My Gas smart meter is not working. It doesn't show up at all on the in house display (the electric meter appears fine), and my account page suggests it's not talking to OVO and there's been no readings since a manual one in April of last year.

I supplied a new, manual reading today, and while digging around in the meter menus (following the instructons on here, thanks!) noticed that the "meter status" was "offline". The signal bars on the gas meter reading display are also missing, suggesting that it’s not talking to the hub. However, on the hub itself by the electricity meter, i do see the HAN signal bars and the HAN lights flashes slowly - which i think means all is well?  

The smart meters were installed by OVO in 2020, they’re SMETS2 . Can anyone suggest next steps?

Cheers,

Martin

Hey there @linedpaper !

Oops, that’s not right. Thanks for those details by the way, it helps a lot. I think the best course of action from here would be to reach out to the Support Team and let them know your gas meter has lost the HAN connection. They’ll go through some steps with you and if they still can’t fix the problem, it’ll be escalated for further investigation.

Great to hear that you’ve already found some helpful smart meter info here on the OVO online community, @linedpaper.

Have you taken a look at the smart meter health check guide above?

This gives you the lowdown on the type of checks that our Support Team will ask you to carry out to help diagnose why we haven’t been receiving the gas readings automatically. It may be that there’s some remote fixes we can try to get things back online, or we might have to schedule in another visit from an engineer to take a look at things.

In the meantime we’d recommend logging your gas readings monthly (as you’ve just done this month) to make sure your charges are accurate.

Do pop back and let us know what the verdict is once you’ve spoken to the Support Team - always great to get an update here! 

Thanks. I’ve called support now - who ran me through the checks you mentioned - and it’s been passed to the ’smart meter team’, who will get back to me in the next 47 working days(!) hopefully they’ll sort it. 

Cheers

Just to tie this off. The support team called me back and told me that they'd done "some fixes at their end". Sure enough later that day the display announced a new gas meter had been initialised and all is now appearing correctly.

Cheers all. 

Had a safety check on the electric metre on Friday, now it’s not sending my electric data reading through. It says the gas supply disconnected but it’s sending my gas reading! 

Hi @Shawfamily7 ,

I’m Blastoise186, one of the forum volunteers around here. It looks like you might have accidentally posted this thread as an Idea, but don’t worry as I’ve let someone know and they’ll be able to convert it to a Question for you.

What kind of safety check was it that got performed, if you don’t mind me asking? If you could show us photos of everything you’re seeing, we might be able to give you some advice that could help.

Thanks!

An engineer came and disconnected wires put a metre reading on each individual wire, he said it was to make sure there was even wattage going through them. 

Hmm… Interesting… That shouldn’t have caused any failures in communications.

Could you show us photos of everything please? I might be able to help with some diagnostics.

Hi @Shawfamily7 and thanks for posting about this. I’ve now moved this out of the Ideas section and made it into a question. 

We’ve made some guides here for a few difference meter types we fit, to help you diagnose why your smart meters aren’t sending readings:

SMETS1 Secure Smart Meter Health Check guide - here

SMETS2 Smart Meter Health Check guide - here

We’re lacking some details here, we don’t know why the engineer came or what they did, we don’t know what the smart meters are or what they look like. We might be able to help with more details. It’s probably best to go directly to the Support team once you’ve had a look at those guides above to let them know the results. 

Hi I have a Smets2 smart meter. It’s an Alcara SGM1411-B

It was installed a year ago and has never communicated with OVO to send readings. We also never received a IHD

We live in a area with poor radio and wifi signal- I’m hoping that we aren’t one of the “0.5%”

I have done the health checks and my wan light flashes every 5 seconds. The meter signal strength is -99db. What does this mean?

I have contacted customer services and they  are investigating but say they will take up to 45 days to respond!

Any diagnosis or tips to get it working?

thanks

Hi @big_malcs ,

I have some thoughts, but I could do with seeing photos of your meter if that’s OK? Once I’ve seen them, I can try to advice on what your options might be.

Thanks!

