Why are my storage heaters not coming on with my Secure Liberty 100, no 'boost' mode, no off peak night rate?

Hey there @superstarmie !

So it seems the power of this forums SEO is clearly working really well then! XD

We like to open the doors to anyone regardless of supplier, so you’re definitely going to be welcomed in even if you’re not with OVO. Now, let’s see if we can help to answer this question for you. If possible, please could you share some photos of your meters, IHD, storage heaters and any equipment that’s wired in nearby to all of them - this helps us to get a better picture of what you’ve got. If you’re happy to fill out your profile as well, that would be really helpful to some of the other volunteers. :)

It’s a little tricky to know exactly what’s happened here for sure, but it almost sounds like the meter config has been wiped out and put back to a default state where all E7 features are usually completely de-activated (Economy 7 mode is disabled by default as most people don’t have it). I would expect that your supplier should re-enable it as soon as possible once the new tariff is activated but in the meantime I have a feeling you won’t be able to make use of it.

You might want to chat with them to flag this up, especially if it’s breaking your heating and hot water!

Hi @superstarmie and welcome to the Forum.

Firstly I’m unsure if it was your intention to do so, but your question has arrived in a topic about the earlier SMETS1 Smart Meters. Do you know which generation of meter you have or the installation date?

Secondly if you have just one meter and it switches Economy-7 devices separately to the rest of the house, then can you confirm that it is a 5-terminal meter?

Here’s a modification of my earlier diagram to show the 5th terminal. The Timed Contactor at the bottom is the one which you might hear as the Economy-7 circuit switches on.

Does this description match what you think you have?

@Transparent yes it's a SMETS1, from my understanding they had an update recently that allowed more suppliers to communicate with them, which I think is what happened as until August I was having to send meter readings in manually, last month however I got a notification that they could now get them automatically from my smart meter.

Here's my meter, storage heater and water heater. There's only one storage heater, the one in the living room was upgraded to an electric radiator that works more like central heating.

The water heater has one on/off switch that always came on overnight after the meter went CLUNK (that's the technical term!), Which is no longer working. However the separate Boost switch pictured turns it on fine as that's wired in differently (I barely use it as have electric shower, dishwasher etc so had no reason to need to heat up a great big tank all the time, or I might have noticed this was happening sooner)

I haven't noticed the meter going CLUNK at night and again in the morning since August, when I was notified my supplier could now communicate with my smart meter. There's still 2 meter readings when I press 6, and the meter for the night rate is still going up and they still show as separate meter readings in my account

I've requested a call back from my supplier this afternoon to ask them about it, unfortunately aside from requesting call backs it's quite difficult to get hold of them!

If I wasn't moving back to an Eco 7 tariff I wouldn't be that bothered, just obviously want to make sure when the switch happens the new supplier can set it back to the correct mode remotely, or I'm going to be in a right kerfuffle!

Thanks for the help despite me not being an OVO customer, it's very much appreciated.

Thanks for the pretty pics @superstarmie 

Yes, that’s definitely a [color=#D00070]SMETS1 meter[/color]. And your description tells us that it’s been upgraded to [color=#A00080]SMETS2[/color] functionality by the manufacturer, Secure, and migrated to the [color=#b09020]National Smart Meter Network[/color].

Now we need a bit more clarification please:

The Liberty 100 is a 4-port model, which I’ve labelled below.

You also have two wires connecting to some auxiliary contacts, which I’ve circled.

Is the box I’ve marked C a separate relay/contactor to operate the Economy-7 heating units?

Does this connect back to the auxiliary contact port on the meter?

@Transparent

I've taken another photo which better shows those wires

It looks like there's definitely a wire going into that box where you've circled, plus some more connections, so I'm guessing this must be the bit that operates whatever is connected to the economy 7.

EDIT: Had a call from my supplier… the lady couldn’t help me, I have to wait for another call from a different department.

I’ve also only just realised that when @Blastoise186 asked for a photo of my IHD earlier, that means “In Home Display”, d’oh. I saw I and H and my brain said “immersion heater”, haha.

I don’t actually have an official IHD - when I moved here there wasn’t one and I don’t know how/if I could have got one, so I bought my own and connected it myself to keep an eye on what my electric is doing, so I doubt it would show any useful info in this respect

@Transparent thank you so much!

I have just now emailed my current supplier with all the information and a link to this topic. Hopefully we can easily get it sorted so when my switch is finalised, Economy 7 will work as intended, otherwise I’m getting the cheaper night rate for my heating/washing machine/dishwasher etc for nothing!

I know when I looked into switching, whenever I got quotes all the suppliers I checked were able to automatically detect that it was an Economy 7 meter at my address and either gave me Eco 7 prices only by default or allowed me to choose between Eco 7 and single rate. Hopefully this means that it’ll be as simple as sending it a signal to work as Eco 7 again and I’ll get my CLUNK back!

Thank you again for all the help, and hopefully if anyone else has a similar problem in the future and takes to Google like I did, they’ll find this topic.

