Had a smart metre fitted today. Old THTC to E10. Fitting finished at 15.45, which showed Tariff rate .1894 on display and Storage heaters/water heater showed on and worked..This price is what I was told for the cheaper Tariff  and heaters/water being on is what I would except for this time of day. At round 4.30pm tariff on display turned to .2402p which would be stitching to standard Tariff. Again this is what I would expect at this time of day. However the storage heaters turned off but the water heater stayed on. This is not the normal practice for off peak tariff under THTC. 

As off 6pm the water heater ring is still live and should by now be off/no power. Storage heaters are off.

May understanding is the storage heaters and water heater on old THTC would remain the same on E10. Is this correct ?

This may well need just the metre to be reconfigured or the installation has not put a water heater circuit on the correct feed.   

Does anyone have a direct number or which team I should be asking for to assist in this issue. 

Cheers

David

Hey @Kirrimove 

It might be best to contact the team to check if some simple remote commands would do the trick here. 

It’s a common fix following 5 port installations where the 5th port isn’t working as it should, the commands from the team tend to fix things. We’ve got some other topics on this that may be helpful:

It’s tricky to tell if this will fix the issue but does sound like the most likely fix. 

Do let us know how you get on.

We’ve heard from another customer in a similar situation that on his THTC system, there were two feeds to the water heater: one on the offpeak circuit along with the storage heaters, and the other on the 24-hour cheap-rate heating circuit. This second feed would normally be off, governed by a switch by the hot water tank. It could be turned on to give a boost if all the hot water had been used up. 

If your system was like this, then it sounds as if the boost switch is turned on. Of course, without the convenience of the 24-hour heating circuit, this boost will be at peak rate, for emergency use only! 

The engineer should have made sure that all the equipment wired to the 24-hour heating circuit was now connected to the constant domestic supply along with every other appliance apart from the storage heaters. You could check the consumer units (fuse boxes) to see how the water heater is connected.

The other customer is in the Scottish Highlands. Where are you? Kirrie’s in the same region ... 

Hi,

I've just started on an economy 7 plan but it seems that my electric storage heaters are not being charged overnight during the off peak hours. It's as if they don't receive power during these times. They have two power socket inputs, with one solely for off peak.

I've seen other threads about asking the smart support team to send the ECAUL command to update the ALCS configuration, but not sure how to do this?

The web chat team can't seem to help and my flat is currently freezing cold. I've had to purchase other temporary heating solutions.

Is anyone able to point me in the right direction? Any support is greatly appreciated.

Attached pictures of my meter with both rates for example

Thanks

Dan

Hi, I had my old RTS meter switched over to a smart meter yesterday evening. The heating control unit on the wall came back on whilst the installer was still in the house, but soon after he left I noticed the heating wasnt coming on, the control unit was blank and I couldnt turn it on, so I've had no heating overnight and still the same this morning. I've looked for advice online and it said to try pressing button B on the meter but doesnt seem to have done anything. All other power is working fine.

Hi ​@wdan96 ,

This should be easy - if the agent can’t do it themselves they should ping someone in S2/Smart Support to handle it for them.

Otherwise, failing that try https://ovoenergy.com/feedback .

Hi ​@Clairey_bell ,

Should be an easy fix - get OVO Support to run the ECAUL Command to configure ALCS in the morning, which should set up the features you need to get the heating back on. Pressing B one time by itself does not enable the Boost function on Aclara meters. I will look this up shortly - bear with me.

For a fast response, ping OVO’s Social Media Team via DM - they’re active now IIRC.

Sorry to hear that the heating isn’t working yet. It’s really good to see a picture of your meter and associated equipment - it’s the first I’ve seen where a Kaifa Flying Lead has been fitted to an Aclara meter because there isn’t room for the EDMI Communications Hub (CH) on top of the meter itself. This opens more possibilities for customers whose CH fails to connect to the Long-Range Radio signal.

