Smart meter displays wrong readings - Ovo seem fine with it as it sends them correct readings?

Hi @NikL,

I’m sorry to hear this.

It seems our forum volunteer has given some good advice here already.

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Please keep us updated.

Thank you. There is clearly something wrong somewhere.

Do you have an IHD connecting to this meter? Secure meters usually came with a Secure Pipit 500 IHD, which unlike some more modern ones is able to show the readings on both registers. I can’t find this documented anywhere, but I assure you it is there somewhere. I’m just wondering whether your keypresses on the meter aren’t doing what they should.

There is a meter health check wizard that may still work - I haven’t tried it for a few years. It’s worth going through it in case it helps: the results are allegedly sent direct to the smart people at OVO HQ. You might have to wait a long time for a response, though. See here: OVO Energy - Smart meter help .

Where does your hot water come from? E.g. you have a tank in an airing cupboard with immersion heaters, or instant on-demand hot water in the kitchen and an electric shower, or it’s centralized somewhere else in the property and not your responsibility.

It’s fairly obvious to me that this meter has not been correctly configured, and it’s getting a bit urgent to get it fixed so you’re not left with no heating once it starts getting colder. Could I trouble you to take another picture of your meter cupboard, so we can see the meter and everything else around it, including the cables to and from it and any other boxes fixed to the backboard? 

Once we can see what’s what, we’ll have a better idea what you’ll have to say when you contact Support again. I’d recommend using the webchat option, because then you can prepare some text in advance and you’re also able to send images. You can also get a transcript of the chat so everyone knows what was said.

Usage data: it may take a day or two for your half-hourly data to start turning up in your online account after you opted in. Keep an eye on the usage pages.

That’s brilliant, thanks! It all looks fine. The fat grey cable coming from the foremost port at the bottom of the meter is labelled L S, which means Line Switched. This is the one to your heaters, controlled by a switch inside the meter called ALCS, Auxiliary Load Control Switch. Whether it is operative or not depends not least on whether it’s been properly configured or not. I’m a bit doubtful that it has, since you say there’s no mention of Economy 7 or anything similar on your plan page, and your meter is only sending one reading a day as opposed to two - peak and offpeak. 

I’m glad the health check wizard is still working, even though it didn’t uncover any fault. It’s a pity about the IHD - they went out of production many years ago, so it’s not surprising OVO couldn’t supply one. Your meter’s got a couple of years of life left, so I doubt it will be replaced soon unless they can’t get it to do what it’s supposed to be doing. I’m still wondering about the readings you’re seeing on it, though - you have to be able to check that it’s sending the right ones to OVO, because that’s what is used to calculate your bill. 

If the ALCS is properly set, the heating circuit should be live between 01:00 and 08:00 (during British Summertime). You could try turning the heater on shortly after 07:00 one morning to see if it shows any sign of life; there may be an indicator light to show that the power is on, but if not, you should be able to feel it getting warmer and (in my experience) hear it clicking and creaking and possibly smelling as it heats up. If there’s no sign of life, then the ALCS is probably not working. It would be as well to check this before contacting support so you can say that there is or isn’t power to the heaters.

Since you only appear to have one heater on the offpeak circuit, it would be worth finding out whether Economy 7 (E7) would be the best tariff for you. For it to be economical, you would have to consume something like at least 28% of electricity at night. Since you’ve only recently moved in, I don’t suppose you have any idea what your annual consumption is likely to be, so there’s a lot of guesswork involved.  Here goes:

Your consumption July-August was 74 kWh. That happens to be almost exactly the same as my own, so it could be that our usage patterns are similar, in which case your annual consumption exclusive of heating might be around 1050 kWh, of which perhaps 150 kWh is at night.  

A single storage heater will probably be rated at 3 kW. Let’s assume that this is switched on on 1 October and stays on until 31 March, and it takes 3 hours to charge each night. That’s 9 kWh per day x 182 days =  1638 kWh. That gives a total annual consumption of 1638 + 1050 = 2688 kWh, of which 66% is used at night - well within the E7 comfort zone.

The annual cost at single-rate on OVO’s current standard variable tariff for the Northern Powergrid regions, paid by Direct Debit, would be something like
2688 x £0.2020 + 365 x £0.6422 =  £777.38. VAT at 5% would bring that up to £816.25. 

At E7 rates (day £0.2245, night £0.1440, SC £0.6416), this would work out at
(900 x 0.2245 + 1788 x 0.1440 + 365 x 0.6416) + 5% = £728.40.

So, if your consumption was anything like this, E7 would be £88 a year cheaper. You can’t possibly know whether you’ll need to run a 3 kW heater for three hours each night to keep you warm, or whether you could get away with less or possibly have to supplement with other heaters. 

I would suggest that you try switch to the E7 tariff until you have some idea of how well it works for you. If you end up using much less overnight power, you could then ask to be switched back to single-rate.  

With all that in mind, I’d say you should ask support:

1. to switch your account to the Economy 7 tariff you assumed you’d be on if that’s what they said in their welcome letter of 20 June;
2. to ask the smart team to ensure that your meter is set to record peak and offpeak usage separately, with day usage recorded on R01 and night on R02;
3. (depending on the result of your early-morning check on the heater) to ask the smart team to ensure that your offpeak circuit is turned on for the offpeak period. 

It may be that they work out that it would be simpler just to install a new SMETS2 meter instead of trying to get this old one to work properly. If they do send an engineer to check your meter, that would be a quick and easy solution - the one I ended up with last year. If they did that, and got it right, you wouldn’t have to worry about the strange readings you’re seeing at the moment, and you’d get a shiny new IHD to boot. If they say that that can’t be done quickly, we’ll have another look at the meter display problem. Meanwhile, you’ll have to rely on the online readings to keep track of your usage.

Phew!