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November 29, 2023
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OVO Smart Meter fitted- Off-peak circuit always OFF?

  • November 29, 2023
  • 153 replies
  • 5801 views

Hello,

I'm an ex-SSE customer that was migrated to OVO in June 2023.
I had a new smart meter fitted on the 16th of December 2022 by SSE and since then I had an issues with the Economy 7 tariff.

Initially, all appliances connected to the off-peak rate circuit (port 5) were always ON instead of turning on and off during rate changes.

After contacting SSE support and later on OVO support multiple times, on the 17th of July 2023, OVO sent an engineer that supposedly fixed our issue but instead it changed to the opposite way:
All appliances connected to the off-peak rate circuit (port 5) are now always OFF during both peak and off-peak hours.

Our heating system consists of storage heaters which are all connected to this off-peak circuit so we are now effectively without heating.

We contacted the OVO support multiple times about this issue with no luck.
They sent multiple emergency and non-emergency engineers and none of them was able to fix our issue beside worsening it on the 17th of July.

By going through other posts on this forum, I came to the conclusion that our problem is probably due to a misconfiguration of our smart meter that could be fixed remotely by OVO, specifically the ECAUL and ALCS config via SMETS commands.

I tried to mention this possible fix and those commands multiple times during phone calls and chats with support but they don't seem to understand what I'm talking about or flat out ignore it.

 

Both yesterday and today they sent an emergency engineer that as aforementioned were unable to do anything about it and told us to ask for an OVO engineer.
I tried this but the earliest would be the 29th of January which is ridiculous as we would be without heating for 2 more months during winter.

I’m not sure what to do at this point. I also raised formal complaint through the webchat but that seems not to do anything.

 

The smart meter that we got fitted.

 

Best answer by Emmanuelle_OVO

Updated on 03/04/25 by Ben_OVO:

Hey @insoctek,

 

Sorry for the issues you’re having, 

 

It might be worth speaking to the support team via webchat and sending them this topic. It is something we’ve seen on the Forum several times but might not be something agents are aware of.

 

They need to ask smart support team to send the ECAUL command to update the ALCS configuration.

 

Hope this helps. 

153 replies

Ben_OVO
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 17, 2025

@Siberia Ben here, I’m one of the new Forum Moderators. I’ve just been catching up on the history of this and I’m happy to hear you’ve got the appointment booked in. Fingers crossed it all goes well - we look forward to your update!

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Rank 2
March 18, 2025

@Firedog ​@Emmanuelle_OVO ​@Ben_OVO 

Good morning, I am glad to report that everything with the installation of the new smart meter went according to the plan. 

Dan (from OVO) was technically super competent and did a great job yesterday leaving no stones unturned during the installation including swapping the communication module, and testing the 2amp aux switch, etc. Aclara SGM1416-B was installed and the pre-configured calendar worked as expected, off-peak power came on at 00:30 last night and went off at 07:30 this morning.

Photo taken at 07:00 this morning.

Thanks to ​@Firedog and ​@Emmanuelle_OVO 

PS, not sure about the communication of the meter with DCC and OVO Systems - while it appeared that the system may have connected on MESH but we do not know for sure till next week! For sure WAN was not functional. I am not hopeful as there is no working WAN inside the Electrical Utility Room even though there are more than 10 smart meters there.  Not a big deal as the important thing was to ensure the storage heating system works. 

 

 

Ben_OVO
Community Manager
Community Manager
March 18, 2025

@Siberia thanks for letting us know - that’s great news!!

 

Thanks as well for your great feedback for Dan, maybe ​@Lukepeniket_OVO can pass this on to him.

 

Hopefully there will be a signal to the DCC, but if not at least the meter is now in situ. It may take up to six weeks for the new meter details to be added to your account, so don’t worry if you don’t receive a bill, or see your old meter details on your online account for the next few weeks - it’ll all be sorted. There’s some more information on the change of meter details in this Forum topic:

 

 

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