Newly installed smart meter - How long until I see smart meter readings on my online account?

 @daddy cool I've moved your query here as it's the same issue - have a look at the 'best answer' for more info.

July is much longer then 6 weeks, so it sounds like there's been a delay with updating your account with your gas meter details. Reach out to the Customer Care team via Facebook, Twitter or webchat via the Help Centre so it can be chased up.

Tim

I have the Smart Meters instaled from 10.03.2020 and I would like to know if I still have to send the read meters.

Hello @Gheorghe Maruntelu 

Nope. You shouldn't need to do anything anymore. OVO should now be able to retrieve your readings. 

You should be able to check your usage via https://my.ovoenergy.com/login

Hi @Gheorghe Maruntelu - it can take up to 5 weeks before your new Smart Meters are fully commissioned and your correct Tariff is sent to them.

Therefore it is quite likely that you will still receive one Bill which contains estimated readings. You don’t need to take any action on this. Just allow your Direct Debits to continue as normal. Because Billing is based on cumulative readings, any errors will get automatically corrected on the following month’s Bill.

Have a look at the Topic about Smart Meter Installation, where you will lots of other useful information and contributions from Forum members.

I finally have a working IHD after a follow up visit, but there is no proper usage figures showing on the app and when I look at meter readings it tells me I have to submit them manually. The meters were installed at the end of March.  Any ideas why it is I get these details on my app page?  Are they still not working correctly?  I have to say this smart meter installation has been a nightmare from the start. 

Phil

Hey there @Dellara !

I’m Blastoise186, one of the forum volunteers who helps out here.

Welcome to the forum. Sorry for any trouble with getting your smart meters and IHD working, but it does take six to eight weeks for the activation process to go through. What kind of problems were you having, if you don’t mind sharing? I’m just curious more than anything else and it helps me to learn more of the issues members come across.

If you’ve only recently had the meters installed at the end of March, they’ll not be fully activated yet as there’s a commissioning process that has to take place first. Only once that's done will you start to see everything fire up. You should see everything start working as expected by mid-May at the latest and smart readings will then start flowing in after that. Your IHD might also be a bit wonky until then, but it will settle down as the activation process makes progress.

Hang in there for now though! You should see results soon. But please carry on submitting manual readings for now. I promise you won’t need to do them yourself for much longer!

I think I know what’s going on here, and this is actually a pretty easy fix. If you still don’t see Daily usage after mid-May, it might be because your meters are currently set to Daily mode rather than Half-Hourly. Daily is the default unless you specify otherwise and the options are Half-Hourly, Daily and Monthly. Half-Hourly would still only submit daily, but would show usage data under the Daily tab.

If you’d like to have this turned on, feel free to let the Support Team know and they’ll be able to make the arrangements. It does take a few days for any changes to go through, but once that’s done you’ll start to see the usage data feed in as per your preferred level.

Blastoise, thanks so much for your reply. I did read up on smart meters, but it's just a minefield of information. I was looking at one info point which did it should just work after installation. Obviously I need to wait which is what I'll do. 

The whole process has been a trial from the start, to be honest. Initially I was told that I'd be put on the smart meter list. This was probably shortly after I changed to OVO last March. I heard nothing so rang again in the Autumn to be told that it was being worked on and I'd be contacted by that person I spoke to. I heard nothing so chased it to be told because of covid there would be a delay. I waited and nothing so in early 2021 I went on the website and was able to book an appointment online and little wait. They came and did it, but the ihd never worked so I was put on a follow up visit. I heard nothing for two months and so chased it with success. The guy who came got the ihd working (he had to completely change the meters as the gas wasn't reporting) and do here we are now. Working ihd, but the app is next to useless because it's all wrong and tells me I need to submit a reading manually. I will however do as you say and wait. 

As an aside, the engineer detected a gas pressure drop which was just within the limit so it didn't me to be capped off. Thank goodness. That would have sent me over the edge!

Phew. What a lot of trouble!

I do appreciate your reply to me though. Fingers crossed. 

Phil 

Ouch, that’s not as smooth as it could have been. Thanks for sharing @Dellara ! And I’m sorry for the trouble!

I’m only a forum volunteer myself rather than a paid OVO employee, however I hear you there. Do you have any links to where there was anything that said it’ll all just work straight away? If you do, sharing those would be especially handy.

We’re always happy to offer free advice about pretty much anything. So if you’re ever baffled by the minefield, you’re welcome to stop by and we’ll cut through the noise.

I keep in touch with @Tim_OVO and @Jess_OVO (and the other moderators) on a regular basis and they are OVO employees. So I’d definitely be happy to ask for this to be fed back to the teams. And if you know where you saw the claims about it working straight away, I can recommend for that to be fixed as well, provided it’s somewhere on an OVO website.

The app should stop asking you to put meter readings in once your smart meters wake up and are properly activated. It’s actually more useful than you might think, so I would encourage you to hang in there with it. Sometimes the IHD actually manages to wake up earlier in the commissioning process than everything else - but in most cases the IHD is still only showing demo data at this point. Once it’s all fully active, everything will sync up properly. :)

I’m pretty confident the app will start working properly within a few weeks or so. But if it doesn’t, please do stop by the forums again. We love puzzle solving here and if there’s any bugs that need to be checked out, this is the perfect place to raise them. Any bug report that’s raised on the forums can be escalated directly to the Tech Teams, which can speed up the task of getting it fixed.

If you don’t get any results by the end of May though, definitely stop by here again. We’ll help you out with this as much as you need.

I'm not sure where I saw reference to the smart meter would just start working. There are a number of reference pages on the website and app. There seem to be a lot of confusion. For instance I have just read that daily usage when it's up and running is not available in £ on the app. Only the website. So if I want to view this I have to go to the website. Is that right?  Seems crazy to have to do that. 

One other issue I've had. When I have gone to submit readings on the app it won't take my gas reading because the reading was zeroes when I had it fitted the first time and says “lower than previous”. So I have to take a photo of the meter and send it by email!  I do not intend to take any meter readings as it tells me and will wait for the meters to start reporting as they should. I know I'm paying more than enough (quite a bit more I think) to cover the cost. 

Let's hope this can sort itself soon and I get reliable info to help me budget. 

Thanks again for your time. My fingers are crossed!

Phil 

Gotcha, thanks @Dellara ! I’ll take a look around and see if I can find them. If any do need to be changed, I’ll flag them up. If you do happen to find them again, feel free to let us know.

I think the usage cost not showing up under Daily in the app might be a known issue that’s currently being investigated and should be restored in the near future. I’ve come across that one as well, so I’ll see if there’s any progress updates there.

If your estimated meter readings have been overestimated (and overcharged as a result) for any reason, this will be corrected automatically once an actual reading is submitted via any method and validated successfully. Any excess usage will be knocked off your account at that point and the account balance will be rehydrated to restore the balance to what it should be. You won’t have to pay for anything you didn’t use.

If your account went into debit in the meantime, this process might also swing the account back into credit and make it eligible for earning interest. It is important to submit at least one reading just before each billing cycle resets though, to help make sure your bills are accurate in the meantime. They’ll be corrected anyway, but it’s worth playing it safe.

As for the reading bug, that’s a good catch actually. It might depend on whether the old meter was still attached to your account at the time (which would mean the system was expecting readings from the old meter rather than the new one), but that will be fixed automatically once the new Meter Serial Numbers are linked to the account (which should be done by now).

Based on this however, let me see if @Tim_OVO can double check a few things here, just to make sure everything really is starting to sync up properly.

Thanks for hanging in there.