Economy 7 and Smartmeter

Ferretsox

We had a Smartmeter2 installed in 2021 with Economy 7. It has never connected and just works as a legacy meter so I send in monthly readouts. 

I noticed straight away that our 30Amp AGA cooker which charges overnight was not in sync with the off peak rate. About 49 minutes out. No explanation was identified so we just put up with this.  However, last week I noticed the AGA was not charging at all at night. I contacted EDF who say there is no WAN coverage in our postcode and suggested we just replace our cooker! 

The old meter had a Teleswitch to control the switchover of the AGA to off peak. 

Any ideas please as to what is really happening?
Thank you! 

mmmmikey

Hi - to avoid giving you a lengthy "if this then that" answer, could you have a quick look at your meter and see how many wires are coming out the bottom - should be either 4 or, and if it's 5, the 5th wire may be the same thiickness as the others or much thinner. If you could post that info here, someone here will be able to give you a better answer. p.s. welcome to the forum :-)

TheElectricCow

Is any of the old control equipment for the AGA circuit still in place, or had everything been removed/disconnected when the meter was replaced? Assuming the issue is not with the AGA itself my first thought would be of component failure somewhere, perhaps a contactor in part of the switching equipment has got stuck. 

For the timing issue, The new meter one way or another should be controlling the AGA circuit and will be responsible for the timings. Correcting this should simply be a matter of the configuration of the meter, which can typically be done remotely. As the meter is not connected though EDF will need to send an engineer to reconfigure these timings in person so that it switches on time for E7.

lohr500

As above, a description of the wires coming out of the bottom of the meter will help.

Also, do you have a separate consumer unit (fuse box) for any devices that use the off peak electricity?
Normally your 30Amp Aga would have a 5 Amp fused feed from the off peak fuse box which acts as a trigger to tell the AGA when to start and stop charging. 
Do you have any other devices that should be using off peak electricity, such as storage heaters or an immersion tank heater? 

Scot_39

Ferretsox said:

We had a Smartmeter2 installed in 2021 with Economy 7. It has never connected and just works as a legacy meter so I send in monthly readouts. 

I noticed straight away that our 30Amp AGA cooker which charges overnight was not in sync with the off peak rate. About 49 minutes out. No explanation was identified so we just put up with this.  However, last week I noticed the AGA was not charging at all at night. I contacted EDF who say there is no WAN coverage in our postcode and suggested we just replace our cooker! 

The old meter had a Teleswitch to control the switchover of the AGA to off peak. 

Any ideas please as to what is really happening?
Thank you! 

.

The WAN merely stops them updating the meter remotely e.g. with cap price changes or any other parameters and stops them receiving automatic readings.

The meter should still function as its configuration without any changes being sent to it.

In theory a little time drift - seconds per year is possible certainly not .

Ironically no WAN removes one possible reason for your problem - an over the air update screwing with meter timing configuration.

 

Do you have the original installation manual and wiring diagrams - does it refere to any time sync or charge selection signal from a timer - or meter switched supply even.

Ferretsox

mmmmikey said:

Hi - to avoid giving you a lengthy "if this then that" answer, could you have a quick look at your meter and see how many wires are coming out the bottom - should be either 4 or, and if it's 5, the 5th wire may be the same thiickness as the others or much thinner. If you could post that info here, someone here will be able to give you a better answer. p.s. welcome to the forum :-)

Thanks mmmmikey
There are 5 cables coming out of the meter. All same thickness. The brown one, numbered 5 goes to a separate small box on the wall which has 2 switches:
a brown switch labelled 100A  and
a blue on/off switch 
I very much appreciate your help. 

Ferretsox

TheElectricCow said:

Is any of the old control equipment for the AGA circuit still in place, or had everything been removed/disconnected when the meter was replaced? Assuming the issue is not with the AGA itself my first thought would be of component failure somewhere, perhaps a contactor in part of the switching equipment has got stuck. 

For the timing issue, The new meter one way or another should be controlling the AGA circuit and will be responsible for the timings. Correcting this should simply be a matter of the configuration of the meter, which can typically be done remotely. As the meter is not connected though EDF will need to send an engineer to reconfigure these timings in person so that it switches on time for E7.

Thanks Electric Cow
 Prior to having the Smartmeter installed, the Aga had a Teleswitch which I guess was provided by radio signal. No sign of any old equipment left in situ.
Had a full check of the Aga this week - no problems there. 

I will see if I can get the energy company to reconfigure the timings.
Thank you….moo

Ferretsox

lohr500 said:

As above, a description of the wires coming out of the bottom of the meter will help.

Also, do you have a separate consumer unit (fuse box) for any devices that use the off peak electricity?
Normally your 30Amp Aga would have a 5 Amp fused feed from the off peak fuse box which acts as a trigger to tell the AGA when to start and stop charging. 
Do you have any other devices that should be using off peak electricity, such as storage heaters or an immersion tank heater? 

Hi Iohr500
Thanks for your comments. 

5cables come out of the meter and number 5 goes to what I think is the separate consumer unit (has 2switches and a 100A label on one of them. 

Next to the AGA there is a switch which the Aga engineer says provides the switchover. The Aga manual call this a Teleswitch.
we also run an immersion heater on E7 but this is controlled on a time clock that can be manually adjusted. It also has a on- peak capability (separate immersion element). 

Thanks again for your help.

lohr500

Hi @Ferretsox

Does the Blue On/Off switch have any fuse associated with it? Any chance of attaching some photos showing the whole electrical layout including the meter, switches and any fuse boxes?

