OVO SMETS1 Pipit In Home Display (IHD) - Why is my gas "history" section frozen?

Hi Jess. Thanks for your help. I have read the IHD Tutorial and tried out your other suggestions but sadly this issue still remains completely unresolved. I have also carried out a SMETS1 smart meter health check as recommended and everything is fine. The smart meters are clearly in regular communication with OVO and the “usage” pages on my online account are showing accurate and up-to-date information for both gas and electricity.

This IHD has remained “stuck” in an incorrect state for more than 6 months , yet the online “usage” stats are fully up-to-date. Looking back through the last 4 months I can see that there are occasional days with missing “daily breakdown” data (17th & 18th Dec, 13th Jan & 23rd March). For each of these days there’s an error message saying ”we couldn’t find some of your usage data”. The 48 readings for gas covering hour-by-hour usage are missing, but the total consumption for each day is provided and is consistent with actual consumption. This suggests that OVO is able remotely to read the gas meter consistently at least once per day on a daily basis. 

Whilst it is handy to to be able to view historic usage data online, this is obviously not a satisfactory substitute for having a properly working IHD. In particular a fully working IHD can monitor usage in real time since midnight last night, data which is NOT available online. With energy prices now at record high levels it has become more important than ever to be able to accurately monitor both gas and electricity usage in real time.

I should add that I am responsible for energy management at two different domestic properties, both with OVO energy accounts and both with identical SMETS1 smart meters and Pipit In Home Displays. Unfortunately exactly the same problem exists at BOTH houses! Both IHDs are in a “stuck” state.   :-(

Help please!

Kind regards, John

I’m sorry to hear this, @jrhayley.

Just to clarify, is it the ‘estimated bill figure’ that appears to be stuck? If so I’m wondering if this topic might shed some more light on how this feature works.

If the trouble-shooting tips above haven’t managed to update the unit rate and standing charges that are loaded on to the device, this is best raised to our Support Team who should be able to get these updated.

I hope this helps get this sorted.

Thanks @Jess_OVO. Yes, the 'estimated bill' figure for gas is indeed "stuck" as you suggest. However, the electricity 'estimated bill' is fine. I think there are two separate issues here (possibly related): 1) the 'estimated bill' figure for gas, and 2) the 'historic usage' stats, e.g. kWh usage figures for gas covering the most recent 6 weeks.

To provide more detail on this please see photo below. I've noticed that there are discrepancies in the Estimated Bills section. The figures on the left show accurate and up-to-date estimated costs for electricity. These are aggregate costs since the tariff was changed on 01.04.22. The figures on the right show estimated gas costs of £793 which are increasing on a daily basis but which represent about 6-8 months worth of gas consumption. These massive costs seem to be calculated using an incorrect datum which precedes the change of tariff on 01.04.22 and also a previous change that happened on 04.02.22.  
  
It’s interesting to note that tariff charges shown within the IHD for both gas and electricity were successfully updated on 01.04.22. (The gas tariff is shown as 7.360p & 27.216p). Yet despite this change the 'estimated bill' and 'historic usage' stats have remained in a "stuck" and incorrect state.

It seems that this topic that you’ve referenced is related to my problem but unfortunately doesn't resolve it because the tariff charges have already been updated.

Here's a further photo showing Weekly History. As you can see the stats don't show the most recent 6 weeks. Instead they are "stuck" showing a period which started on 26 October 2020. 

Coincidentally I am in the process of contacting Ovo support about exactly the same issue with the same SMETS1 IHD.  Electricity working fine but Gas history stuck to same period in November. Est. bill also showing over £700. And online readings, billings and history all OK.

Will be interesting to hear outcomes and I'll post if anything resolved through Support.

That’s very interesting @SimonW . On your IHD are the tariff settings up-to-date for both gas and electricity? Do the figures match your current OVO Plan?

I’ll also post the outcome if/when this gets resolved through OVO Support.

Thanks for highlight that you’ve also noticed this issue with your Pipit IHD since the price change, @SimonW.

Juts wanted to let you both know that we’re forwarded this thread on to our team to investigate whether this is a wider bug which needs fixing.

