Smart meters are working but not communicating with OVO - why?

Hi @BrendanC and welcome to the Forum.

You are one of many customers who are experiencing “issues” with Smart Meters and some unusual patterns of readings not being delivered to their In Home Device (IHD), or their My OVO page, or both.

Two factors have conspired against us to make it more difficult to resolve these problems:

• the introduction of a new Billing System to comply with Ofgem requirements
• the pandemic restrictions, which make it difficult for installation engineers to visit enough properties

Your situation does at least have a clear cause at the root of it. As the meter commands are actually generated by the Billing System, it simply won’t know how to handle a site which it is aware of, but receives no responses from!

For your peace of mind, I suggest that you continue to read the meters manually once each month. That gives you a time/date-stamped copy of what you’ve written. From their side, unless there’s something unusual about those readings, I’m sure that OVO will be able to use them as the basis of your monthly statements until matters can be put right.

If you’d like to discuss particular issues concerning your meters, then please post here again. The Forum is a good place to share these experiences because it helps to provide better feedback to OVO as to where problems exist.

Thanks for the response but is there a reason e-mails are not responded to ? I understand that there will be teething problems with new systems but I think repeatedly not responding to e-mail sent to a customer service centre is pretty poor. I can put up with most things if I’m kept informed. I need to know if Commissioning my Meter is on Ovo’s “to do” list ? , and I’m wondering if this would prevent me from changing supplier ?

Those are questions I can’t answer, @BrendanC. Here on the Forum we are fellow customers.

The Moderators are the same team as those who handle social media. So if you send in a direct message via on Facebook or Twitter and provide your Account Number, then they can chase this up with the Customer Services Dept. If you don’t use social media, then send a Private Message to a Moderator (ask if you don’t know how).

I expect the CS Manager will be none too pleased to hear that a customer has failed to receive the required email responses. That’s a breakdown in the procedures that needs checking.

OVO repeatedly scores highly in the annual Which? survey of domestic Energy Suppliers because their customer support is better than their rivals. This is also depicted in the low level of complaints that get taken up by the Office of the Energy Ombudsman.

We’re not ignoring you intentionally, @BrendanC, we’ve discovered an issue which meant emails haven’t come through to us. This has now been resolved and the team are working through the emails as quickly as possible so you’ll get a reply soon.

Don’t forget you can also reach out on social media and we’ll be happy to help. 

And that’s an important reason why customers should be discussing issues here on the Forum. It enables us to see if a fault, such as missing emails, is being noticed by several customers.

I’m writing on behalf of my stepdaughter.  She transferred to OVO in 2019 and had smart meters installed in October 2020. All was well until she told me this week that her IHD wasn’t showing any meter readings. I had a look and sure enough, it wasn’t. It displayed gas but no readings and no electricity at all. What’s more, it constantly reboots after several minutes. I investigated further and found that the electricity meter stopped sending readings to OVO on August 6th. Before that it was fine so what would cause it to suddenly stop? The WAN/HAN lights are flashing every 3 seconds so there is a connectivity issue but why after a year of no problems? OVO have never alerted her to the fact that they are no longer receiving readings, they just send estimated bills. Why? What’s going on?

Hi there @Albourneboy !

Is your stepdaughter anywhere near Bilsdale by any chance? Because if she is, then I think I know what will explain the root cause of this outage. It’s very likely that the fire at the Arqiva Bilsdale Transmission Station back in August is related. This is beyond OVO’s control I’m afraid and it knocked out basically everything coming from that mast - including the Arqiva WAN service that’s used by Smart Meters in the Northern Territory in that area of the country.

Suppliers can’t easily detect these outages, but I’d definitely recommend asking the Support Team to take a look just in case they’re able to find a solution. Please be advised though that if her meters are meant to be serviced by the Bilsdale station, then I’m afraid it could be a while before that service is fully operational again.

Based on your description and the details over on SmartMe, it sounds as if the meters are trying to re-establish the connection - so it’s likely that there’s a comms outage somewhere. I think the reboots of your IHD are related to it trying to re-establish a link as well, but is unable to do so. Let me grab the expertise of @Lukepeniket_OVO just in case he can help too.

Hi all, hope everyone is OK!

So by the looks of it above you've sent a few details in to be checked. If you are in Arqiva Bilesdale then it's just going to be a wait until the mast is repaired.

If you are in another area the back office team will look at your system with the use of the smart meter health check but ultimately an engineer visit may be required. 

Nothing to do with Bilsdale for 2 reasons. Firstly, the fire was at the end of August, her meters stopped communicating with OVO on 6th August. Secondly, she lives in Scotland 🤣🤣

We've had a couple of members affected recently who came here to ask for help, so it's currently one of the things I like to check until the mast gets fixed permanently.

Based on everything mentioned, it definitely seems like a fault has developed somewhere. Please ask your stepdaughter to contact the Support Team and go through a Smart Meter Health Check so that it can be investigated. They'll keep you posted. 