If your 30 Amp Aga has been installed using the default wiring it should have : 

A 30 Amp permanently live supply from the main fusebox.
A 5 amp supply connected to the off peak supply.

The 5 amp supply is used by the Aga's controller to determine when off peak electricity is available.
When it detects a voltage on this 5 amp supply it switches on the main heating elements which are powered by the main 30 Amp supply.

If the Aga core temperature falls below a preset limit during the peak rate electricity period, then it will switch on the elements at peak rate to heat back up the core to the minimal level required for cooking.

I think the blue on/off switch you describe will be the 5 amp trigger signal for the Aga.

Is the Aga working at all. With no off peak trigger signal, the control panel should still work, the heat circulation fan should kick in and out periodically and the core should be heating up to the minimal level on peak rate.

As Scot_39 mentioned, even if the Smart meter isn't receiving a signal, the previously set Economy 7 period should still be functional, albeit with the possibility of a slight drift in time.

If you check the two rate readings on the meter, are both increasing each day, or has one of the two rates stopped increasing? 

We need to start with the meter and establish if it is switching internally to the off peak rate. This will be the case if both readings increase over a 24 hour period. 
If the readings are increasing, then the next thing to figure out when the off-peak period kicks in.
When it does switch to off peak, there should be a click from the meter as it energises the 5th wire feeding your separate small box on the wall.

Please let us know if the Aga still has any power at all and also if both rates on the meter do increase over a 254 hour perur period.

With answers to those two questions, we can help with the next stage of fault finding.
  

Ferretsox

Scot_39 said:

Ferretsox said:

We had a Smartmeter2 installed in 2021 with Economy 7. It has never connected and just works as a legacy meter so I send in monthly readouts. 

I noticed straight away that our 30Amp AGA cooker which charges overnight was not in sync with the off peak rate. About 49 minutes out. No explanation was identified so we just put up with this.  However, last week I noticed the AGA was not charging at all at night. I contacted EDF who say there is no WAN coverage in our postcode and suggested we just replace our cooker! 

The old meter had a Teleswitch to control the switchover of the AGA to off peak. 

Any ideas please as to what is really happening?
Thank you! 

.

The WAN merely stops them updating the meter remotely e.g. with cap price changes or any other parameters and stops them receiving automatic readings.

The meter should still function as its configuration without any changes being sent to it.

In theory a little time drift - seconds per year is possible certainly not .

Ironically no WAN removes one possible reason for your problem - an over the air update screwing with meter timing configuration.

 

Do you have the original installation manual and wiring diagrams - does it refere to any time sync or charge selection signal from a timer - or meter switched supply even.

Hi Scott 39
Thank you for your reply. The wiring diagram in the  manual shows a main power supply near the Aga and a Teleswitch next to it. Looks exactly like what we have. The other option shown in the manual is a timer - do you think this would be like the one we have for the immersion heater?

Before the Smartmeter was installed, it worked exactly on time.  The original time lag of 40 minutes which was immediately apparent after installation was the length of time it took the engineer to install the meter. 

Thanks for your help. 

Ferretsox

lohr500 said:

Hi @Ferretsox

Does the Blue On/Off switch have any fuse associated with it? Any chance of attaching some photos showing the whole electrical layout including the meter, switches and any fuse boxes?

If your 30 Amp Aga has been installed using the default wiring it should have : 

A 30 Amp permanently live supply from the main fusebox.
A 5 amp supply connected to the off peak supply.

The 5 amp supply is used by the Aga's controller to determine when off peak electricity is available.
When it detects a voltage on this 5 amp supply it switches on the main heating elements which are powered by the main 30 Amp supply.

If the Aga core temperature falls below a preset limit during the peak rate electricity period, then it will switch on the elements at peak rate to heat back up the core to the minimal level required for cooking.

I think the blue on/off switch you describe will be the 5 amp trigger signal for the Aga.

Is the Aga working at all. With no off peak trigger signal, the control panel should still work, the heat circulation fan should kick in and out periodically and the core should be heating up to the minimal level on peak rate.

As Scot_39 mentioned, even if the Smart meter isn't receiving a signal, the previously set Economy 7 period should still be functional, albeit with the possibility of a slight drift in time.

If you check the two rate readings on the meter, are both increasing each day, or has one of the two rates stopped increasing? 

We need to start with the meter and establish if it is switching internally to the off peak rate. This will be the case if both readings increase over a 24 hour period. 
If the readings are increasing, then the next thing to figure out when the off-peak period kicks in.
When it does switch to off peak, there should be a click from the meter as it energises the 5th wire feeding your separate small box on the wall.

Please let us know if the Aga still has any power at all and also if both rates on the meter do increase over a 254 hour perur period.

With answers to those two questions, we can help with the next stage of fault finding.
  

TheElectricCow said:

Is any of the old control equipment for the AGA circuit still in place, or had everything been removed/disconnected when the meter was replaced? Assuming the issue is not with the AGA itself my first thought would be of component failure somewhere, perhaps a contactor in part of the switching equipment has got stuck. 

For the timing issue, The new meter one way or another should be controlling the AGA circuit and will be responsible for the timings. Correcting this should simply be a matter of the configuration of the meter, which can typically be done remotely. As the meter is not connected though EDF will need to send an engineer to reconfigure these timings in person so that it switches on time for E7.

The meter and wiring. 

The Aga will partially charge via the trickle feed and continues to do so even after the time off peak starts to register on the meter. Problem is, it doesn’t get up to temp and very expensive. There is no clicking over at the meter - waited up the other night to listen for it.  

Electricity is being recorded on Rate 2 overnight.  

The 5amp switch by the Aga has been checked by the Aga engineer. All wiring and fuse ok.