It’s great to hear another mysterious meter set up has been metaphorically untangled and the issue better identified. Hopefully your energy supplier will be able to use this thread, and @Transparent’s most recent comment in particular, as a bit of a guide for this issue. We’ve fact check that advice and it’s got two thumbs up from our technical leads. Top advice!

@superstarmie please be advised I have moved this into its own thread as I wanted @Transparent’s answer nice and easy to find. Just be aware you’ll need to have the latest URL now, rather than the thread you originally posted which is here:

• OVO SMETS1 Secure Liberty 100/110 smart meter guide Tutorial

In fact, I think I can add a bit more context on here as well - but I’d agree that this doesn’t change the Best Answer in this case.

As far as I’ve encountered, the only supplier who is known to do this somewhat hacky setup is E.On/E.On Next because I’ve answered a whole bunch of questions before elsewhere on another forum where these external heating contactors keep cropping up. I’ve even seen them do it for S2 Aclara meters, despite the fact the Aclara SGM1412-B, SGM1415-B, SGM1416-B, SGM1422-B and even some of the Three-Phase SGM1430 (specifically the SGM1432-B and SGM1433-B) models have internal support for controlling storage heaters.

As for Secure… What you really wanted for S1 with Economy 7 and Five Terminals would have been the Secure Liberty 112 like this puppy. I don’t really know why a few suppliers went with the Liberty 100 and tacked on an external contactor though. That’s a puzzle we’ve yet to solve...

I don’t really know why a few suppliers went with the Liberty 100

Because there weren’t any 5-terminal meters manufactured, tested or approved at that time. Mains contactors didn’t need to go through the approvals process.

The list of currently approved meters can be viewed on the excellent SmartMe technical page.

Did you get the problem sorted ? I have a similar issue.  Our supplier has "accidentally" switched us from E10 to E7 without telling us - I spotted it coincidentally only a few days later. It is taking forever to get it sorted,  and they are saying they might not be able to fix it. We have the same set up as this,  with a 4 leg meter and one of those Proteus contactor boxes. Our heating is still coming on on the E10 times while the tariff is on E7 timings. What I am trying to find out is where the Proteus box gets its timings from. Is it something I can alter myself via the meter ? 

Hi @Sandydog ,

I’m afraid the other users in this thread have not been seen for several months, so they might no longer respond to anyone.

I’ll do some digging to see if I can figure this one out, which might take a few days. If I find anything, I’ll let you know.

Thanks, that is very kind.

Great to see our superuser @Blastoise186 has got his meter investigation hat on already. 🕵

Sounds like your external time-switch (the Proteus box) might need to be reset to align to the hours offered on dual rate plan. Wonder if @superstarmie might be able to give us an update on how they managed to get this sorted in their case?

Ok, I think I understand this now. For legal reasons, I have to inform you that I’m not a qualified electrician myself and can’t make claim to fully understand exactly how these Proteus external heating contactors work. I could “phone a friend” though, but I think I’ve got the basic idea figured out.

As far as I can tell, these external contactors are pretty simple switching devices with no real “smart” capability of their own, nor any built-in timers. It appears they require something else to tell them what to do, such as by powering them with a control signal which causes these Proteus devices to react accordingly.

This suggests it’s all ultimately controlled by the meter, but perhaps the meter config hasn’t been updated correctly?

And right about now, I suspect a real expert will probably completely smash this theory to pieces! XD

Thank you for helping us. It's obviously something that only the electricity supplier can sort out,  and they aren't helping. What puzzles us greatly is that the proteus is switching at E10 times while the meter tariff is switching on E7 times.  Therefore whatever is telling the proteus when to switch, it isn't the meter tariff times ! It must have a stored timer setting in the meter independent of the tariff switching.

So we are stuck with an E7 tariff which can only be used for 4.5 hours per day.

Thanks for taking the time to help us understand it. 

I think it’s a different part of the config for each task. Chances are somebody forgot that crucial factor again.

To be honest, most of the installs that use these Proteus devices were cases where the supplier was either unable to source a compatible meter, or were being too pushy about it and couldn’t be bothered to wait for the right types to launch before aggressively pushing people to upgrade. I’ve not seen any indications that OVO has ever done this, but I know of at least one supplier that has been known to do it. For their sake, I will not name that supplier at this time.

Just curious, but who is your energy supplier? The house rules here allow you to mention competing suppliers freely, so don’t worry about upsetting the moderators. It actually sometimes helps us out to know these things, as there might be options I can recommend based on them. :)

The supply was Eon, as I'm sure you've worked out ! They retired the Economy 7 with Heatwise tariff in 2019. We previously had a 5 rate meter with E10 for heating and E7 for everything else.  They fitted a smart meter as we weren't allowed to keep the old meter. We didn't know about the fudge with the timer until noticing this problem.  We have had to try and work out how it all works from googling it. 

It has worked perfectly for us for the last 2.5 years to be fair though, before this nightmare started.  I wonder how many other customers are affected who don't even know yet. Its hard to believe its just us. 

Hehehe, I had a feeling it was E.On right from the start. I can’t think of any other supplier that’d be so impatient that they’d force through this sort of thing so quickly. There’s probably a ton of other affected sites as well and I’ve seen previous evidence of that on this forum. It’s not just you.