A few questions to find out a bit more about your installation:

1. What time was the photo of your meter taken? 
2. What are the two indicator lamps on the EDMI CH showing? If they’re flashing, how long between flashes?
3. Where are you in the country? The first bit of your postcode is enough.
4. What tariff were you put on? It’s likely to have been one of Economy 7, Economy 9 or Economy 10. 
   There are big differences in the times when offpeak rates apply for the different plans.
5. You mention a ‘heating control unit’. Could you please post a clear photo of this unit? It may be that it needs re-configuring to take account of the offpeak timings.
6. What sort of heating do you have? It might be night storage heaters, direct (panel) heaters or a combination. How many of each type, with their make and model if you can find them. Photos would help, of course.
7. How is your hot water produced? If there’s a tank with immersion heaters, again a photo or two of it would help. 

The quicker you get this information to us, the more likely it is that we can make suggestions about what’s wrong and what needs to be done to fix it. You should be prepared, though, for not having any heating before tomorrow … 

Hi, thank you for your quick response. Photo was taken 8am this morning. 2 green lights (WAN and HAN) flashing every 5 seconds. I live KW15, on economy 10. Heating is air to water with radiators, have hot water tank as well as electric. Will send pics of radiators and hot water tank separately 

Hang on… Is that for a Heat Pump?

You do realise those shouldn’t run on RTS Tariffs or load switching… Right?

Er... yes it's a heat pump and no I didnt realise

In that case, I think you need to reach out to OVO ASAP about changing to a flat-rate tariff and getting the Off-Peak circuit energised 24/7.

Heat Pumps and Economy 7/9/10 do not go well together.

Oh dear.  I was never asked what kind of heating I had. So is it still Ovo social media I need to contact?

Definitely - at very least to get the ECAUL Command sent through. That’s something they should be able to do. Tell them I sent you and include a link to this thread as it’ll reduce the amount of typing you need to do.

Ok, thank you for your help with this

No worries. As for fixing the tariff, feel free to discuss that with the Social Media Team too for initial advice, but the tariff swap itself may need to be done with the regular Support Team during the week - they’ll be able to advise on that.

I’ve just seen indications that Fionn is actively responding to stuff on Trustpilot right now. So your chances of a quick response are good.

That’s … interesting, thanks! 

I’ve no real idea how an ASHP will function with your current set-up, but I’m fairly sure that it shouldn’t be on the switched circuit which is only live during offpeak hours. I can’t tell whether that’s the case, but it sounds likely. Let’s see if we can drum up a couple of HP/Ecodan experts. You there, ​@juliamc and/or ​@M.isterW ?

The heat pump needs to have power  24/7. That doesn’t mean it will run the heating constantly, but the controller will get in a right muddle if it’s powering on and off every day (technical term!).

Thanks, Julia - that’s what I thought. It looks as if an electrician will have to be called in to rewire the heat pump; it’s not certain a meter engineer would have the appropriate authority to do this, since it’s downstream of the meter. It’s not necessarily a major task.

With an Ecodan, Claire may be able to benefit from the Heat Pump Plus bolt-on, which would bring the price of heating down significantly.  

My monitoring tools indicate that Claire has been noticed by the Social Media Team. It looks like they’ve stepped in to assist.

Just reread this and seen it’s in economy10, so in some respects this is better than economy7 as it’s on for several bursts throughout the day. So whereas the system will be going through a startup/reboot each time the power is on, and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing ( ​@Blastoise186  ?), on the plus side the house has less time to cool down between bouts of running. As a heat pump is a low temperature system it needs longer periods of time to get the rooms up to temperature than a higher temperature gas boiler would.
It would have been powered on overnight, is that for about 5 hours ? so it would have run the heating depending on whatever schedule was set. The hot water could have been heated during that time.
Getting it on a 24 hour power supply is definitely the way to go !!

I think there’s no doubt the HP’s wiring has to be changed to move its power supply to the constant, not switched, circuit. With any luck, this will only involve doing a bit of knitting in the CU. 

Whether its possible to gain some benefit from the E10 reduced rate at certain times is a different question. I’ve seen many different scenarios where the HP’s controller adjusts the output at different times of the day, e.g. less hot at night. I just don’t know how such a setting is applied to the HP itself; it could involve, say, slowing the pump down a bit, or the fan, or some other mechanism that I can’t think of ATM. Someone must have done the sums. 

​@Blastoise186 The support chat insisted on booking an emergency engineer visit so hopefully that helps.

It's getting cold again this week so I am really hoping for a resolution.

Neither of the operators I spoke to could acknowledge other users had this resolved remotely, but it is possibly a different issue I suppose.