Here is a picture of the meter, I was fiddling around with the settings, that was why it says-99db and not the reading.

My wan light blinks every 5 seconds and I don’t have gas.

Any helpful suggestions appreciated!

thanks

Malcolm

Ah ha! Muhahahahahahhahahaha!!!

I think I’ve figured it out already. :P

It looks to me as if the meter itself has somehow either dropped or lost the HAN connection to the Comms Hub and may need an engineer visit to rectify. Please could you fire up a live chat with OVO when you get chance and ask them to link this thread to the support case that you’ve already got open. That image will definitely help them out and the extra information might make it easier for them to figure out the next steps. If it was working properly, I’d expect a Meter Signal Strength of something more like -20dBm, not -99dBm!

I have to admit, this has been one of the easiest issues I’ve ever diagnosed. :)

Hi Blastoise186,

Thanks for the quick reply, there is no live chat at the moment as it’s a Sunday, but I’ll get onto it on Monday and let you know the outcome.

Cheers

Malcolm

You’re welcome. :)

You might need to wait until Tuesday though, as tomorrow is a bank holiday and the office will probably be closed.

Hi @big_malcs and thanks for sharing the latest on this. 

Blastoise is here which is a good sign. @Blastoise186 do we think this is a Arqiva comms hub?

If it is, these SMETS 2 meters run on radio signals rather than mobile phone signal. The fact that the ‘WAN’ light is flashing is a good sign but you’ve called out having bad radio signal so this might be the issue. It sounds like this has already been raised with our site support team, who will investigate over the next 45 working days and see if they’re able to fix the issues remotely.

If they’re unable to do so they may send an engineer out to try and resolve the issue. Currently as we have no communication with your smart meter’s, an In Home Display (IHD) wouldn’t work. When we re-gain communications with the meters, contact our support team who will be able to order you an IHD. 

In the meantime to ensure your bills are accurate, we have a live billing system on your online account. This means when you send in readings manually your account balance will automatically update within 24-48 hours. So you can keep track of your usage in between your billing dates. 
 

Yup, that’s an Arqiva LRR (Long Range Radio) Comms Hub alright. All EDMI Standard 420 and EDMI Variant 450 Comms Hubs are running via LRR via the Arqiva WAN.

Funny actually, I was travelling past one of their transmission stations recently. Boy those things are HUUUUUGE!

While I’m at it, your Comms Hub is also missing an anti-tamper seal. Chances are that can be resolved in an engineer visit.

Hi Tim_OVO is it still worthwhile contacting OVO support to see what’s happening?

That was the recommendation from Blastoise 186, but I’m just in from work and the chat function isn’t happening, and there appears to be a big wait on the phone. I presume 45 working days is standard, but it seems a mighty long time for a response! That’s two months!

thanks

Malcolm

No need to reach out to our Support team, I’d say, @big_malcs - the 45 day time frames tells me it’s already been raised to the right team. Check out my comment here for more info:

My smart meter seems to be doing fine - I don’t know because the display on the remote unit is blank. After dis-assembling I found that the Led lights that illuminate the display have failed. I have tried multiple times to get a new replacement so I can monitor my usage with no luck! Can I buy a compatible one from E-Bay or Amazon? will they work? OVO seems too busy to be bothered…

Regards

Sean

I wouldn’t suggest buying an IHD (in home display) second hand as these are linked to their original meters and it might be difficult to update. There are alternatives if you want a quick fix 

It’s actually almost impossible to unpair and re-pair an IHD to a different site than the one it was originally paired to. You effectively have to access functions that are basically locked away for very good reasons.

You also can’t guarantee that eBay/Amazon IHDs haven’t been tampered with either!

I’m told I am not eligible for a smart meter, but I don’t know why. I currently have one of the old style smart meters, which no longer works since moving suppliers. It used to work fine, so I assume my phone signal is not the issue.

Does anyone know what else is taken into account? I would have thought that since all the suppliers are so keen to push their intelligent tariffs, they would be more keen to install meters that actually let you join them.