Why is my off peak not working after smart meter installed?

This is my meter set up 

Thank you for taking the time to help -  dealing with Ovo is driving me to despair 

Thank you for the photo. It’s a pity you didn’t notice the suggestion that “it usually helps to touch a button before taking the picture to light up the display screen,” because then we’d probably have seen these little fellows much more clearly:
  

These show the state of the meter’s internal relays. The upper one, labelled ı, shows that the main 100A relay is closed ( o¯o ) as it always should be unless something bad has happened. The lower one (labelled ıı) shows the state of the ALCS, which governs power to the heating equipment during offpeak hours. It is currently open ( o´o ), but it should change to something else at the start of an offpeak period to show that it’s closed. You may see LC1 like in this illustration from an instruction manual:

  
 … but that’s not certain. What is important is that when the tariff changes to offpeak, the ALCS should close in order to deliver power to the heaters and the lower icon should no longer show as open. In your case, I think your offpeak hours are currently nominally 01:00 - 08:00, so looking at the meter a minute before 08:00 should tell you whether the ALCS relay is closed as it should be. If it is, watch it until it changes again in a few minutes’ time* as the offpeak period ends, and make a note of the exact time when it does.

If the relay is closed at 08:00, well and good - the meter’s working as expected, but there may be a fault further downstream, e.g. a fuse blown, a breaker tripped or a wire come loose. You’ll have to call in your friendly neighbourhood electrician if you can’t spot it yourself.

If the relay is open at 08:00, the ALCS has probably not been properly configured. Call Support and ask them to have the ECAUL request sent to your meter to update the ALCS calendar to what it should be to match your E7 plan. 

*   Offpeak periods don’t start and stop at precisely the nominal times. There is a random delay, usually of less than 10 minutes, built in to each meter just to ensure that not every storage heater in town suddenly switches on at the same millisecond, which might blow up the grid if they did. Make a note of your meter’s delay so you know when it’s best to run power-hungry appliances and you don’t switch them on too early.

Hey ​@Mila, 

Welcome to the community.

I noticed that ​@Firedog has shared some great advice already! If the ALCS isn’t set up just right, don’t hesitate to reach out to our Support Team. They’re helpful and can send a request to the meter to take care of it remotely. Also, make sure to ask them about doing a tariff configuration for you. This'll help get things back on track for you.  

You’ll find similar topics below and if you have any further questions we’d be happy to help.

Thank you for your reply. What seems most bizarre and mysterious to me is that everything was working until they put the new smart meter in. It seems as if Ovo aren’t bothering to check if everything is working and I just walking away and leaving customers to sort it for themselves. If these issues are a known problem then ovo should be making sure everything is working properly before leaving a customer In the lurch. I’ve checked the switch things that firedog mentioned and it seems they’re doing what he says they should. But I still have no off-peak electricity. So now it appears it’s up to me to go to the expense of getting an electrician to try and sort a problem which didn’t exist until Ovo started messing about with a meter. I’m really unhappy with their customer service. The customer relations assistant has said that his escalated to another level and I have to wait a few more days to see what they say, but I’m not holding my breath

Hey ​@Mila,

Technology can be a bit unpredictable at times. It’s so frustrating when trying to fix one thing leads to another issue cropping up! I totally understand where you’re coming from. While engineers do their best to leave everything in top shape, there are some areas they just can't touch because of training and liability rules. I’ve shared an article below that breaks down who’s responsible for what, which I hope makes things clearer for you.

By the way, when you said you checked those switches that ​@Firedog mentioned, did you make sure they are opening and closing at the right times or at least pretty close?

You’ll hopefully realize that one thing the meter  engineer can’t check is whether the auxiliary load control switch is operating at the right times for Economy 7. Although all the checks that can be made before he leaves are made, he can’t reasonably be expected to come back in the wee small hours to see whether things are working as they’re supposed to just then.

Now you’ve told us that the ALCS is doing its job, but power isn’t reaching the heating equipment. You’ve checked the fuses in the fuse box or breakers in the consumer unit and nothing is off there. OVO engineers aren’t supposed to touch anything downstream of equipment OVO have installed, which all seems to be in order. That’s why you’ll have to get an electrician in to see what the problem is. I should point out that meter engineers aren’t (necessarily) electricians.

I understand from what you both replied with that ovo take no responsibility for their actions. I certainly don’t expect anyone to come in the ‘wee small hours’ but I would expect an energy company to take responsibility for their actions and not wash their hands of errors caused by their operatives or by their technology , whichever is at fault here.. If the system was working before why should the fuses or breakers or anything else  suddenly become an issue? 

We have seen customers in a similar situation to yours come here after a few days’ to-and-fro troubleshooting, which culminated in a suggestion to call in an electrician to trace the fault. Sheepishly, but really courageously, they reported that the first thing the electrician did was to check the breakers, found the one that had tripped, reset it and solved the problem in just a minute. Can you confirm that you’ve checked yourself and that all is in order? 

We’ve also seen cases where the engineer has done everything he was supposed to, but whoever wired the consumer unit did a poor job of connecting the cable from the meter to the CU. When the engineer reattached the cable at the meter end, he didn’t notice that it had come adrift at the other end. I don’t expect you to look for faults like this - it’s an electricians job.

In any case, safety is everyone’s priority. Fuses blow, breakers trip, things stop working for all sorts of reasons. When a fault occurs, it’s a good idea to get an expert in to check for possible risks - there are two many reports in the press about fatalities caused by electrical faults.