Can you change a single rate smart meter to economy 7 after it's been fitted?

So I need some help/advice please. I have been trying to move to an Economy 7 tariff due to the installation of storage heaters. I moved to OVO having checked and double checked that they would be able to accommodate this.

The response was yes, we’ll upgrade you to a Smart Meter and can then switch you to an Economy 7 tariff.

I have since had the Smart Meter installed and today called up to request the change to Economy 7 to now be informed this is not possible.

So how can I get moved to an Economy 7 tariff?

Hi there @dayr8x and welcome to the forums. Could I ask you to fill out your profile please, as this makes it easier for us to help you out.

In theory, it should be possible for smart meters to support Economy 7 if the correct model is installed and configured properly. We can certainly try to help figure out some clues here though. Would you be OK to snap a few photos of your meters and post them here for us please?

Thanks @Blastoise186 have updated my profile so hopefully now has all the information. Meter is an Aclara SGM1411-B
 

Also seems to have the option for a second rate

Thanks for this info. The Aclara SGM1300 Series meter that I have also has that TOU feature as well, so it should support the feature set. Unless it’s because your SGM1411-B didn’t get wired up properly?

@Tim_OVO can you check for any reasons why a customer might have been set up incorrectly like this please? It sounds like there was some kind of mix up here.

Just a quick thought though @dayr8x .

How long has it been since you joined OVO and had that smart meter installed? I know it sometimes takes a little bit of time to get things running, so I just wanted to ask

@Blastoise186 thanks. I’ve not been with OVO that long but readings are being sent and can be seen in my OVO so assume the meter is working correctly.

@Tim_OVO i moved to OVO as was advised beforehand that I could switch, get a smart meter and then be moved onto an Economy 7 tariff. Speaking to customer services today they’ve told the can’t move me onto the new tariff as have no way to update the meter. 
 

Surely there must be a way to switch me onto Economy 7 I now have storage heaters that are costing a fortune to run all because I can’t have something I was told I could have. 
 

Thanks for the update.

So the good news is that you’re now on OVO and it is indeed possible to reconfigure a Smart Meter remotely to activate (or deactivate) Economy 7 where appropriate.

From here, I’d say it’s a case of waiting to see what Tim suggests as the next step. Sorry it’s a bit bumpy so far!

Thanks @Blastoise186 hopefully @Tim_OVO can get this sorted for me

You’re welcome.

In some cases, it might be a case of having to wait a little bit before you can make these changes as the account needs to go live first. But Tim should be able to check the details.

Although we’re slightly limited in what we can do directly via the forums, we’ll definitely help you as best we can and you can then use this to help you get this resolved too

In fact, I’ve just read through what you’ve posted here a few times and it definitely looks like you were offered the option to enable Economy 7. And from my understanding, you don’t usually need to replace a smart meter to switch between E7 and single rate tariffs as long as the meter is correctly installed.

Once E7 is enabled on a smart meter, it should simply stop spinning the first clock when you enter the cheaper period and start spinning the second clock. And then the same in reverse. One of the cool tricks is that this can all be done on smart meters without sending out an engineer to fiddle with them - you can’t do that with an old traditional one!

I’ll definitely be interested in hearing Tim’s thoughts on this too, but did you try calling the support team after your meter was installed? If not, you can get in touch right here and they should be able to flip the switch.

Hmm this is interesting, @dayr8x 

My understanding is that smart meters can be changed remotely, to enable a two-rate feature. The process is this as far as I know:

• You reach out to our Support team over the phone (as this is a new contract it requires verbal confirmation) with a single rate smart meter and request a change to Economy 7. 
• We make a remote change to the meter, which makes two registers start clocking at different times of the day. Your billing account is updated. 
• Our team apply the Economy 7 plan prices that were available when you fixed in to the single rate plan.

My only concern is that the Aclara (SMETS2) smart meter might not have this option, or our billing platform might not allow this change, effectively making something that used to be possible, now impossible. I don’t know for sure, so I’d like you to check. 

Please reach out to our web chat team next week, and send them a link to this topic. Let them have a read, and let’s make sure you’ve been given the correct advice. 

If it turns out you can’t have this change, I would be happy to promise you here on this public topic a waiver of the early termination fees, that would allow you to find a supplier that can take you on as Economy 7, so you’re not missing out financially. 

Just come back here to advise us when you know please! 

Just to add more context here… I’m also working on this with some of my own research.

Having dug up some documentation related to the Aclara SGM1300 Series and SGM1400 Series Smart Energy Meters, they definitely should support just about any Time of Use tariff.

And full credit to the owners of that smartme website! Seriously, that thing is a treasure trove of useful data. The links in my reply are for the tech brochures for both meters in case they come in useful. I can’t grab engineer manuals however… But I think you can guess why that is! 

Oh and by the way Tim… Nothing is impossible if you’ve got full control of your own stuff. There’s always a fairly easy (albeit rather dangerous!) way of changing the tariff settings on the billing platform. Just modify the database directly and you can do a lot! 

I wouldn’t recommend that solution however...

Hi, my plan still shows as being on an Economy 7 plan but my new smart meter is only reading a single rate and I can only submit a single reading online.. Will my plan be changed to reflect this? - this is fine by me as I don’t want Economy 7. My worry is the daytime tariff on Economy 7 is way more expensive than regular tariff so I want my plan altered to reflect the metering of a single tariff.

**RESOLVED**

Good to hear this is resolved, @ms89028 - let us know if you have any other questions or issues following that smart meter installation. 

It’s kinda our specialty over here!  

After nearly 5 months I finally have an Ovo account. However on checking rather than resolving the class mismatch issue properly they have simply moved me onto a single rate account. Looking at my meter readings I can see dual readings have been returned until a few days ago when they switched to just returning single units. My concern is that I will now have massive bills as I have storage heaters. However it now appears that you will just charge me a flat rate all day which will add to my bills. Has this happened to anyone else?

Have you been transferred from SSE

Not me I moved into the property only recently although SSE used to supply the property (the Smart Meter is branded SSE). Is this a known issue with the move to Ovo from SSE

 Not a known issue with OVO to SSE move, it can just be helpful from the start to know. 

Have you spoken to the OVO Support team to flag the issue and get the process started to sorting it out? Useful to do this as a first step based on experience. 

Hey @rcneedenergy,

That sounds frustrating, 

I think Support would be best placed to deal with this very account specific issue.

Keep us posted with how you get on as this might help other customers in the future. 

Spoke with advanced resolutions a couple of days ago apparently it’s only temporary. As the class mismatch issue was preventing my account from being set up they had to set me up single rate, however they are working on resolving the class mismatch. Fingers crossed this will be resolved by my next billing period or the one after. Keeping my complaint active until this is resolved but hopefully my next update on this thread will be to say all is resolved and I will be billed correctly moving forward on E7

Hey @rcneedenergy,

I’m really glad to hear it’s temporary,

Yes, thank you for keeping the thread updated. Luckily, this seems to be an account specific issues but it’d be really helpful incase another customer gets affected by the same issue!

Hope you had a nice weekend 🙂