My HMO meter burnt out - how do I get help?

Good evening @DavidWright ,

Sorry to hear about this. Please be advised that the OVO Forum is volunteer led and Forum Volunteers such as myself don’t have access to your account, so we can’t directly action anything. However, I have alerted ALL Forum Moderators and asked them to respond as soon as possible - they’ll be back on Monday. Given that the way I alert them is impossible to miss, it’s highly likely they’ll see it rapidly, but I’d still recommend you contact OVO directly on Monday morning anyway to see what Support can do.

You might be able to get a faster response via OVO’s social media accounts if you DM them - the Social Media Team is active at weekends and should be able to arrange an emergency engineer visit to get you back on-supply.

As for why this happened? I don’t have access to my usual OVO contacts at weekends and I don’t think our usual expert is around at this hour, otherwise I’d have been able to ask for his input. However, I did manage to ask National Grid AKA Western Power Distribution for advice - I have contacts there who I can call on if needed. This is their response:

If the tails were not tightened securely they could come loose over time. I had a similar issue with my consumer unit a few years ago. Arcing on the busbar because the electrician who had installed it a few years before didn't realise the thread on the screw was very tight, so the circuit wire wasn't held in by anything. It was fine for a few years then I started smelling burning & when I took the cover off, it was arcing, scorched & the insulation was melting off. It looks to me like something similar may have happened here.

Please note that this is the response from my contact, it’s not necessarily the official response of NGED/WPD.

Please wait for an update - we’ll let you know what we can recommend ASAP.

Thank you for your response, and I do appreciate many people will be volunteers, although I hoped maybe an OVO representative existed on here.

Social Media is something I didn’t think about, so I’ll give that a go

Thanks again!

You’re welcome.

There are OVO Staff here as well in the form of the Forum Moderators who do read pretty much everything posted on a daily basis except for at weekends, as well as acting as a link between the Forum and internal teams. They may also choose to respond to threads if they feel they can add some kind of value. It wouldn’t surprise me if they reply to this one. We also have a resident Smart Meter Engineer who works for OVO as well - we can call on his expertise if we feel he can help unjam tricky questions, for which he aims to respond when possible and convenient.

Many of the Forum Volunteers also have our own specialist skills and interests which we might use if we think it’d help (even if it means diving deep into several days of research), just like we have a few industry contacts and connections we can sometimes reach out to for input.

Other than that, a lot of OVO’s teams are known to read the Forums on a regular basis, but many of them either won’t reply at all or might ask a Forum Moderator to post on their behalf.

Unfortunately, no technical advice will help.  I called out National Grid on 105, as I have never had an issue like this before.  They asked their team leader for the authority to bypass the faulty meter, but they were overruled.  I rang NG several more times and was advised that Ovo should have 24/7 phone lines and are responsible.  

I can’t believe we live in an age where energy companies are not compelled to provide emergency engineers by default for such total failure of their own equipment.

The reason for the refusal is probably because there's no-one living in the property who is considered vulnerable. The DNO cannot bypass the meter for those who don't meet strict criteria.

Thanks to your suggestion - I got a response via OVO Energy on facebook messenger and everything is now fixed and back on.

Much appreciated