Hi @Albourneboy and welcome to the OVO online community.

Sorry to hear about the issues your stepdaughter has noticed with her smart meters not sending us meter readings. Our helpful community members have given some great advice on this one:

We’ve got a handy guide to the smart meter health check for our SMETS 1smart meters here and SMETS 2  smart meters here - it involves checking some details on the meters, including the lights which are flashing. Once she’s checked these details she can forward these on to our Support Team, who’ll advise on the next steps.

In the meantime, It’s worth noting that the meter should still be clocking her usage so we’d recommend taking a manual meter reading and submitting this on the ‘Meter Readings’ page of her online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS).

Hope this helps get things sorted. Let us know how you get on -  We’re always happy to offer advice here where we can. 

Hi Jess. Thanks for the advice. She did send the details you mention to the support team yesterday but I was hoping that there was something else we could do in the meantime to speed things up a little as they mentioned 40 days to fix 🥴. It’s already been almost 2 months since the meter last sent readings to OVO and she wasn’t aware of that until I checked her usage on the OVO app. I’m surprised OVO didn’t inform her that something was wrong and ask her to send in manual readings before now. Incidentally, she also needs a new IHD. The one she’s got constantly turns itself off then reboots so there is something wrong with that too. 

40 days is the maximum target time to resolve these issues, but OVO aims to resolve them faster than that whenever possible - you could even end up with a fix within two weeks if you get lucky for example.

As for the IHD, that’s normal behaviour when it can’t get a connection. I have two Chameleon IHD6-CAD-PPMID IHD’s that I call the Kecleon Brothers and they both do the exact same thing if I move them too far away from Raichu for too long - or if I fire them up and let them sit out of range so that they can’t get a link at all. This isn’t usually a fault as once they’re able to get a connection to my Home Area Network again (from the Comms Hub above Raichu), the reboots cease almost immediately. I think it’s normal behaviour for when the IHD is attempting to run a self-diagnostic and recovery from these issues.

MyOVO does normally alert you to a lack of recent readings if you log in regularly, but I think I’ve got a possible feature enhancement idea here. I think what would help would be if a Push Notification could be sent to the OVO Energy app if your meters miss more than say, five scheduled readings and ask for a manual one. That might help a bit - and is probably a bit less distracting than sending emails out. :)

Ah, well logging in regularly is something she never does - in fact, I doubt she’s logged in since the first time 😢 which is why she wasn’t aware that no readings were being sent. 

Good point regarding the IHD though. I’ll get her to check via the app now and then that readings are being sent and when they are, I’ll get her to turn the IHD on again 

We are customers of OVO and keep getting messages that our smart meter is not sending information. We moved into this property 6 months ago and took over the existing meters etc. A sticky label tells me that the meter was installed in 2019. I have applied for a replacement or repair, but I only get a message stating that they cannot install a meter. I am 87 years old and am recovering from a triple fracture in my neck, I am also diabetic and have heart and kidney problems. I therefore find it difficult to try and read the meter (I have no instructions on this) to send readings to Ovo. I assumed that this was the reason for using a smart meter. I have managed to take a picture of the meter, a L & GE470, but I cannot see how to attach it to this message. Can you help me please.

Thank you Roy Jones

You are eligible to be put on the priority services register.  Until the smart meters are made operable you are entitled to ask for a meter reader to come and do it for you.

the meters are probably OK but their communication with OVO is not.  OVO can try to send instructions to the meter to get it working again.  If eventually that fails you are entitled to a replacement.  It is possible that these meters are SMETS1 meters and they might not have been enrolled onto the DCC network (systems are in the course of change) the conversion is not due to be complete for another 3 months and OVO would not replace a meter that is potentially capable of working.

you can use this tool to check if some features of the meter are working and post the result back here.

https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk

our resident smart meter expert @Blastoise186  will pop by to give his more authoritative opinion in due course.

Ovo installed new gas and electric meters about a year ago and gave me a IHD6 smart meter. It’s never successfully sent meter readings to Ovo, I log in and send them manually on the website instead, which makes the smart meter pointless.
I don’t know why it doesn’t work. The IHD6 top left signal shows full 4 bars and I’ve connected it to my WIFI and that shows strong connection too. The smart meter itself is getting the readings but not then sending to Ovo.

Any ideas how to get it to work?

Please could you post photos for us @mrtomuk ? We can try to advise but photos are important. :)

Hi @mrtomuk

It is also worth a quick check to see if any of the free ofgem regulated 3rd party apps can see your meter readings.

This is one for example. 

https://www.glowmarkt.com/

 

Hi @mrtomuk  that is what is called an In Home Display.

Your electricity smart meter might look something like this

You will also have a gas smart meter somewhere

Can you post pictures of those? 

On the electricity the 4 of the 5 leds flash every 5 seconds, the middle one (MESH) doesn’t flash

On the Gas, I’ve looked through the screens and it says Connected on HAN status