Keep us posted if either of you notice an update and hopefully I’ll be back shortly when I hear back from the team. 🙂

A suggestion from the team has been that this could be linked to the enrollment of your SMETS 1 meters recently, @jrhayley and @SimonW.

They’ve advised we may be able to run a remote process to get thinks back on track, so we’d love to hear if there’s an update once you’ve spoken to the team. 

@Jess_OVO Thanks for the updates. You’ve flagged up Enrolment of SMETS1 Meters as a possible factor, but I think this is unlikely to be the cause in my case. I’ve checked back though all emails from OVO Energy over the last 2 years and can’t find any relating to enrolment of my meters with DCC. This would suggest that maybe my Secure Liberty 100/110 smart meters haven’t yet been processed.

A quick further update. OVO Support have confirmed today that the meters at this address have been processed by DCC and were “adopted” on or around 6 July 2021. However, the gas history stats were already “stuck” for many months prior to this date suggesting that “Enrolment of SMETS1 Meters” by DCC is unlikely to be the principal cause of this issue. We now await further investigation by the OVO smart meter team. 

My personal best guess is that, if OVO were to un-pair, factory reset, and re-pair the IHD with the smart meters, then this would probably trigger a reset of both gas and electricity stats. The IHD would then be able to retrieve and store up-to-date stats from both meters. (Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any way of doing a customer factory reset of the Secure IHD) 

@Blastoise186 Do you have any observations or thoughts on this issue?

@Jess_OVO Some further progress. I’ve been checking the gas smart meter for actual readings and have discovered that the incorrect “estimated bill” figure for gas as shown in the IHD photo above is also stored in the gas meter itself, thus the IHD is merely displaying a copy of wrong data already stored within the meter. I did this by pressing Button 1 on the meter keypad to display Current Day cost of consumption. As at 17.30 on 17.04.22 under the Credit/Using Now section this was displaying 21,287.22 kWh for consumption and £807.47 for estimated costs. By checking through OVO online account details we can see that these figures correspond almost exactly to cumulative gas usage and costs since DCC adoption of the meter took place in July 2021. So this would suggest that DCC enrolment is likely to be a significant factor and that it’s the meter that’s at fault here, not the IHD. Please note that there have been two changes of tariff on this account since July last year and that both of these tariff changes were handled correctly by the electricity smart meter.

I believe that the “stuck” History Data for gas issue is a separate problem which resides within the IHD itself. A firmware issue possibly?

Thanks for the update, @jrhayley.

Glad to hear the Support Team were able to confirm the enrollment of your meter too. Still unsure whether the frozen history section might be related to this upgrade. Either way if you’ve mentioned this to the team they should have passed this on to the smart team for further investigation.

Keep us posted if you do notice any changes to the information shown on your device. 👌

@Jess_OVO After a period of almost 3 months this problem unfortunately remains unresolved. As explained above there are two separate issues here - one directly affecting the gas smart meter which internally is displaying incorrect “estimated bill” figures for gas consumption, the other affecting the IHD which is in a “stuck” state and persistently displays “History” figures for gas consumption which are out of date and faulty. 

I now see that this thread is marked as “Solved” which is incorrect. As far as I can tell both of these issues remain unresolved. Please could you mark this thread as “awaiting resolution” and ascertain what steps are being taken to get a solution to the issues raised.

Hi @jrhayley ,

I think it’s probably worth mentioning that the Solved status on this forum thread is independent of whether your issue is actually resolved or not. Whenever there’s an answer on a question thread that is likely to help the community at large, it may be marked as the best answer at anytime.

We have no way of knowing whether the original problem got solved 95% of the time because users often don’t come back, so this is the best we can do.

I’m so sorry for the confusion, @jrhayley.

As mentioned by our community member, @Blastoise186, we may mark topics here as ‘resolved’ if we’ve given the best advice we’re able to offer on this public platform. Sometimes, as in your case, the ‘Best Answer’ we can give here would be to contact our Support Team, as they’re able to offer much more tailored advice, with full access to your account and the data we’re receiving from your smart meters.

