Do I have to get a smart meter if I switch to OVO?

I’m thinking of switching from British Gas to OVO.  I don’t have a Smart Meter, and don’t want one either.  Will I have to have one if I go with OVO?

Great to hear you’re thinking of joining us @foreststar, see above for more info, if you have any more questions let us know! 

Cheers! 

Hi @foreststar. I’m glad to see you’ve raised this issue on the Forum. There are a multitude of differing views about Smart Meters being voiced here, and you are certainly not alone.

I had Smart Meters fitted 9 months ago, and had a number of problems. However, it has been extremely useful seeing how these  were addressed over the ensuing months. If they’d worked first time then I wouldn’t have learned nearly so much.

You can read of my experiences over here on my Topic about SMETS2 Installation.

During the next few months there will be stories in the press and here on the Forum about customers using Smart Meters for innovative purposes well beyond just delivering usage data back to their Energy Supplier.

Whether you have Smart Meters or not should not dissuade you from joining in with comment or questions about these new technologies. It’s the diversity of viewpoints which makes this Forum so useful.

Thanks for your replies.  Now I’ve only ever paid for my bills once my meters have been read, and my quarterly bill’s been sent. If I go with Ovo, I’m going to pay a set amount each month direct debit.  Now how do they (and myself) find out if I’m overpaying or underpaying?  Do they come out to read my meter occasionally?

Good point @foreststar. You will still send in manual readings - preferably once each month. The basis of this is trust.

When my Smart Meters weren’t fully operational I received an email reminder about 4 days before the optimal monthly read-date. I usually tried to put in the readings a day or two early. That produced bills with 29 or 30 days of “customer supplied reading” and 1 or 2 days of “estimated reading”.

OVO use a third-party company, Morrison Data Services, to log all meter readings. It is Morrison who would attend on site to do an official reading as and when required.

The exact interval of these official readings varies according to

• the age of your meter(s)
• the deviation of your manual readings from an expected norm
• safety-check intervals (typically every 2 to 3 years)

If you have difficulties in providing manual readings, then there are ways to accommodate this. About a year ago, a customer on this Forum pointed out that his electricity meter was in the basement, and he could no longer use the stairs to reach it. There are solutions to such problems and OVO Customer Services need to be informed so they can provide advice and make the necessary arrangements.

I currently use EDF and have a SMETS1 meter installed by British Gas.  It’s pretty unreliable and most of the time the IHD doesn’t show gas readings which are also not sent submitted to the central system.

EDF say the issue is probably caused by the distance between my Gas and electric meters, but can’t offer any solution.

I found that OVO are the only provider to offer the smart meter relay.  Will this work with SMETS1?  Would OVO install a SMETS2 meter if I switch?

They might but the companies are focused on getting those without smart meters locked in rather than fixing existing problems. It’s about targets.

Hi @Mhop74 ,

That sounds like a tricky situation you have there!

Firstly, I need to let you know that OVO has terminated support for their Smart Relays. If you don’t already have one, you won’t be able to get one now. They’re also incompatible with SMETS2 equipment because the NCSC banned them from being used because of security vulnerabilities with that type of device. I’m going to try and ask the forum moderators if the relevant articles can be updated to reflect this.

To me, it sounds like the only fix would be to replace the meters with SMETS2. OVO’s policy is that they will try to get the existing kit back online if possible, but as you have SMETS1 it would rely on the meters being migrated to DCC via Enrolment & Adoption first. If the process completely fails and it becomes impossible to get the existing meters back online, OVO would offer to replace them with SMETS2 for free - and chances are they’d use the new Dual-Band Comms Hub to eliminate range issues. OVO has installed a bunch of them already and they work brilliantly, but not all suppliers have them yet and they only work for SMETS2 meters.

@Blastoise186 thanks for the reply. Disappointing to hear about the relays being discontinued- seemed that this might be a solution.

One challenge is that the connection currently is intermittent- sometimes I get gas metering info on the IHD, sometimes not - and gas data rarely makes into into the EDF energy hub, whereas electricity is more reliable.

I’m trying to get to the bottom of an issue with heating/water controls for which hourly gas data would be really helpful.

Obviously at the moment there is no benefit in terms of cost from changing suppliers, but I’d hoped it might be a chance to get changed over to SMETS2.

