[BCM454]

Hi All, I moved to Eon at the start of 2024 and I took a screenshot of my start-up terms showing off-peak hours running from midnight to 0700. In Mar 2024, Eon told me my hours would be changing but not when or what to.

I believed them when they stated 0030 to 0730. Unfortunately, most of the year was taken up with a dispute as they billed me for all use as peak between April and September and they also charged me for over 2000kWh more than my meter readings showed so with all that , it was hard to tell whther my off peak hours being charged were those that they communicated.

However, this year, I have had at least 6 alternating notifications from Eon switching between 0000 to 0700 and 0030 to 0730, also asserting that they were always 0030 to 0730 and never 0000 to 0700, even though that included a few weeks when the supposed wrong tariff hours of 0000 to 0700 showed on the Eon app, so now I simply don't know what to believe the real hours are.

I have an EV and house battery to charge and kiln to run so I often need my full 7 hours but have no confidence that I am being charged correctly. At 12kW consumption for 30 mins at the wrong tariff, I could pay around £1.25 per day more than necessary so it is no fun being in the dark about the actual times.

On one occasion a couple of weeks ago, when I was up late, the smart meter in-home display (IHD, which the Eon engineer who set it up in April told me gets its tariff data from the meter), actually switched to offpeak at 0138, instead of the 0030.

I had been told that once I had my new meter (in Apr) that I wouldn't need to worry about GMT/BST off-peak hours changes, so I was still assuming offpeak started at 0030 and therefore paying a lot more than I should because I was not being given the right information.

I do not know what to believe and Eon state that as I am on the EV tariff, the IHD is wrong, but why would the meter hold not only it's own correct tariff times but a wrong set of times that it sends to the IHD?

Does anyone have any similar experiences or recommendations so that I can finally settle down to reliable offpeak hours for me to make full use of?

Thanks,

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by BCM454

Hi All, I moved to Eon at the start of 2024 and I took a screenshot of my start-up terms showing off-peak hours running from midnight to 0700. In Mar 2024, Eon told me my hours would be changing but not when or what to.

I believed them when they stated 0030 to 0730. Unfortunately, most of the year was taken up with a dispute as they billed me for all use as peak between April and September and they also charged me for over 2000kWh more than my meter readings showed so with all that , it was hard to tell whther my off peak hours being charged were those that they communicated.

However, this year, I have had at least 6 alternating notifications from Eon switching between 0000 to 0700 and 0030 to 0730, also asserting that they were always 0030 to 0730 and never 0000 to 0700, even though that included a few weeks when the supposed wrong tariff hours of 0000 to 0700 showed on the Eon app, so now I simply don't know what to believe the real hours are.

I have an EV and house battery to charge and kiln to run so I often need my full 7 hours but have no confidence that I am being charged correctly. At 12kW consumption for 30 mins at the wrong tariff, I could pay around £1.25 per day more than necessary so it is no fun being in the dark about the actual times.

On one occasion a couple of weeks ago, when I was up late, the smart meter in-home display (IHD, which the Eon engineer who set it up in April told me gets its tariff data from the meter), actually switched to offpeak at 0138, instead of the 0030.

I had been told that once I had my new meter (in Apr) that I wouldn't need to worry about GMT/BST off-peak hours changes, so I was still assuming offpeak started at 0030 and therefore paying a lot more than I should because I was not being given the right information.

I do not know what to believe and Eon state that as I am on the EV tariff, the IHD is wrong, but why would the meter hold not only it's own correct tariff times but a wrong set of times that it sends to the IHD?

Does anyone have any similar experiences or recommendations so that I can finally settle down to reliable offpeak hours for me to make full use of?

Thanks,

I'm on the Next Drive tariff, and the billing is done based on ½ hourly readings from midnight to 7 am current local time (i.e BST in the summer or GMT in the winter)

However the times on the meter doesn't reflect this at all so only use them as a rough guide (this may affect users on a two-rate E7 tariff differently, where the timing triggers heaters etc to turn on)

My meter & IHD actually changes from standard tariff to cheap tariff at 00:30 GMT (ie at the moment in BST it actually changes at 01:30 local time)


Have a look at this thread where I confirm what the meter shows re tariff time change (half way down the page at post 8 has screenshots)
https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ull=1#post5998

And EOn confirmed this is the reason why they do this here

https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ll=1#post58959

Confused dot com or what! 🤓

[rwh202]

Does your drive tariff end in 2R?
If not, simples, they should use 30 minute data and always 00:00-07:00 regardless of time of year.
For those with 5 terminal smart meters with a time controlled circuit, there is the 2R tariff with a 00:30-07:30 timing. This is probably GMT, so becomes 01:30-08:30 BST.
The different timings are apparently because they couldn’t get meters to reliably switch at 00:00.
There is then the added complication of a random delay configured in each meter, so a million circuits don’t all get switched on at the same second, so 01:37 isn’t surprising.
If you don’t have a time controlled circuit (typically for immersion and storage heaters), get on the non-2R tariff for simplicity.

[alankh]

@BCM454 check the time held in your smart meter. I had huge problems (previous supplier) with an EDMI meter which was out by over 4 hours! That really got my billing wrong. My current meter is L & G which seems to sync every day.

Not easy to navigate the smart meter menus, but hit the right buttons in the right order and you’ll find the time screen,

[Indyk_EONNext]

Evening @BCM454 👋

How are you?

