Storage Heater trying to charge outside offpeak time with change to Smart Meter

Hi @JamieTall , can you post a photo of your smart meter please. From that someone might be able to help

Thanks for replying.

Thanks.

It’s good that it is working of course, but I’m concerned not as intended.

When you say it can change not exactly on the hour, a small change would be fine but this problem suggests I’m losing out on 3 hours charge.

The past 2 nights the LED attached to the Quantum heater indicating off peak is live and is charging hasn’t come until exactly 3am and then switched off at exactly 10am. Keeping an eye on the IHD, at 3am the IHD was already showing it was on offset peak time for 3 hours but the radiator only came on at 3am at which point my usage understandably jumped up. And then at 7am this morning the IHD showed the meter has switched back to the on peak rate and my usage dropped to almost zero but the LED on the radiator was still lit up for a further 3 hours until exactly 10am.

So the IHD is reporting the correct on and off peak times and rates. The radiator is set to match these times. But something is throwing this window out by 3 hours.

Hmm .. the offset on switchover should be just a few minutes at most, not several hours. 
From what you say, either the meter isn’t switching at the correct time (in which case it need a reset) or there’s another time switch somewhere in the circuit. 
 

Thanks for your help, I appreciate you taking the time to look at it.

I was hoping a solution might be known but it looks like I’ll need to give OVO a call, which unfortunately never goes well. Thanks again.

It sounds as if the schedule for the Auxiliary Load Control Switch (ALCS) isn’t right, even though the meter is switching its counters from peak to offpeak and back again at the right times, which are given on your Plan page. The two should match. Yes, you’ll have to contact Support and get them to ask the smart team to send the ECAUL request to configure the ALCS. It might take a couple of tries to get the change to stick.

You are probably correct @Firedog although I can’t figure out why the indicator on the heaters should be ‘on’ between 3am and 10am? 
 

As the IHD doesn’t control the switch, what would be keeping the indicator live only between those times? Wouldn’t that be when the 5th terminal is live?

I’d guess that the LED just shows that the power supply is live, i.e. that the fifth terminal is live. It’s the heater’s internal clock that switches it* on at midnight and off at 07:00 (“I have checked the settings on the heater and it shows the off peak tariff time is 12am to 7am”). So it’s not charging between midnight and 03:00 because the ALCS is off, and not between 07:00 and 10:00 because the equipment’s heating elements are off even though the ALCS is on.

Every element of the timing puzzle has to be in alignment: the tariff (as shown on the Plan page), the tariff timings and rates as pushed to the meter (to manage its registers) and thence to the IHD, the ALCS to match the tariff timings and the time switches on the heaters themselves. This looks to be all in order except for the ALCS calendar, which is remotely controlled by the smart team at OVO. ECAUL should fix it.

*   ‘it’ being the heating element. There should be 24-hour power to the heater via a separate circuit to control its fans, so it discharges heat more quickly when asked. Quantum call this the ‘comfort’ setting, I think. The LED presumably only monitors the feed to the heating element. 

Hey @JamieTall 

Did you get this sorted in the end, and are the heaters coming on and off at the right times now?

Let us know how you got on.🙂