[haru]

I've recently switched over to the Next Drive tariff and have been told by E.ON that my SMETS2 smart meter and Chameleon 3 IHD are apparently incapable of showing the correct estimates for electricity now that I'm on a split-rate tariff.

This is surprising to me, as it is a very clear and required part of the SMETS2 specification that both smart meters and in-home displays should support multiple tariffs for different times of day (what the SMETS2 specification calls "Time-of-Use") either with or without block pricing.

So far, since switching, the electricity tariff on my IHD now shows the new overnight rate for the whole day and the gas tariff hasn't updated at all from the old expired rate. As a result the IHD cost estimates are now completely useless and wildly incorrect. I'd might as well just unplug it and put it in a drawer at this point.

This is actually not a limitation of the smart meters or IHDs at all, but rather that E.ON are not configuring them properly with time-of-use pricing when moving people onto the Next Drive tariff.

Can anyone confirm whether there are plans to address this?

Thanks!

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by haru

I've recently switched over to the Next Drive tariff and have been told by E.ON that my SMETS2 smart meter and Chameleon 3 IHD are apparently incapable of showing the correct estimates for electricity now that I'm on a split-rate tariff.

This is surprising to me, as it is a very clear and required part of the SMETS2 specification that both smart meters and in-home displays should support multiple tariffs for different times of day (what the SMETS2 specification calls "Time-of-Use") either with or without block pricing.

So far, since switching, the electricity tariff on my IHD now shows the new overnight rate for the whole day and the gas tariff hasn't updated at all from the old expired rate. As a result the IHD cost estimates are now completely useless and wildly incorrect. I'd might as well just unplug it and put it in a drawer at this point.

This is actually not a limitation of the smart meters or IHDs at all, but rather that E.ON are not configuring them properly with time-of-use pricing when moving people onto the Next Drive tariff.

Can anyone confirm whether there are plans to address this?

Thanks!

Hi @haru
I'm currently going through the same process as you and have posted a number of messages relating to this on this forum.

My smart meter (Landis+Gyr E470 Type 5424) is still showing the single Next Flex rate.

I've got hold of the User Manual for the meter as it's quite difficult to navigate unless you know how, and can see that non of the TOU registers appear to be populated (or possibly the first one is, but not the second)


The manual says this:

The Active Tariff Price display will show the pence per unit rate for the current active tariff

In the case of a single rate tariff there will only be one tariff
For a multi-rate tariff, the display will default to the rate that is applicable at that time
i.e. the day rate will be shown during the daylight hours and the night rate during the night hours

so I assume it should pick up TOU tariff amount 1 or 2 at the time the rate changes :

I have just submitted a detailed question on this directly to the customer services email address, so will keep you posted

[Mcbutler76]

@geoffers did you receive a response from them please? My data is also wildly inaccurate ive tried to contact the EV team with no feedback or communication, so I’m assuming the lack of contact means they are still trying to rectify it
thanks

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by Mcbutler76

@geoffers did you receive a response from them please? My data is also wildly inaccurate ive tried to contact the EV team with no feedback or communication, so I’m assuming the lack of contact means they are still trying to rectify it
thanks

Afraid not - the last message I had (see below) was that my smart meter tariff rates had been updated overnight on the 21st August, but nothing actually changed at my end.

It doesn't look like they can apply (in my case) ToU split rates to the meters at the moment, so unfortunately the cost breakdown visible on your IHD will be incorrect, but the kWh power usage is correct.

What I can suggest is downloading the Bright app (from Hildebrand / Glowmarkt, who are approved suppliers) with access to the raw meter data via the DCC. Once you've registered your meter on the Bright app you can view your power usage (the costs will unfortunately still be wrong as they pick the tariff rate off the meter)

However, you can now log into your account on the Glowmarkt website and download the raw meter data in CSV format which can be loaded into Excel, then apply your tariff rates to the half-hourly energy usage to calculate your costs.

