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

Blastoise186 writes: If the meter comms are working, it should be an easy fix. The SMETS Command to reconfigure ECAUL/ALCS should do the trick.

No joy, Support are still saying it takes up to six weeks to ‘sync up’ the meter after installation. I think the comms are working; the WAN light is flashing and the IHD is showing an MPAN and OVO as the supplier, for at least a week now.

I am giving up. I will wait another 4 weeks.

Support basically hung up on me. My beef was always that OVO did not warn me that I would need to wait up to 6 weeks and that they provided conflicting information about how the meter would be initialised. 

Thanks for your help.

This is the current situation:

• My RTS meter was replaced 3 weeks ago and everything looks ready for the Economy 10 supply.
• The meter and the IHD are showing the Economy 10 tariff.
  • The meter is fully populated with two TOU rates,
  • the active tariff changes according to Economy 10 times 
  • meter balance, Total Active Input and Total Active Output (from solar) are all showing and increasing as I would expect
• Two meter readings are being recorded daily in my Account
• But Off peak power is only available overnight at Economy 7 times
• the last time I talked to support I was told that I would know that the Economy 10 service had started when the meter was displaying all the correct information
• I was also told to wait for 6 weeks following the meter installation for the Economy 10 service to begin.

From what I have deduced from advice given from this forum and my other research, only the ECAUL request is need to switch to Economy 10 supply times. 

Am I missing something or is it reasonable to expect that part of the process to take another 3 weeks? 

I am asking because I don’t want to get to the middle of November and find I still have a problem. At the moment, if I switch on my heating, I will incur the 24 hour tariff because the off peak supply is only available over night, i.e. mostly during Economy 10 peak tariff times.

Hey @Keast 

I understand your frustration, however, I would advise if the timeframe that has been given is 6 weeks it’s best to flag this again to support if these issues haven’t been resolved by the time that timeframe has elapsed. 

4 months and two smart meters and still showing economy 7 time even tho I’m on economy 10 and account shows this,OVO are beyond useless and will no doubt have to put dumb meter back in.

@Codeye If you’re talking about moving back to Traditional THTC Meters or Traditional Economy 10 Meters, especially the RTS ones? Not Gonna Happen. There’s an explicit ban on deploying any more of them these days - and there’s NO downgrade path either.

You should check all the options at https://ovoenergy.com/feedback - one further down may well solve your problem.

I’m really sorry to hear of your frustrating experience @Codeye, I think your best option would be to escalate this to our support team. Please keep us posted with how you get on. 

Gosh this is worrying.  I have booked a smart meter install for 4th November to replace my current THTC set up.  I don’t want to have to wait 6 weeks at this time of year to have it working properly!

@Mo59 you’ll have the Boost Button available if you get desperate.

At what tariff?

Peak.

However, just because one person had issues, doesn’t mean you will. Ultimately, it’s better to experience some pain temporarily and get it healed up later, than to experience permanent pain with no fix by not doing anything.

They haven’t a clue,one phone resulted in being told I can’t possibly have evonomy 10 as that’s a business tariff 🤣

I’ve already fed that back. It’s being looked into.

Remember that some staff are new and still learning - genius takes time and I’d like to ask that you try to help them along with that. It helps a ton if you do.

I’m wondering if I should cancel the installation until the winter is over now 🤔

The House Rules require that I leave that decision to you - I’m not allowed to force your hand.

However, I will advise that as we get closer to RTS Shutdown, there will almost certainly be a mad rush of stragglers, so appointments may get significantly harder to grab before the deadline. Only cancel if you want to take that risk - it may be better to just get it done now while it’s easy.

I wouldn’t advise cancelling the appointment, as Blastoise pointed out it doesn’t mean you’ll have any issues. We’ve seen plenty of community members who’ve had positive experiences. 6 weeks is the industry timeframe for any meter exchange. It doesn't mean it’ll necessarily take 6 weeks for the meter details to be updated. 

Reading all these posts has been informative but also scary!

We had an engineer here last Thursday to fit an Economy 10 (or 7 to begin with) meter.

“Unfortunately” that didn’t work due, he said, due to a weak signal. So we’re back to RTS. (Interesting that he didn’t fully disconnect the RTS meter and then fully fit the new one. Think he was expecting a problem - and not for the first time).

I’ve been in touch with DDC (the network provider for OVO) where an Escalations Analyst! tells me that they’ve checked our postcode coverage (12 miles from Perth) and believe our connectivity should be high. Anyway she has forwarded all the e-mails I sent her to OVO. I’ll wait till Thursday of this week - then I’ll call OVO. I’m not expecting much joy from that call.