Right apart from other issues with SSE/OVO we now have the Smart Meter threat of our long wave or something disappearing and we must have one of the Smart Meters fitted. Really? We have a dual meter fitted at present which surely does not run on anything wireless as it’s been here over 30 years.

We have solar panels connected to the electricity grid for Feed in and we have economy 7 and a very poor mobile phone system. We have broadband but no community wi fi as we have no close neighbours.

We have not booked a new smart meter as a neighbour says his doesn’t do what it is supposed to do and he gets asked still to give meter readings.

Where do we stand legally on this issue and how could not giving in and having a ‘smart but not smart’ meter installed affect our electricity supply and feed in from solar?

Solar won’t be affected, but if you’ve got the old Radio Teleswitches, you will be affected badly if you don’t upgrade. Time is ticking I’m afraid and the last transistors down at Droitwich Transmission Station that are capable of broadcasting the RTS Service are likely to go pop soon - assuming the BBC doesn’t kill the Radio 4 LW service before then!

Please post photos of your meters and all equipment near to them. I’d like to check something.

Legally speaking (!!!AND THIS IS NOT LEGAL ADVICE!!!), the meters remain property of the supplier at all times. You can’t prevent the supplier from replacing them if they have to be replaced for safety reasons or if they have to be replaced to keep your configuration in support, such as Economy 7.

If you are able to upgrade, I strongly recommend it anyway. Your neighbour might have an older SMETS1 Meter, which are no longer being installed. SMETS2 has a MUCH better chance of working in areas with poor phone signal.

Our neighbour only had his smart meter recently so don’t think its out of date. When did these tele wotsit meters come in ? I am not sure how to add a photo to this site?

To add a photo, click the little black square with a white mountain, at the top of the reply box.

A couple of thoughts there.

If your neighbour only had the meter installed within the last six to eight weeks, it’s probably still commissioning and won’t be ready to submit readings yet. Either that, or it’s not due to send one yet and they opted for Monthly readings, which means a long wait until it pings the first one. Daily or Half-Hourly is recommended for this exact reason.

Your electric meter is also near the end of service life and will be up for Recertification soon. You’ve got maybe two years left before you are required to have it replaced.

If a regular SKU1 Comms Hub can’t get a link, there’s a good chance an SKU2 with either a T1, T2 or T3 Aerial can. :)

So you believe we will not be inconvenienced by having a smart meter in a mobile black spot area yet risk having no supply if the tele wotsit loses signal?

Correct. If the current RTS Device doesn’t get a control signal, it’ll be stuck in whatever state it was in when the last successful control signal was received. This may cause your house to become a furnace if that signal was to energise your heating circuits, or an ice cube if it was to de-energise them.

Smart Meters however, control this stuff locally, so E7 functionality remains available even during a Comms Outage. There’s other magic tricks available as well, such as Mesh Comms which uses the WAN Connections of other meters in the area to fill in any coverage gaps for any SKU2 and SKU3 Comms Hubs in range of the Mesh Network.

There are no other meters close by because we live in the countryside. Nearest house is not within range I don’t think. We have had issues with a burglar alarm system which relied on mobile and now has to be linked to the landline instead.

How do the engineers know of individual circumstances when they fit Smart meters as I have heard poor reports?

Burglar alarms don’t get to use giant Oriel or Panorama T3 Aerials with dimensions of 580 x 100 x 40 and 695 x 25 x 25 mm respectively. :)

If those monsters can’t pick up a signal, nothing can. And conveniently, DCC allows them to be used in edge cases like yours.

Where the heck do these aerials go…we live on a windy ridge where we catch the weather pretty sharpish!

They’re not as big as you might think. Divide the numbers by 10 to get them in cm and it’s a lot more realistic.

T1 and T2 Aerials are internal, so go inside your house (usually). T3 Aerials go wherever the engineer can install them, usually external.

Thanks for all the explanations but I foresee a problem with the engineer who actually comes to the house being equipped with a one size fits all meter and none of the extras!

That’s also been considered. There’s various checks made before the engineer even turns up. Those checks help to identify what to install and all engineers tend to carry quite a lot of kit - including all the various meter types needed along with a selection of T1 and T2 Aerials. DCC supplies a T3 Aerial on request only if needed, which can require a second visit in some cases.

It’s only impossible if DCC determines there’s absolutely no way to get coverage to your location.