[meldrewreborn]

@Beasel

I've done some sums and reckon our energy used to heat hot water over a year is 4,000 kWh. That's for 2 of us and on our pattern of showering etc which is obviously not the same as yours. But even if your use of hot water was much reduced, from ours, you could easily be using 500-800 kWh of electricity to heat that hot water. Which you should bear in mind when analysing your off peak consumption.

Just as an aside, our electricity consumption is a tad over 1,600 kWh per annum for the two of us, but we use gas for heating, water heating and cooking, while you do not. My thinking is that your electricity consumption, excluding water heating might be circa 1,400 kWh and water heating being the rest. Just intuitive reasoning.

[DebF_EONNext]

Hey @Beasel welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to post!

I'm not going to lie metering isn't my strongest point but I didn't want to leave you without a response! I can see that our lovely members have been supporting you here which is great to see!

I know this has probably been considered but you have mentioned your off peak times (night rate) being 0000-0030 / 0230-0730 / 2230-2400 - Have you given some allowance for GMT / BST clock changes as this may cause the meter to be out by 1hr.

The other thing I would suggest (which you may have already done) would be a kettle test - so during your off peak 10.30pm off peak time turn on a few more things boil the kettle a few times and see which reading is moving. If it is register 1 try again 1 hr later (to allow for changes in bst/gmt) if it is still showing register 1 is moving rather than register 2 it could be that rather than your timings being wrong we have your readings transposed on the system instead, which is something that we can update for you.

Usually if your readings are out by less than 2hrs we wouldn't send an engineer as this is within tolerance levels. Also was this an issue before your meter exchange or has it only been since you had your smart meter installed?

[RobJM]

I find myself in the same boat, going around in circles on WhatsApp with them, every contact someone different, always resulting in "it's within the 2 hour tolerance"

My ALCS is set 00:30 to 08:30, confirmed on meter, however the off peak tariff hours are 01:30 to 08:30, so an hour every day at peak rate instead of low rate.
Also that first hour of the storage heaters coming on is always the most power hungry.

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by RobJM

I find myself in the same boat, going around in circles on WhatsApp with them, every contact someone different, always resulting in "it's within the 2 hour tolerance"

My ALCS is set 00:30 to 08:30, confirmed on meter, however the off peak tariff hours are 01:30 to 08:30, so an hour every day at peak rate instead of low rate.
Also that first hour of the storage heaters coming on is always the most power hungry.

@RobJM whilst I'm on Next Drive not on E7, my meter has been set up with off-peak tariff times of 00:30 to 07:30 similar to E7, which allows the IHD to show the relevant usage (luckily I'm accurately billed from midnight to 7am, summer and winter)

The reason for this was explained by DebF here>>> https://community.eonnext.com/thread...ll=1#post58959

However the meter times are in GMT, so in the summer the rate change at the meter/displayed on the IHD is actually happening between 01:30 to 08:30 BST (I proved this using the mark-one eyeball early one morning)

[RobJM]

@geoffers earlier in the year, before clocks changed, everything seemed to be just back an hour, heaters were coming on at 23:30 , but night tariff not starting until 00:30, their excuse of a 2 hour tolerance to allow for the GMT/BST change doesn't seem to make any difference? Still an hour at peak time.

[meldrewreborn]

@RobJM. How are your storage heaters switched? Do you have a smart meter with 5 terminals (the 5th feeding the heaters fuse box) or do you have a Radio Tele Switch or something else. A photo of the setup would help.

EDIT I did a search for E7 tariff tolerance and the result was that the tolerance provides additional not less time on off peak to avoid customers being penalised over minor errors. The result was from AI.

[RobJM]

@meldrewreborn hi, I have a fairly new smets 2 , 5 port meter, installed about a year or so.
The switch in the meter (Auxiliary Load Control Switch), turns on/off my E7 circuit controlling my old style storage heaters.

[geoffers]

@RobJM - well, as I expect most E7 users know but the rest of us don't... It looks like there's an ALCS calendar in the meter which controls the circuit switching.

Clearly this should match the tariff price/timings, but it looks like in these situations it doesn't match: hence the incorrect billing.

Lots of similar discussion going on out there in the interweb. For instance....

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/smart-me...ng-to-ovo-9291

They have advised that the tariff and the ALCS (auxiliary load control switch - a relay that can open and close to power things attached to it like storage heaters) are two separate objects in a smart meter.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com...ter-timings/p9

There are two sets of timings within the meter:
1. The Time of Use switching table, which specifies the times when offpeak periods start and stop;
2. The ALCS calendar, which specifies the times when the Auxiliary Load Control Switch closes and opens.
These timings will normally be exactly the same, so that at the (nominal) start time of an offpeak period, the ToU register changes from peak to offpeak and the load control switch closes to energize the heating circuit

[RobJM]

Originally Posted by geoffers

@RobJM - well, as I expect most E7 users know but the rest of us don't... It looks like there's an ALCS calendar in the meter which controls the circuit switching.

Clearly this should match the tariff price/timings, but it looks like in these situations it doesn't match: hence the incorrect billing.

Lots of similar discussion going on out there in the interweb. For instance....

https://forum.ovoenergy.com/smart-me...ng-to-ovo-9291



https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com...ter-timings/p9

It's a pity we can find out what's happening but their 'smart team' seem unable to.
On my googling I've also found It's simply a case of remotely updating the meter, they don't even need to come out. The issue is getting someone that understands the problem I think.

[meldrewreborn]

It seems we have an explanation of what the problem is, and how to correct it it. Each individual case will be different, but it will require a complaint to be raised and compensation demanded for the overcharges, which will vary based on usage and elapsed time, downloaded data will help in that assessment. Hopefully this is the explanation in both cases but only the individuals affected can confirm that.