I contacted DDC directly rather than OVO on the advice of the engineer who tried to fit the new meter. I’m glad I did that since I wasn’t impressed that OVO just sent me a link to a DDC form when I did call them about the problem.

The bottom line is that my wife is very happy that we didn’t make the change with winter on its way. Think we’ll wait till February at least for the meter change even if there’s a rush of people needing new meters. Maybe by then OVO/DDC will have got their act together. Their act isn’t together right now and I no longer want to be a guinea pig.

I think you mean DCC, the Data Communications Company. They are responsible for smart meter communications for the whole of Britain, whoever the energy supplier might be. In Scotland, the network is provided by Arqiva and uses Long-Range Radio (LRR) mainly with the necessary aerials mounted on their many TV transmission towers. DCC tells the supplier whether there is likely to be a good signal where you live, and if there is, the supplier will go ahead with the installation. However, local conditions - nearby structures or geographical features, and the location of the meter in relation to the mast, for example - can affect connectivity, and this is probably your situation.
      

Communication with the smart meter network is DCC’s responsibility - there’s nothing OVO can do about it.
  

That’s not the problem. OVO will have told DCC that the meter they installed wasn’t able to connect adequately to the network, even though they had been told that connectivity was expected to be good; the ball is then in DCC’s court. They have a few remedies, but they’re not known for acting at warp speed. 

You will have to have a new meter before next summer when the RTS transmitters are eventually switched off anyway. If you don’t get one, there’s no saying how your heating and hot water equipment will behave: it might stay on the same schedule it was on when the RTS closed down, but it might just stay permanently on (expensive!) or permanently off (uncomfortable!). The longer you delay having your meter replaced, the more likely it is that you’ll end up in what might prove to be a nightmare scenario. 

Apparently the ball is now in OVO’s court. If I understood correctly (not a natural English speaker at the other end of the phone line) they will resolve the situation with DCC. Might need to wait months. I won't be impressed if I’ll be paying higher rates after RTS switch off. It’s not as if OVO/SSE haven’t known about this issue for years. Their problem, they’d better get it fixed. There must be 20+ others close to me who will this problem. (We’re within 2 miles of Auchterarder - so not up a mountain).

Hi @Sandy42,

I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing this. 

I can see our forum volunteer has already given some good advice here.

Have you managed to get in touch with the team yet? Please keep us updated.

Been in touch with OVO per my last post.

Also, initially, with DCC.

Not sure who Shads_OVO is referring to as “the team”.

Ah I see @Sandy42, apologies. Was just checking as you mentioned getting back in touch on Thursday in a previous post 😊. This would be our Support team that I’m referring to.

Perhaps they will try to resolve the situation with DCC.
    

If you get a smart meter in time, it rather depends on which alternative to your current tariff that you choose - there will be several choices: single-rate, Economy 7, Economy 9 and Economy 10, for example. It will depend on your heating arrangements and other electrical equipment which of these will best suit. You shouldn’t be any worse off financially. 

If you don’t, nothing will change as far as your rates are concerned.
  

The BBC announced publicly in 2022 that their long-wave radio transmitters would soon be closing down. It was widely reported that this was in part because the ancient equipment used valves that were no longer available. Arqiva had enough spares for a couple of years, but no more. This was long after OVO took over SSE’s retail arm. 

OVO is pretty powerless, since communication is DCC’s responsibility. You can be certain they’re doing whatever they can to get their customers connected.

Arqiva claim to have coverage for (I think) 99.7% of households in the CSP North region, a better result than they were obliged to attain. It still means, though, that 0.3% are outwith the SMWAN, and it’s not certain anyone will go to the expense of reaching them all.
       

This is interesting. Is it a guess on your part, or do you have evidence that there are 20 households near you who are out of range of the SMWAN? If this is in fact the situation, there may be other solutions. It may be worth conducting a community exercise to establish the facts.

Is your television aerial - and those of your neighbours - pointed towards the Angus transmission tower just north of Dundee? If so, that may be where the LRR equipment is located. I found a TV coverage map (green=good); I’ve no idea what significance it has with regard to the LRR network, but it doesn’t immediately indicate a major problem. That’s why I suspected local obstruction. 

[OT I have many memories of soggy weekends - and admittedly a few sunny ones - spent at Cultybraggan, and of mountain rescue exercises on crags not so far away from you 🙂]

Firedog wrote:

  

Sandy42 wrote:

… they will resolve the situation with DCC.
 

