Why is my In Home Display (IHD) gas cost data not displaying? The kwh consumption seems wrong too!

Howdy @Primusm , welcome to the OVO Forum!

I’m Blastoise186, one of the forum volunteers around these parts. It’s good to see a new face. :)

No worries about having trouble with search, we can help you out anyway. If you ever have trouble finding an existing thread for a question, feel free to create a new thread as we can always merge it with an existing one later if needed.

I can definitely tell you that you’ve got a Chameleon IHD6-CAD-PPMID right there, which is a SMETS2 IHD so works with any supplier. It looks like it’s got a healthy connection to the Comms Hub on top of your electric meter as well, so that’s a good sign.

By the looks of things, I’d say your IHD is currently showing demo data for your gas meter, as the real gas meter is probably still setting itself up at the moment. How long has it been since the meters were installed by any chance?

It can take up to six weeks for newly installed Smart Meters to fully commission once they’re installed and it’s normal for things to be a bit unstable during that time. Once that’s all done, you should start to see actual data replace the demo data on your IHD and things should begin to look a bit more realistic. Don’t worry though, this won’t affect your bills since OVO’s billing platform doesn’t rely on your IHD to get meter readings and actual bills are generated from that side. You can check MyOVO anytime you’d like to see what the current bills are too.

It’s also worth noting that gas meters only wake up and perform a heartbeat roughly once every 30 minutes, so as not to drain the internal battery too much. This means you can’t get real-time gas usage and your IHD will only be able to show half-hourly snapshots. It can also take up to an hour after you fire up the IHD before it can show anything from the gas meter once it starts working.

I don’t think there’s any obvious faults though, which I think you’ll be glad to hear. So you won’t need an engineer visit or a replacement IHD. The best solution I can give right now would probably be to keep an eye on things over the next few weeks and see what happens. If you still don’t get any luck by the end of this year, the Support Team will be happy to take a look for you.

Hi Blastoise186 and thanks for the reply.

I should have mentioned in my original post that we’ve had our smart meters since 2019, so I don’t think that’s the problem. I had to request a replacement IHD once before, and it was working for a while. But for the last few weeks the gas usage data seems to have been intermittent at best, and the budget data gone altogether.

Sounds like I’ll need to contact the support team then? Thanks for your help though.    

Oh ok, that’s understandable. In that case, I think the Support Team will want to take a look and see if they can do anything. It’s quite likely that they’ll ask you to submit a Smart Meter Health Check, so here’s a guide with most of the questions that are usually included.

If you have any trouble at all with filling one out, feel free to stop by again and we’ll be happy to give you a hand. :)

...

 

I’m pretty sure there’s some kind of problem, but wouldn’t know if this could be “demo” data. Note that energy is “so far today” and the clock says 12:11. I happened to learn recently that typical gas supplies, are often rated “U6” which means the flow of gas they can deliver is a volume which is “only” about 6 m^3 per hour, and the energy in this gas depends on calorific value but can’t be much more than 64 kWh per hour, which works out to a limit of 780 kWh “so far today”. Your IHD is therefore indicating an average flow of over 12 m^3 per hour.

The next rating up, I think, is U16. But is your consumption really over ¾ of the limit for a larger than usual gas supply, I wonder?

Hi, thanks for the replies. I’ve contacted the support team to see what they say. I’ve looked at the usage pages but I’m not really what sure what I’m supposed to be looking for - the data looks reasonable, as far as I can tell.

If there’s no obvious discrepancies on the usage pages, you could also check that the meters are communicating by checking the latest reading we received on the ‘meter readings’ page.

If there are intermittent signal issues you may be asked to carry out a smart meter health check. Find out more about these check by viewing the guide for your meter type below:

The SMETS1 Secure Smart Meter Health Check 

The SMETS2 Smart Meter Health Check

 Keep us updated when you hear back from the Support Team, @Primusm. Will be interesting to hear what’s behind this tech bug.  

Any update on what was causing the strange gas usage figures you were seeing, @Primusm?

Unfortunately no, still having problems. The support team tried to make changes at their end, and I switched the meter off and on again, But no luck!

Today’s scary looking figures!