO need to setup a Help Desk for meter replacement problems. You are right about the size of this project and it has started at full pace. Many of the customers they inherited with storage heaters, with our without THTC, are vulnerable and it is not a simple change.

I have had a private message from an OVO employee asking me to verify my identity and account number. We will see where that goes.

I have a suspicion about all of this. Can you confirm if anyone has successfully moved to OVO Economy 10?

Regards

P.S. I should have said I have an Aclara SGM1416-B meter with an EDMI ZigBee comms unit.

That’s the meter that I think OVO is installing exclusively for RTS refugees. I have one, too, but I was never on RTS.

The solution is almost certainly the one I gave: OVO’s smart team have to send the ECAUL request to your meter to configure the ALCS to the times in your plan. 
  

There’s a contradiction in what you write: 

“a 24 hour ‘domestic’ which is feeding the NHS controls and thankfully a boost service to my immersion (otherwise I would have no hot water)”

and

“an OP supply for the NHS bricks and water.”

If the offpeak (switched) circuit is powering your water heater, why would you have no hot water without the 24-hour (constant) boost? 

A common arrangement has two heating elements in the hot water tank: one at the bottom, fed from the switched circuit to heat up the whole tank at offpeak rates, and another near the top, fed from the constant circuit and used to heat up the top quarter or third of the tank at peak rates if you run out of hot water. You shouldn’t ever be left without any hot water if the bottom element is switched on at the same time as the storage heaters. 

Firedog writes:

OVO’s smart team have to send the ECAUL request to your meter to configure the ALCS to the times in your plan.

That nugget of information may be very important for people moving to Economy 10. It might explain why OVO customer support have told me that the meter cannot be configured for Economy 10 until up to 6 weeks after installation. It begs the question, ‘why was I not told that beforehand?’

I also don’t understand why, if the meter can be pre-configured for Economy 7 times, it cannot be pre-configured for Economy 10.

Firedog raises a ‘contradiction’.

This is a red herring sorry, my fault. A little background is needed.

THTC provided off peak power to storage heaters and tank emersions. It also provided 24 hour power to panel heaters and a boost function for water heating (called 24 hr heating). These were separate feeds and, crucially, both were charged at the off peak rates. There was a third feed for normal household i.e. points, cooker, etc. which was charged at the standard rate.

That’s three supplies - off peak (storage and emersion), 24 hour heating (panel heaters and emersion boost) and other normal household.

During my meter replacement, the household and 24 hour heating circuits (including the boost function) were combined and are supplied by the 24 hour side of the meter. That’s why I can use the boost for water heating. I also have only one (long) emersion element.

For full disclosure - I also have solar panels. The energy generated is, after other household demands are met, directed to my immersion and any other excess is pushed out to the grid. To achieve this, the diverter uses the boost function circuit meaning I have full support for water heating.

I hope is makes sense, even if I am no further forward. I have not come across the ECAUL and ALCS stuff before so I will look that up but it sounds as if I may need to wait another few weeks to get my full service.

The panel heaters only heat bedrooms and provided a little back ground warmth in living areas. If it gets colder, I will just switch on my storage heaters and swallow the extra expense for overnight charging. I am sure that OVO will be willing to compensate me when it all pans out ???!!!???. 

I will up date in due course when all is revealed.

I’m sure that Firedog will update you but the ECAUL command is only required to be requested/sent if the meter set up isn’t as it’s supposed to be. Meters can be preprogrammed for various tariff setups but there are occasional adjustments required. 

That sounds, I’m afraid, like nonsense. There may be some other pitfalls with E10 settings that I’m ignorant of, but I was speaking from experience. When my (E7) SMETS2 meter was installed last year, I noticed straight away that the switched circuit wasn’t working as intended, or indeed at all for that matter. I contacted OVO to say so, and that I was aware of other customers in similar situations whose solution involved (re-) configuring the ALCS remotely. The storage heaters started charging that night.  

[Aside: I understood that this failure to configure the ALCS was at the time a common fault caused by an error in the app used by meter engineers. It returned a success message even though the configuration wasn’t actually correct. I rather thought that that particular bug in the app had been squashed, but perhaps not ...]

I’m still confused: with the old system, your immersion [sic] heater was wired both to the constant (household) circuit and to the 24-hour cheap-rate heating circuit. How was that achieved? And for that matter, why doesn’t this arrangement still work? I.e. the immersion heater works during E10 offpeak hours by virtue of being on the same circuit as the storage heaters, but can also be activated when necessary during peak hours by switching the booster on. That will have involved some nifty wiring which the meter engineer won’t have messed with. 

