Just had smart meters installed - Why are my gas costs showing on the In-Home Display so huge?

Hey there @john_and_chris , welcome to the OVO Forum!

Nice to see you’ve had the Smart Meter upgrade then, hopefully everything else is working nicely so far? I think I know what’s happening here though and it’s not too tricky to resolve.

To me, I suspect the gas meter is probably still setting itself up and doing things like firmware updates and self-testing before it fully comes online. It can only check in roughly every 30 minutes during a heartbeat, so it can take a little while to get that completed. Keep an eye on things over the next couple of weeks and it should start to settle down.

As for the price, don’t worry. It won’t affect your bill as OVO uses a different system to calculate your actual bills. This is probably just a config issue with the gas meter. If you’d like to, the Support Team will be happy to try and set that properly. The SMETS Command Update Tariff Configuration should do the trick. :)

Hopefully that helps, but if you still have trouble after a week or two, feel free to stop by again.

Hi,

Thanks for reply,  sorry to sound a bit dumb but what is 

The SMETS Command Update Tariff Configuration ?

No worries.

Ah yes, I could have probably explained what that does. There’s a whole bunch of SMETS Commands that exist, which can do tons of different things. There’s too many to go into details, but some of the more commonly used ones do things like commission newly installed meters, take meter readings, pair a new IHD and (for Pay As You Go) send top-ups directly to the meters once they’ve been purchased.

Update Tariff Configuration is the one that sets and updates the tariff rates on your meters. It has more purpose for PAYG since it makes sure you’re charged correctly, but otherwise it mainly just makes sure that the right tariff rates are loaded onto the meters and therefore show up on your IHD. Usually it’s triggered automatically when meters are being commissioned or your tariff changes, but it can be triggered manually as well if needed. OVO’s Support Team are able to use it to fix cases where your meters and/or IHD aren’t showing the correct rates, as it downloads the correct rates to the meters so that it shows up correctly from that point onwards.

It can take up to 72 hours for a SMETS Command to process, but it usually works a bit faster than that and on the first try. But if it doesn’t go through properly, the team can re-send the command a second time and if it still fails they can do some detective work to find out what’s happening.

Many thanks for replies, feel a little happier now, it does seem to be settling down a bit,   we had a leaflet for the IHD, it’s a shame we didn’t have one for the meter too, the little screen lights up now and then, by the time I get down to look at it…. it’s gone again!  (it’s in living room behind tv!) plus there are a couple of buttons,  would have been nice to have a leaflet explaining everything.

No worries.

Yeah, you don’t tend to get a leaflet regarding the Smart Meters very often these days, probably because most of the marketing information is the sort of thing you’d encounter before you decide to get one. However, I can do one better than that. 

SmartMe is a great website that explains a ton about Smart Meters and how they work in depth and it’s an absolute treasure trove, just like this forum is. That website is run by a few engineers who happen to know a lot about this stuff. I’m not sure who they are as they’re unnamed and I don’t think they’d be on the OVO Forum, but we use that site a lot as a resource when helping members out. It’s definitely worth checking out.

The documents library in particular is pretty useful. If you’d like to know pretty much anything and everything about SMETS2 Aclara meters for example, they’ve literally got the entire user manual available for download - all 108 pages of it. Perfect for some light reading, so to speak.

Just wanted to pop back to check this point, @john_and_chris  - Did you not receive a digital PDF booklet giving you the lowdown on your new Smart meters?

This should’ve been sent as an attachment to your smart meter booking email - although the resources posted by @Blastoise186 above do go into a lot more detail. There’s also the guide we’ve got posted on the forum too, if you haven’t already taken a look! 

Hi Jess,   

Thought we’d leave things for a while to see if it settled down, but it hasn’t, still keep getting ‘waiting for data’  on both gas and elec,  and huge amounts phr for gas! 

We don’t have an online account so didn’t get a PDF booklet.

Thanks for all replies

I’m curious. Is there any publicly available documentation of the SMETS Commands?

On the one hand, I feel that such information is no use to customers like us (unless we have done whatever it takes, which is partly a matter of paying lots of money, to become an Authorised User of DCC), but it would resolve a lot of unanswered questions I have just to be able to see actual documentation of SMETS Commands.

Any links would be greatly appreciated, @Blastoise186 - thanks in anticipation…

BW

Yup, there is indeed. The only list I know of that’s in a format for which you don’t need a PhD in Rocket Science to read is the one at https://www.smartme.co.uk/commands.html .

It’s worth remembering that regardless of what the IHD says, the actual billing is done by OVO’s billing platform, so even if the IHD is giving weird data, it shouldn’t affect the bills.

I think your meters might still be in the commissioning process right now though, keep an eye on things over the next couple of weeks. Hopefully it’ll complete soon!