OVO Smart Meter fitted- Off-peak circuit always OFF?

So as I thought the screenshots are showing that circuit II is not being energised on either rate.

The question then being should it be being energised on one of them?

Yes - it should be energised during the Off-Peak rate unless you’re on Flat Rate in which case it should be energised 24/7.

It should if the switch is working properly. I don’t suppose Brian stayed up until offpeak hours (or got up early) to take the photos; any picture taken in daytime hours will show that switch icon open. 

I suspect that “The agent advised …  he can send another signal to the meter” means that the ECAUL didn’t work first time. This is not unusual - it seems that it sometimes takes several goes to get the new ALCS configuration to stick. Brian should persevere with the smart team person he was in contact with to get him to keep trying.

Slaps own head - of course - it's showing the current switch status when the photo was taken; whereas the displayed rate is not necessarily the current one in use.

Thank you very much.

I’ll wait to see if you have a further update. 🙂🙂🙂

Yes, I’ll certainly call squad 70 and do as you recommend.

However my experience with OVO energy agents has been very poor.

I am sad that the agent who helped me over a few days has now stopped calling me despite knowing I don’t have economy 7 during winter.

1. I will take photos of the meter reading during off-peak and upload them here. Should be up tomorrow.
2. I’ll mention to an agent from squad 70 that several signals may be needed to set the meter properly.

Remember that the switch won’t happen on the dot, because each meter has a built-in delay of a few (potentially up to 30) minutes so that every storage heater in town doesn’t start up at the same instant (if they did, the grid would blow up!). Early morning might be your best bet; if your offpeak period ends at 07:00, take the photo at 06:55. 
 

1. I called Squad70 dept and arranged an agent to send a new signal to my meter. He advised I should check my meter readings after midnight. Also the agent cannot send numerous signals as the meter may ‘freeze’.
2. I checked my storage heaters but they’re still not coming on.
3. I have taken pics of my meter reading at 6.51am. 

Should I call Squad70 again and ask for another signal to be sent to my meter?

Thanks for making the effort! The pics are pretty conclusive: at the time, the meter was recording on the offpeak register (2) but the auxiliary load switch was open (o´o). When the register switches from 1 to 2, the load switch should close and vice versa.

If you spoke to the agent this morning, you won’t be able to tell whether the ECAUL request was successful or not until tonight. If you can manage, another photo taken at 06:50 tomorrow morning would be convincing evidence. It would be enough at this stage just to capture another ‘active-TOU-number’ image. 
 

I’m curious - how did you manage to get in touch with Squad 70? Were you given a dedicated phone number, or did Support put you through on request? 

Just a suggestion - my system kicks off at 06:25. So if not too much of a trouble I suggest the photo is taken at 6am to be on the safe side. 

Brian’s was clearly still in the offpeak period when he took the first photos at 06:50 (“Active TOU Number 2”). 

Is yours functioning as expected, apart from the lack of communication? 
 

​@Firedog 

Thanks for the note above.

I was advised by my better half to not change the meter before Christmas/New Year. Currently, installation is booked for early Jan, we would like to do this provided we don’t get the cold weather from the east!
 

As you know there is always a chance that the meter we get is NOT preprogrammed :-( Then we have to spend a lot of time on the phone and chat line to get OVO TEAM to replace the meter with one correctly preprogrammed. 

It’s up to you when you get the meter exchanged ​@Siberia. But if you’re off supply I'd recommend getting an emergency appointment booked. Especially at this time of year.

Hi,

long story…

We have a property which we rent out (through a leasing company).

The tenant changed electricity supplier (as they are entitled to do) to OVO since which time the off-peak devices (storage heater & water heater) have not worked overnight.

We have informed the tenant & leasing agent that there is a known issue OVO forum topic and asked the tenant to contact OVO asking for them to resend the configuration as per the instructions given on the forum.

