My OVO's 'Energy Breakdown' showing high costs for heating - why?

How is my electricity breakdown 'usage' for August showing £9.11 for electric heating when there is no form of electric heating in the house? I thought smart meters were an accurate reading so is my bill too high by £9.11?

Unfortunately I can't give generic information on this one as I’ll need to look at your account. Can you drop me a private message with your name, DoB and OVO account number so I can help you with this, Pat Moore?

Lucy

@Help-please if you are taking about the Energy Breakdown on the My OVO website then this is only an estimate/guesswork of the type of appliances.

This is what I understand:

Your smart meters will take a meter reading of usage every 30 mins, and then once a day will upload that data to OVO.

Based on your profile, which you complete online, such as if you have an Electric Car, Gas Central heating, etc. their computer systems look at the patterns in use over a couple of months and try to break it down into categories.

For example, if they see that 2kW is being used every hour regardless of the time day, even in the summer, they might guess that this is being used by appliances that are always on, for example fridges, WiFi router, etc.

Is your profile up to date in terms of heating systems?

Hi @Help-please! Just to add to what @Mw2870 has said - the smart system learns the "energy signatures" of the devices in your home and attributes them to the available options on your energy breakdown in My OVO. This is done in the way @Mw2870 described:

@Help-please
For example, if they see that 2kW is being used every hour regardless of the time day, even in the summer, they might guess that this is being used by appliances that are always on, for example fridges, WiFi router, etc.

There is some room for error in this calculation. It might pick up low constant usage of electricity and assume it's electrical heating, when actually it's the filter on your fish tank! Unfortunately MyOVO doesn't factor in that as an option, so it'd probably be attributed to a more obvious option.

Hope that makes sense!