Welcome to our Eon Next Community, I can see our members have given some helpful information here and if there is anything you need please let us know.

It may be best to give our customer services a call on 0808 501 5200 lines are open Monday to Friday 9am - 5pm and they will be able to clarify the timings for your meter type. 😊

[BCM454]

@geoffersThank you for your reply and apologies that it has taken me so long to respond. I could not work out how to reply while looking on my phone and had to wait until I was back home on my PC. Even now, as I respond, I cannot see your message in the same window as I write my reply.
I find it really disturbing that the meter, which must have a register that tells it when to increment the off-peak counter vs the peak counter is not visible in the display. I wrote the the manufacturer of my Kaifa MA120B, and they explained that the offpeak vs peak timings are not displayable anywhere on the meter - which I think is crazy! They added that there is a randomiser function to add on offset to the change-over time, to prevent thousands of homes switching on off-peak appliances at the same instant. In my case, that was 8 minutes.

Even for only 8 minutes, if I am drawing 12kW thinking I am offpeak but am actually peak then that is still costing me 30p a day or £80/yr, simpoly because no one is giving me a straight answer about my actual off-peak times! To me, that is not a trivial amount.

When I saw the IHD click over to offpeak at 0138, that trigger has to be coming from the meter. Why on earthe would IHD manufacturers fail to consider GMT vs BST if the meter only ever talks in GMT times?

Assuming that is true, I can get past the ridiculous missed opportunity to display the data correctly on the IHD, but all I really want is the truth about when my tairffs change and then proceed accordingly with my heavier offpeak consumption. This is against the backdrop of over a year of toggling offpeak hours announcements from Eon; sometimes withing 48 hours of each other, and they never ever consider the cost implications of this mis-information!

[BCM454]

@rwh202 Thanks for your reply and I echo my apoologies to you, as well, for being so late responding.

Yes I have a 2R tariff but Eon has flipped from yes I can have a never-changing 0000 to 0700 (which is ok for me because I simply switch at 0001), to no it is not possible, back to yes, back to no and now back to yes (all in email responses from Eon - a**e and elbow forever indistinguishable based on my experience of all of them). When I urgently requested this be set up before they changed their minds again, they ignored my request! I am waiting to hear. As per my response to another helpful user's response, I really don't mind when they actually cut over - JUST TELL ME. I have a small ray of hope that it may yet be resolved.

[BCM454]

@alankh Thank you, I wrote to the meter manufacturer, who replied that the tairff times are not visible. It seems an implausible answer but perhaps I should try tinkering on it to see what I can find, for myself, though it is a precarious balancing act to get to the meter. A Kaifa MA120B manual would be worth its weight in gold!

[BCM454]

@Indyk_EONNext Thank you for your message but in the almost 18 months of being with Eon, I have had so much contradiction, misinformation and ignoring of my requests that there is no point contacting Eon about anything.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by BCM454

@geoffersThank you for your reply and apologies that it has taken me so long to respond. I could not work out how to reply while looking on my phone and had to wait until I was back home on my PC. Even now, as I respond, I cannot see your message in the same window as I write my reply.
I find it really disturbing that the meter, which must have a register that tells it when to increment the off-peak counter vs the peak counter is not visible in the display. I wrote the the manufacturer of my Kaifa MA120B, and they explained that the offpeak vs peak timings are not displayable anywhere on the meter - which I think is crazy! They added that there is a randomiser function to add on offset to the change-over time, to prevent thousands of homes switching on off-peak appliances at the same instant. In my case, that was 8 minutes.

Even for only 8 minutes, if I am drawing 12kW thinking I am offpeak but am actually peak then that is still costing me 30p a day or £80/yr, simpoly because no one is giving me a straight answer about my actual off-peak times! To me, that is not a trivial amount.

When I saw the IHD click over to offpeak at 0138, that trigger has to be coming from the meter. Why on earthe would IHD manufacturers fail to consider GMT vs BST if the meter only ever talks in GMT times?

Assuming that is true, I can get past the ridiculous missed opportunity to display the data correctly on the IHD, but all I really want is the truth about when my tairffs change and then proceed accordingly with my heavier offpeak consumption. This is against the backdrop of over a year of toggling offpeak hours announcements from Eon; sometimes withing 48 hours of each other, and they never ever consider the cost implications of this mis-information!

@BCM454 - there's been a lot of discussion (now 13 pages & growing) on another thread about a similar problem.

It turns out that there are 2 separate timings in play:

1) The tariff timings, which the actual usage is billed against

2) A calendar setup on the meter called ALCS (Auxiliary Load Control Switch) which is there to control the switching of the 5th terminal. This setting is present so that should the meter's "Smart" connection fail, the home's switching circuits will still function

The ALCS calendar should exactly match the actual tariff timings (which differ in different parts of the country, and maybe between suppliers)

It appears that in a lot of cases the ALCS calendar has been incorrectly setup on the meter, meaning that night storage heater circuits are actually switching on at peak tariff times.

It also appears that many front line support staff don't have any understanding of this, or how it can be corrected.

The are apparently remote commands which can be sent to the meter (via the DCC) to correct the ALCS calendar settings to match the tariff charging times.

From Googling the problem, some suppliers seem able to do this , but others don't seem to know what's involved.

So maybe keep pressing EOn, to get hold of someone in the Smart Meter team who surely must know how to set the ALCS 🤞