Sorry, what extra expense? They are already wired for offpeak charging, supposed to be three hours at night and seven hours in two daytime slots. Do you mean that this isn’t enough to charge them up (or won’t be when the ALCS is fixed)? 

Firedog writes regarding the 6 week wait for the meter to be configured:

That sounds, I’m afraid, like nonsense.

When I ordered Economy 10 I considered trying Economy 7. I was advised by the OVO rep that if I chose 7 a site-visit would be needed to move to 10 later. I pointed this out during my on-line chat and despite their misgivings the support person has arranged a site visit for a week on Friday. Their retained position was that the meter was working OK but could not be configured until it established communication with their systems.

(Did I say that my first on-line chat last Friday resulted in an emergency call-out for ‘exposed copper wiring’? Naturally the engineer could not do anything on a Friday evening to solve my problem but he did suggest I had an Economy 7 meter.)

Firedog asks about my emersion setup. 

When THTC was installed it came with a switch connected to the water heater and fed by two supplies - from the off peak side of the fuse box and from the 24 hour heating side. This switch controls the water heating and has a 1hour timer for boosting. When the off peak supply is available it uses that for the emersion, when a boost is needed at other times it takes power from the 24 hour supply. Two inputs from the fuse box, one output to the emersion.

The energy diverter is another switch which feeds the wiring previously used for boosting. It takes power from the 24hr heating side of the meter previously used for the boost and the solar panels. It diverts power from the solar or from the 24hr supply as it is available and if the water needs it. Another switch with 2 supplies and one output going to water heater via the old boost circuit. Just say if this is incomprehensible and I will try to draw it when all this is sorted.

Firedog asks about extra expense for storage heaters.

I was referring to the extra expense I will incur if I use them before the meter is fixed. The heaters will only charge during Economy 7 hours (01.00 - 08.00) but I am being charged Economy 10 tariff if my IHD is correct. Economy 10 cheap rate ends 01.30 and starts 08.30. In addition because the off peak appliances are not charging I am using backup panel heaters and heating water during peak times. For now, I am going with the IHD because that’s all I have.

BPLightlog and ECAUL

Thanks for that.

OVO response to my problem moving to Economy 10 from THTC.

I raised a complaint with OVO this morning and received an impressively quick response which is copied below.

I'm Adam, an account management agent here at OVO, I've just received your email regarding the issues since your meter install, I tried calling today around 1.50 P.M but unfortunately there was no answer, Don't worry, everything I was going to discuss with you I have contained within this email.

I am sorry for the inconvenience and for the experience that you have had after a new meter was installed on 1st October. I am sorry that you where not made aware that nothing can be configured for Economy 10 until the data from the smart meter starts coming through to OVO which can take up to 6 weeks. You should have been made aware of this and I am sorry. I do understand that this knowledge would have saved you hours problem determination and influenced your decision to move to Economy 10.

I have raised a case of feedback on your account that will be passed on to my manager and senior members of the team to be reviewed as unfortunately the delay in the configuration of the smart meter is not something that OVO have control over as it is an industry standard time frame of 6 weeks for the meter to connect to us. in this case I have stated The customer has had the meter changed to a smart meter on the 1st of October and feels as no where in the information supplied about moving to Economy 10 does it mention a 6 week delay. OVO's representatives provided the customer with conflicting information about how meters are configured for Economy 10. Overall the customer was not happy with the service received. The case reference number for this should you need to refer to it at any point is 25498383. I hope this is helpful for you.

So, there we have it. It takes up to six weeks for an Economy 10 meter to be configured and they are sorry for not having told me beforehand. 

Should I cancel the site-visit for next Friday (I don’t expect they will be efficient enough to do it themselves) or should I just make sure I am out for the day so that they can share in my ‘inconvenience’?

Interestingly my telephone rung just before 2 p.m. and I answered fairly quickly. The line went dead but the calling number registered in my phone was OVO’s. Maybe Adam thought speaking to me directly might not be a good idea.

Another wee anecdote: When the engineer had finished physically installing my new meter he went back to his van for a cigarette while the meter was going through its paces. When he came back he popped his head through the door and muttered something about the meter being faulty and my heating supply. After a short time he came back and said he had replaced the meter, using one from a different batch just to make sure the fault did not recur. It was only after he left I realised he had done that without switching off the power. No wonder I can’t believe anything someone from OVO tells me.

If anyone is really interested in my setup, and I have not described it well enough, please say so and I will try to put some drawings together later. It is the least I can do in return for your help.

It may have been a Comms Hub Hot Swap - those don’t require the power to be turned off.