How Long to Wait When Meter Usage Data Not Being Sent?

MeteredOut

I've only had my smart meter for a few months, but I've noticed no data has been sent to my supplier (or seen on Loop/Hugo or n3rgy/Guy Lipman site) since around 3am yesterday morning (so over 30 hours ago). This is for both gas (EDF) and electricity (Octopus).

Usage data is showing on my IHD for both.

At what point should I start worrying that usage is not being sent through and connectivity might have been lost - particularly for electricity where I often get smart slots during the day when I plug in my EV don't want to be charged a blended rate for that.

What period of time have others seen no usage flow through, then it restarts?

MarzipanCrumble

I have had an ongoing (friendly) email discussion with Octopus (Elec & Gas) over about 3 years.  The SM2's are not Octopus' meters but Co-op (Shell at the time).  My meters communicate intermittantly which is a pain.

Octopus have now agreed to a more powerful 'hub' which fits to the Elec meter and an ariel to the window.  I am in S Wales where I believe the meters communicate via O2 - may be wrong here.  I have already had a PowerCycle.

Keep at it - the Octopus SM team do respond and are helpful.  Just be patient.  They may be quicker via X  but I am not prepared to use X.

I DO believe that not having a functioning SM2 will mean you are a second class user who will not get the most appropriate tarrifs.  Like everyting this government has done Smart Meter communication is a mess.  Different comms for different areas.

MeteredOut

Just to be clear - i've had no issue since the meters were installed 4 months ago - usage and readings have flowed to both EDF and Octopus since then. I've never seen the normal delay of more than a few hours for data to reach the apps/n3rgy before now.

pensionpawn

My smart meter(s) stopped communicating to Octopus on 2nd. I raised it as an issue on 4th, and was told to wait to see if it sorted itself out. Spoke to Octopus yesterday and today and they can't send an engineer out to fix it until 22nd. Not impressed. They also said the electric has to go off? Surely that isn't necessary for just replacing the coms?

MeteredOut

Thanks, I suspect this will be my first test of the reportedly stellar Octopus customer service.

MeteredOut

Still (seemingly) no data flowing to the DCC. WAN and HAN lights both blinking as expected on the smart meter comms module.

Have resurrected an old twitter account and DM'd Octopus - let's see what they say.

Anyone else on IOG had this issue? Do Octopus charge the SVT for days when they have no readings? I had to do a car charge and don't want to be paying 25+p/kWh. Have taken photographic evidence of meter readings and Octopus app before and after.

mmmmikey

Hi, I have a 100% record of data getting through but have still had the occasional blip (maybe once every few months) where it stops for 2 or 3 days then catches up with itself so it is quite possible that this will just sort itself out.

As far as Octopus customer service is concerned (and hopefully on the subject of blips 🙂) be prepared to be underwhelmed. There are various reports of it being pretty poor at the moment which is consistent with my own experience. To be fair, they seem willing enough and things get sorted in the end - I think they've got more customers than they can cope with. But they're nothing like as good as EDF were in my experience - strange but true.....

MeteredOut

Within 2 hours of sending Octopus a DM on Twitter, I got this response

I have checked your account and I can see there are some missing half-hourly readings. I have requested the readings from the national metering body (DCC) and these should come through within the next couple of days, but it is usually much quicker. Once the missing half-hourly readings come through to us you'll be able to see these via your Octopus account. I've also run some checks on the account so will await for this to come through and will get back to you with an update. Please reach out if you need help with anything further. All the best

So, a positive start, though I'm wondering that since the Loop etc apps and n3rgy.com do not have the data, whether the DCC will be able to send through the missing entries.

MeteredOut

Nothing more back from Octopus and still no data flowing through to any of the apps or Octopus via the DCC.

Has anyone on an smart tariff had the same issue and managed to get Octopus to do anything other than use the SVT rates for periods where data does not flow through?

pensionpawn

Spoke to Octopus again yesterday afternoon. It really is down to who picks up the phone and how switched on they are. The young woman advised on this occasion that she could nudge the meter to wake up / start responding, although she couldn't guarantee this would work. I applauded her proactive thinking compared to others I have spoken to. Electrical import data has now populated however still waiting for gas import / elec export, which is the important one as since moving to BST my peak period export has taken off and I want to see the benefit of this rather than being told I'll have to accept flat rate. Not the reason I'm on Flux!

MeteredOut

So my data has appeared overnight - completely back to last Monday on n3rgy, Loop and Hugo, but Bright app still has Mon-Wed missing and the Octopus site has Mon-Thu missing (but weirdly, the Octopus app is showing Tuesday but not Friday). Hopefully Octopus fill in the gaps as I had some EV charging during those missing days and want to ensure the smart IOG slots are captured.

I'd contacted Hugo and Bright to see if they could help, and I did get a response from Hugo saying they were looking into it, so I don't know if it was contacting Octopus earlier this week, or contacting one of them, that rectified the issue.

Thankfully (it looks like) no engineer callout required for me.