If you haven’t already we’d recommend re-contacting the Support Team to report the ongoing issues with your Pipit IHD. They’ll be able to carry out some remote trouble-shooting or if these have failed to get things resolved they can request a replacement device for you.

In the meantime, we’d recommend using the ‘Usage’ pages of your online account or OVO app (download for Android or iOS) to monitor your smart meter usage data.

Thanks both. Thanks @Blastoise186 and @Jess_OVO for the clarification. This helps me to understand the reasons for marking this forum thread as “Solved”.

Unfortunately, despite contacting and re-contacting the Support team to report ongoing issues this problem remains unresolved.

I was going to post this as a new question, then I saw that two other users have the same issue.

My data for gas also stopped Oct/Nov 2020.

My IHD is connected to the smart meters as the actual / current consumption is shown for both electricity and gas (current day / previous day),  however the history only works for electricity.

The gas history graphs have stopped updating Nov 2020. Just realised I’ve been meaning to look into this for nearly two years…  ….

Stuart

Hey @supercitybity,

Sorry for the issues you’re having.

In regards to the meter readings stopping as of the 1st November, this is a known issue. Most customers affected by this have seen their readings start again and the problem resolve itself. I’d advise contacting Support if we still aren’t getting readings by the start of next week. 

If we get any updates about this internally we’ll update these threads. 

With your gas usage graphs, are we in communication with the gas meter? Are we getting readings through shown on the Online Account? If it’s just the graphs I'd advise contacting Support about this one- it sounds like a tech issue. 

Hope this helps. 

Oh dear. The advice you have given here @Emmanuelle_OVO appears to be wrong. You are suggesting that without any intervention this problem might resolve itself within a few days. This is blatantly untrue. In my case the problems started 2 years ago in the week beginning 30/11/2020. @supercitybity has exactly the same issue and you can see from Stuart's photos above that his problem also started in the same week, on or around 02/12/2020. So here we both are 2 years later and clearly the problem has not simply "resolved itself" - it is totally wrong to suggest that it will. In my case I raised this issue with OVO Support more than 6 months ago and at the time of writing the problems remain unresolved. I am still chasing OVO Energy for a solution.

You say that this is a "known issue". But if it's a known issue then where is the "known solution"? What is the long term solution and is there a workaround? If there is a known solution then please publish it. 

@Emmanuelle_OVO. I suspect that your response above may be referring to a completely different IHD issue which is covered here.

@supercitybity. I find it very interesting Stuart that you seem to have exactly the same problem with your Pipit 500 display as I have. Of particular note is that in both cases the "stuck" gas history issue started at exactly the same time 2 years ago, i.e. during the week beginning 30/11/2020. This suggests that one possible cause might have been a faulty gas meter firmware upgrade being rolled out to SMETS1 customers during that week in 2020. As stated above I have been chasing OVO Support for a solution to this for more than 6 months but to date have not obtained a satisfactory resolution. 

I should add that my family has 2 properties with 2 separate energy accounts both with OVO Energy. Both have SMETS1 smart meters with Secure Pipit 500 IHDs. Both of our properties have exactly the same problem with gas history as described above in this thread. So this means that at least four separate OVO Energy customers have these issues and therefore this suggests a possible generic firmware problem in the SMETS1 gas meter software and/or IHD firmware.

To get this problem resolved I would urge you to reach out to OVO Support referencing this Forum thread so that the smart meter engineering support team can see all of the technical details.

Come on OVO Energy you need to get this problem fixed once and for all!

Kind regards, John

As someone in the know, I believe the explanation given by Emmanuelle to be correct. The issue you linked to seems to be an unrelated issue that I think has been mostly resolved at this point.

@Blastoise186 Thanks for your update. I would agree that the issue linked to was posted there to solve a slightly different problem. Nevertheless the bottom line here is that this SMETS1 “frozen” gas history problem remains unresolved after many months and IMO won’t be solved by simply waiting a few days to let the problem try to resolve itself automatically. If you could shed any further light on a possible route to getting these gas history stats working again then that would be much appreciated. 

Please post photos. I have some thoughts but I can’t try any of them until I know what you’ve got.