Perhaps they will try to resolve the situation with DCC.
    

Sandy42 wrote:

… I’ll be paying higher rates after RTS switch off. 
 

If you get a smart meter in time, it rather depends on which alternative to your current tariff that you choose - there will be several choices: single-rate, Economy 7, Economy 9 and Economy 10, for example. It will depend on your heating arrangements and other electrical equipment which of these will best suit. You shouldn’t be any worse off financially. 

If you don’t, nothing will change as far as your rates are concerned.
  

Sandy42 wrote:

… It’s not as if OVO/SSE haven’t known about this issue for years.
Their problem, they’d better get it fixed.
  

The BBC announced publicly in 2022 that their long-wave radio transmitters would soon be closing down. It was widely reported that this was in part because the ancient equipment used valves that were no longer available. Arqiva had enough spares for a couple of years, but no more. This was long after OVO took over SSE’s retail arm. 

OVO is pretty powerless, since communication is DCC’s responsibility. You can be certain they’re doing whatever they can to get their customers connected.

Arqiva claim to have coverage for (I think) 99.7% of households in the CSP North region, a better result than they were obliged to attain. It still means, though, that 0.3% are outwith the SMWAN, and it’s not certain anyone will go to the expense of reaching them all.
       

Sandy42 wrote:

There must be 20+ others close to me who will this problem. (We’re within 2 miles of Auchterarder ...).
  

This is interesting. Is it a guess on your part, or do you have evidence that there are 20 households near you who are out of range of the SMWAN? If this is in fact the situation, there may be other solutions. It may be worth conducting a community exercise to establish the facts.

Is your television aerial - and those of your neighbours - pointed towards the Angus transmission tower just north of Dundee? If so, that may be where the LRR equipment is located. I found a TV coverage map (green=good); I’ve no idea what significance it has with regard to the LRR network, but it doesn’t immediately indicate a major problem. That’s why I suspected local obstruction. 

 

[OT I have many memories of soggy weekends - and admittedly a few sunny ones - spent at Cultybraggan, and of mountain rescue exercises on crags not so far away from you 🙂]

I’m in Crieff and due to get my THTC set up changed to Economy 10 this Monday.  Praying it goes smoothly.

We’re next to a well know golf course on one side and open country (admittedly with trees) on the other. So, no obvious obstructions other than our house itself.

There are 3 blocks of flats in our development. At least 6 flats per block and probably more. All with no option other than storage heaters so I assume THTC. Also, there are houses in the development. Some houses (not ours) dug up their garden to fit gas tanks. Hence my 20+ figure. I’ll do some asking around though.

I’m starting to wonder if there was a fault with the smart meter that was temporarily fitted. Wondering won’t do me much good though!

No problems with TV reception. Not sure if that’s relevant.

I’ve set myself a reminder to contact OVO again in 4 weeks for an update. When that’s done I’ll set myself another reminder etc etc etc

Funnily enough I personally just can’t find any sympathy for OVO et al. They may be powerless etc but I’m the one paying them ££££.

It’s not certain that the signal your TV picks up is in fact coming from the Angus tower; there may be a repeater station a bit closer to give you your good signal. A quick look at the antenna (on the roof?) - could it be pointing in a different direction from the line from where you are to 10km north of Dundee? 

And of course the house itself (or the one next door) may be interfering, if the meter isn’t on the side closest to the tower the signal is coming from. Could this be the case?  

That’s not very likely - they’re pretty reliable. It is possible, though, that there was a problem with its communications hub, although the engineer is likely to have tested that by trying a different one - he would most probably have several to choose from in the back of his van.

Of course, we can speculate until the cows come home why the engineer gave up. There are lots of possible explanations and there may even be a few solutions. We’ve seen situations where the signal just isn’t good enough, so the engineer installed the meter and got it working locally, but without it being able to send data back to the mothership. The customer then had to submit meter readings manually, but everything else worked.

That’s when some customers applied Heath Robinson solutions to boost the signal at the meter, with often surprisingly good results. The supplier had given up, meaning that smart-meter-only tariffs weren’t available. That was very expensive for EV owners, for example. By investing a few pounds in a home-made repeater, they could put all their woes behind them. So even some of those in the 0.3% managed to partake of the blessings of smart meters.

I don’t know how suppliers other than OVO are getting on with replacing RTS meters, but I suspect they’re struggling. OVO have worked very hard for the past few years to develop a smart metering solution to replace THTC.

Your scheduled check for updates every few weeks sounds very reasonable. Please keep us informed 🙂.