Smart meter gone "dumb" again

Try the app on your smart phone. There is an option to submit readings there even if it’s missing from the website.

OVO Energy App - Your Energy At Your Fingertips | OVO Energy

[To find the reading submission button, tap the little person icon in the top right-hand corner to get to your profile, then tap on Meter readings > Send … reading.]

Support staff should be able to accept readings over the phone, too, or you could use webchat which would allow you to upload a photo of the meter showing its reading(s).

Of course, there’s no need to submit a reading manually until the morning of the first day of your billing period: your bill for the current period will still be accurate if you do. The usage table you show above has got its figures from somewhere, so this indicates that your readings are indeed getting through to OVO even if the usage data are lagging a bit. I’d not be overly concerned yet …
  

This may be unrelated: A lot of users have reported major delays (several days) in receiving readings and usage data from before the weekend and over the bank holiday (precisely the dates in your usage table). It wasn’t only OVO customers that have been affected, and it looks like there is a big catch-up exercise underway. I was affected by this hiccup in data transmission, but I didn’t see any sort of warning like the one you show above. My LEDs have been flashing as normal throughout, but I’m still waiting for yesterday’s figures which normally arrive before breakfast. The previous day’s arrived this morning.

@Firedog Thanks for the reply and I’ll try the app as luckily I have a modern mobile. 🙂

I just get frustrated by poorly performing/buggy software having worked in IT for all of my career. Coupled with the fact that the government tries to sell smart meters so hard when the infrastructure in my experience, since my meter was installed some 12 months ago, seems to me to be so flakey.

The last 4 figures are estimates as there is no click through so I guess I might also be caught up in your “unrelated note” 

The two parts of the website have now caught up and I can now submit readings.

I’m glad to hear your issue is resolved now @grumpy235. Please pop back if you have any further issues 😊

@Emmanuelle_OVO  Only part, I can now enter my own readings via the Web but what caused my meter to go dumb is still not resolved. Whenever this has happened before in the past year since install it has been fixed on the OVO end, I assume via a software setting and on one occassion almost immediately once the right level of support was involved.

As far as I am concerned the meter has been fault free for the 12 months I have had it, the IHD is working fine so local comms is OK, my mobile works just fine so I guess that leaves only a prossible problem with meter comms software/hardware.

I just wanted to be sure that the correct level of software support had been involved on the OVO end so as to avoid a wasted engineer visit.

Hi @Emmanuelle_OVO @Firedog 

Just tried https://homebrew.n3rgy.com/ which did not work for me last year but appears to be now. Result is as follows..

I have no gas so that is OK.

Meter security cert expires today - from my limited experience with SSL certs this could be a problem depending on how it is renewed

** Screenshot removed by Mod ** 

HOME - to my mind suggests that my meter is communicating with the Network as the cache data given is current for when I connected to n3rgy.

Any thoughts ?

By chance, your equipment is identical to my own, installed just a few days earlier. My homebrew report is just the same - same firmware all round, same security certificate versions (note that the one for the meter expired a year ago today!). So everything is working.

You were missing some data last week, but they eventually turned up. That was precisely my own experience, and it’s happened again this week - my latest (on 30 August) readings and usage data are from 27 August. So I think you can assume that the problem is at OVO’s end and there’s nothing wrong with your meter.

So, there’s no need to be submitting readings manually, although you might just to be on the safe side submit readings on Sunday morning to close off August and avoid an estimated bill.

Since you’re aware of n3rgy, you could check that they are able to retrieve your usage data even if OVO aren’t. There was a long period (13 June - 25 August) when n3rgy couldn’t get any data out of my meter. That was a problem specific to Aclara SMETS2 meters as far as I’ve been able to ascertain, and I know Aclara and DCC were working hard to find the cause and remedy it. They have clearly been successful, but I can’t say whether whatever they did has affected suppliers’ ability to retrieve data.

To get your data via n3rgy, visit https://n3rgy.com and sign up, if you haven’t already. Then https://data.n3rgy.com/consumer-login to see if you can download your data as CSV.