Note that the raw data saved on the meter has been adjusted to GMT, so any usage between midnight and 01:00a.m. BST is recorded as 23:00 to midnight GMT. So if you're on a cheap overnight tariff there is still the unanswered question as to whether the billing system re-applies the GMT adjustment to bring this time back to 00:00 - 01:00 BST

This was the message about my attempted meter update>>>

Hi there Geoff
Thank you for emailing us!
I'm sorry for the delay in getting back to you. We are receiving a high number of calls and emails at the moment and we do appreciate your patience in hearing back from us.
I have sent a tariff change update to the meter which will update at midnight tonight.
By the morning the meter and the IHD should show all the correct information. Please rest assured you have been charged on the correct Next Drive tariff rates since 27th July so even though this information isn't showing at your end, we have all the correct information our end.
If there is anything else I can do for you, please let me know.
Many Thanks
Kersha
Energy Specialist

[Mcbutler76]

@Mcbutler76 thank you for taking the time to respond Geoff
so I’m assuming the metre reset worked on the day I swopped to the EV tariff
My hat off to Eon for launching so quickly or in time not to lose more customers as I was about to switch to be fair but it seems to me the last part of the required tech wasn’t completed

[Lee_EONNext]

Hi @haru

Can I check if you have contacted customer service to see if they can resolve this for you? We have seen over the past few weeks/months where the meters and IHD match but the meter doesn't match what it should be.

Can you let me know if you have spoken to our customer service teams at all please?

Thanks

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by geoffers

It doesn't look like they can apply (in my case) ToU split rates to the meters at the moment, so unfortunately the cost breakdown visible on your IHD will be incorrect, but the kWh power usage is correct.

What I can suggest is downloading the Bright app (from Hildebrand / Glowmarkt, who are approved suppliers) with access to the raw meter data via the DCC. Once you've registered your meter on the Bright app you can view your power usage (the costs will unfortunately still be wrong as they pick the tariff rate off the meter)

However, you can now log into your account on the Glowmarkt website and download the raw meter data in CSV format which can be loaded into Excel, then apply your tariff rates to the half-hourly energy usage to calculate your costs.

The “Act Tariff Price” register on the meter shows 29.94p per kWh


The data polled from Glowmarkt contains the half-hourly energy usage in kWh, and also the epochTimestamp (the current local-time in BST or GMT) and the base UTC dateTime. However it doesn't show the tariff rate applicable for that particular period. I used this to show the epoch in human-readble format https://www.epochconverter.com

epochTimestamp, kWh, dateTime, Epoch coversion
1656543600, 0.039, 2022-06-29T23:00:00.000Z 30/06/2022, 00:00:00

1667259000, 0.030, 2022-10-31T23:30:00.000Z 31/10/2022, 23:30:00
1667260800, 0.031, 2022-11-01T00:00:00.000Z 01/11/2022, 00:00:00

Looking at the calculations in the “Bright” app…

The Bright app only shows a single tariff rate of 29.947p per kWh


So when the Bright app calculates the electricity costs it must be polling the meter for the half hourly usage in kilowatt hours.

Since Glowmarkt/Bright does not know anything about the customer’s account, it can only be getting the rate by polling the meter for it.

This means that it's cost calculation can only produce the energy cost based on the single unit rate of 29.947p

It therefore can not calculate the cost between midnight and 7:00 a.m. based on the cheaper overnight rate.

So thinking about the way the IHD must work…

This must interrogate the meter for the daily/weekly energy usage in kWh. To calculate the corresponding energy cost it has to multiply this by the rate in pence. If the only rate it can pull from the meter is the single unit rate value, the IHD will never be able to display the correct cost information for a multi-rate tariff.

Looking at the way the EON Next app shows the energy usage costs…

At the moment this must be doing exactly the same as the Bright app ie polling the meter for the energy usage and the tariff rate, since the daily cost it currently displays is virtually identical to the Bright app.

However since EON does have access to your account information, surely the app must be able to poll the meter for just the half hourly usage data, and then apply the correct rate for the specific time period with the relevant rate it knows from your account details.

[Chris13579]

@haru I've just moved to smart meter and next drive a day later. I have exactly the same problem. Display does not hold or use overnight tariff. So all costs are meaningless. Might as well switch display off.

[Mcbutler76]

@Chris13579 I just request the accurate data via email on a monthly basis although I did have to raise a complaint to Eon before I received a response

[Chris13579]

@Mcbutler76 thanks for suggestion . Might well do that.