Is there a way in which I can check the programming of the meter to see what times are set for it to switch to off-peak? I’m sure I saw a mention in one of the forum posts that this could be done but “isn’t straightforward”.

The meter is an Aclara SGM 1416B, I’ve had a look in the online docs which I can find for the meter but they are fairly basic.  

Thanks.

It seems to be a bit hit-and-miss whether the support agent a customer talks to understands both the problem and the solution. In most cases, if the fault is in the configuration of the load control switch, the ECAUL request will do the trick almost instantaneously. There is no way I know of for the customer to extract the ALCS calendar from the meter, but a member of OVO’s smart team should be able to. 

You didn’t give many details to help us help you, for example:

• where the property is located (the first part of the postcode will do);
• what plan the customer is signed up for (specified in the welcome package or other confirmation after switching to OVO);
• what times the heaters were turning on and off before the switch to OVO;
• who the previous supplier was.  

There’s a detailed downloadable user manual for this type of meter here (PDF, 4.5MB)

PS I almost forgot: we had a similar case not long ago, taking several days’ to-and-fro troubleshooting. We came to the conclusion that the fault was somewhere in the house’s electrical installation and suggested calling in an electrician. When he came, he found that the circuit breaker for the heaters in the consumer unit had tripped. 

Step 1 should be: check the fuse!  

Thanks for the replies,

Previous supplier was SSE

We’ve checked the breakers etc all ok.

Advised customer of Ecaul issue - they contact helpline OVO couldn’t help 🤷🏼‍♂️ “as they are getting info from meter the system is working”

Paid for an electrician & checked the system - no fault found 

OVO engineer came out, did something (we think connected the off-peak supply to standard) and the panel heater came on.

We are vey limited in what we can do as the account (the only info we have is it is OVO and it’s dual tarif) is in the tenants name and we need their permission to access the property.

We have passed all relevant info (from this forum) to tenant & leasing agent

Not sure the relevance of the Location/Postcode

Thanks again

I’m glad ​@Firedog was able to advise here. Please keep us posted with how this situation unfolds ​@FMilne. 

Thank you.

All former SSE customers became OVO customers a couple of years ago following OVO’s takeover of SSE’s retail arm. If the tenant recently switched to OVO, it was from a different supplier. 
  

Good thinking!
  

Oh dear. I did warn you - “It seems to be a bit hit-and-miss whether the support agent a customer talks to understands both the problem and the solution.” There seems to be a default reaction - send an engineer, which is costly, wasteful and often not likely to help.

I’m not sure what the OVO engineer might have done. If the storage heaters and water heater aren’t charging up overnight, the most likely explanation is that the time switch that turns them on and off hasn’t been configured, or perhaps not configured properly to match the tariff. A visiting engineer can’t remedy this; he can only call OVO and ask for the configuration to be updated just as the customer can. Please ask the tenant to try this again: ask the support agent to get the smart team to ‘update the ALCS’ via the ECAUL request. It only takes a moment for someone who knows what he’s doing.  

Panel heaters (which will be very costly to run at peak rate) shouldn’t be wired to the offpeak (switched) circuit. If they were, they wouldn’t be able to run during the day when they’re needed. I find it very unlikely that the engineer connected the equipment designed to run during the night to the constant circuit. 

I wonder if you can persuade the tenant to add your name to the account; this would require you both to be present during a call to Support, and it requires a good deal of trust on the tenant’s part. It would make it possible for you to talk to support and find out just what has happened with the installation, including engineers’ reports. You would also be able to find out just what tariff the customer is on.
  

The timings and charges for offpeak electricity vary considerably across the country, depending on the terms of the contract between the supplier and the distributor. Knowing the location makes it possible to identify who the distributor is; Sussex (E&W) is a big area, with some parts of it served by SSEN and others by UK Power Networks. If you have an electricity bill for the property (e.g. from the period before the latest tenant moved in), you could find the supply’s MPAN. The first two digits on the MPAN’s bottom line specify the distributor. 