@Firedog Thanks for the reply and I guess patience is a virtue😁

I tried to get the CSV data from n3rgy as well but no joy, had a similar experience last year. I missed that the cert expired in ‘23, makes you wonder why it is there in the first place.

I worked as a mainframe systems programmer for 40 years and if I had to support a data collection system like this I would probably go mad.

No joy? What happened? You got an empty file, or no file at all? Any error message? What period did you check for?

Zip file downloaded named data, contains one folder electricity which in turn contains a consumption and a tariff folder, each of these contain a single folder named “1” and each of these contain a CSV named “20240801-20240830” which in turn contain a single header line “timestamp (UTC)  energyConsumption (kWh)”

So no data. Time span used contains data that has reached OVO

This is exactly the same as my attempts before. I guess it is possible that the meter is reachable assuming the data given under HOME in homebrew report (above) was obtained from the meter but metering data is not flowing from the meter for some reason. I’ll wait and see what the engineer has to say next Tuesday.

Just a heads up - Smart Meters in the UK don’t use SSL nor SSL Certificates. :)

OK, thanks. This would indicate that whatever fix was done to make it possible for me to receive nr3rgy data after the long famine has not been applied globally. They knew I was watching (the squeaky wheel!), so it’s possible there’s some alpha testing going on before deploying the fix to all affected customers. I have no idea whether any of this fiddling could be affecting OVO’s ability to retrieve data reliably. 

In any case, I don’t think a site visit will help; I think this is all a question of remote software updates. An engineer might be able to see something interesting in your meter’s security log, but then so could the engineers at OVO so long as they’re able to send the right service request. We’ll see - I expect a full report on the results of the site visit 🙂 

Meanwhile, I’ll get back to n3rgy and Aclara to see if I can extract a progress report from them. 

PS An hour or two ago, I saw that my account was showing both readings and usage data for 29 August but not for 28th. So billing is up to date, and it’s possible the missing day’s data will pitch up in due course. n3rgy is still bringing me a full house of usage data, so I can keep my spreadsheets on track.

@Firedog Thanks for the update. Glad your data has returned and guess what my data is now upto date as well 😀Latest reading dated 30th August.

I feel sorry for the folks on the Support desk having to work with what I perceive as a flaky system as they appear not to have the right tools to answer customer queries other than call an engineer (where have we heard about flaky systems recently, the answer is just over the Horizon!)

Going to cancel the engineer visit I think although it might be good to hear what he has to say. I’ll probably wait to see if readings continue to get through.

I’ll keep you posted

Hi @grumpy235,

Glad to hear this has sorted itself out. Please let us know if you have any further issues.

@Firedog 

You asked for an update after my engineer visit…

Smart readings still getting through since 30th August

Engineer turned up on time, extremely helpful and friendly guy.

Job ticket was a bit vague so he had a Webchat with engineering support - “MILES ?” about what was expected of him, seemed to be a Comms check.

He requested they check if my meter was visible, answer was no so he removed comms block for 5 mins and put it back (re-boot) and support could then see my meter. 3 green lights at correct frequency before and after the re-boot. He closed the ticket.

Not sure if I am any further forward as unless the meter is in permanent contact with the DCC then I would expect no visibility before the re-boot and to have it after re-boot if the comms are working fine.

Searching the Web it appears getting data out of the DCC has not been good during August for a number of suppliers.

Coincidently just after the engineer left, the man from Morisson turned up to read the meter🙂

Thanks for the update. It’s good to know that rebooting the comms hub helped. I’d heard that it is possible to do this remotely, which would have saved an engineer visit in your case. Perhaps @Lukepeniket_OVO could confirm or refute?

Just to clear up a widespread misunderstanding: DCC doesn’t hold any data. They’re all stored on your meter. DCC’s job is to provide the secure communications channel between your meter and anyone else authorized to access the data it contains. This includes your supplier, your DNO and any ‘other user’ like n3rgy or Bright that you give permission to. There have indeed been a few hiccups over the past few weeks, but I’m sure DCC and others involved are working hard to get them all ironed out (to mix my metaphors a bit 🙂).