Since the meter is clearly in communication with OVO, it should be a simple matter for the appropriate commands to be transmitted from OVO HQ to the meter to get the system working as it should.

Hi all I think I'm having issues or a similar issue to this post I switched from British gas back to OVO I have just electricity as I have storages heaters and my peak and off peak are correct on the meter but not on OVOs app I'm on an economy 7 tariff but my peak according to OVOs app is higher then my off peak witch makes no sense as no one's home in the day and we always use more over night due to the heaters and water tank here are some pictures as you can see I think my meter has not been set up correctly any help would be great as I'm going to end up being charged way more than I should

To add I'm also not getting any usage updates on the app just says unable to read

Your first picture shows that a Load Control switch (LC2) is closed (i.e. the circuit it controls is live). If the picture was taken during the peak period - i.e. during the day - then something’s wrong. 

It would be helpful to see a wider picture showing all the cables to and from the meter. The LC2 switch will normally power an external contactor, but if none is present, then it should really be disconnected inside the meter.

Perhaps you didn’t notice the post immediately before yours where I pointed out why it’s important to give your location. Without knowing where you live, we can’t tell when your offpeak periods are. Without knowing that, we can’t suggest just when you should take another picture or two of the meter’s display so we can see just what’s wrong. 

Hiya thanks for the reply I'm in Staffordshire this was taken at about 10.37am this morning I'm in a flat here is some pictures of the hole box setup my other people's meters have two symbols like some I have seen on this post 1 and a 2 open and closed 

My meter is the one in red on the hole picture shot

At the top that's a picture of what neighbours look like taken from and early post they all have the symbols 1 and 2 but I only have the lc2 logo

A quick explanation of what's happened so I was on OVO and my contract came to an end and I switched to British gas as they was offering a better tariff that's when all this started going wrong as I was getting changed crazy amounts that's also when I noticed my meter had changed so I switched back to OVO hoping it would go back to how it was set up before plus I happened to get a better tariff then previously offered but I'm still getting charged wrong and the meter is still not right I went onto a economy 7 British gas tariff so I'm unsure why they have messed around with my settings or whatever they've done 

What a mess! I’m glad I’m not an electrician.

A few comments:

1. I’ve learnt over time that if BG can get something wrong, they will.
2. This is illuminating:
     

   

     
   TOU 2 is normally offpeak, although it may not be. If the picture was taken at 10:37, I think that would be during the peak period for any tariff. It’s possible that your TOU registers are the wrong way round. 
     
   The bottom load control icon shows that the auxiliary circuit isn’t live, so there should be no power to your heating equipment.  
   
   It would be helpful if you could take another photo at 07:00 tomorrow morning (perhaps a few minutes earlier, but no later). That should be towards the end of your Economy 7 offpeak period. Navigate to the Active TOU Number screen again before taking the photo. Make a note of the TOU Rate 1 and TOU Rate 2 readings at the time. Take another pair of readings in the evening so we can see which register is recording daytime usage.
    

3. You posted a photo earlier showing LC2 where the bottom load control icon is now. This tells me that at the time, the meter’s load control switch was closed and the heating circuit should be live. Was it?
     
   As I wrote earlier, when LC2 is active, it only sends a little signal to an external contactor to switch on the heating. Because it’s a low-current (2A) switch, the cable from it would normally be a much thinner one, not the full-fat meter tail labelled L5. It really depends where this cable leads to, because the external contactor for the heaters might be in your flat somewhere, or in that sturdy box at the top-right of your picture with the red circle. 

Let’s see your new photos before we dig into your billing. To do that, it would be best to see screenshots from your online account, using a browser (not the app):

1. Your Plan page Plan - OVO Energy 
2. Your recent readings history Meter readings history - OVO Energy
3. Your latest billing details Billing details - OVO Energy

Nobody said it would be easy to sort this out!