Tomato Energy

lohr500

The prepayment meter is going into an increasing debit value, using the old EDF peak and off peak rates/times as the basis of the calculation.Currently showing -£20.13

I had it set up via the EDF website to auto top-up by £50 whenever the credit balance hit £5.
The auto top-up and manual top-up options have both disappeared now on my EDF logon.
If I recall correctly there was a way to manually add a top-up to the meter using a one time code if the electronic top-up communication failed to reach the meter. But I never had cause to try this.

I'm assuming, rightly or wrongly, that the meter configuration is now irrelevant other than recording the consumption and that TE will base the billing on the half hourly readings being sent by the meter. 

The half hourly data is still being sent out as I can see it in my Bright App.

I'm also assuming that at some point the meter should get a new configuration pushed to it to change the settings over to TE. How it will then work and what it will do with the registers/rates/etc remains to be seen.

Ildhund

lohr500 said:
The half hourly data is still being sent out as I can see it in my Bright App.

Just to correct what I think is a common misconception: the meter only sends data in response to a service request from an authorized user. That might be the supplier, the DNO or an 'other user' like Bright or n3rgy. The mechanism has been a bit flaky for some weeks now for some customers, with users not always able to retrieve data from the meter. So the fact that Bright are getting your data doesn't necessarily mean that any 'other user' or indeed your supplier are able to when you or they expect them to. In the cases I've seen, the data have turned up eventually, possibly hours, days or even weeks late. 

lohr500

Ildhund said:

lohr500 said:
The half hourly data is still being sent out as I can see it in my Bright App.

Just to correct what I think is a common misconception: the meter only sends data in response to a service request from an authorized user. That might be the supplier, the DNO or an 'other user' like Bright or n3rgy. The mechanism has been a bit flaky for some weeks now for some customers, with users not always able to retrieve data from the meter. So the fact that Bright are getting your data doesn't necessarily mean that any 'other user' or indeed your supplier are able to when you or they expect them to. In the cases I've seen, the data have turned up eventually, possibly hours, days or even weeks late. 

That's helpful info. Thanks.

Reed_Richards

Ildhund said:

 In the cases I've seen, the data have turned up eventually, possibly hours, days or even weeks late. 

You didn't see my case then.  My meter lost 10 days worth of data; it just wasn't there.  This was in March and it has been fine ever since.  

wrf12345

If Ofgem told energy companies if there was no data then they could not charge customers, I'd guess there would be a sudden and miraculous improvement to the system...

Ildhund

Reed_Richards said:

Ildhund said:

 In the cases I've seen, the data have turned up eventually, possibly hours, days or even weeks late. 

You didn't see my case then.  My meter lost 10 days worth of data; it just wasn't there.  This was in March and it has been fine ever since.  

I was only referring to the recent flakiness, which started in mid-June 2024 and affected some customers with Aclara SMETS2 meters. It probably isn't fully resolved yet. It was acknowledged as a 'known issue' by email to me from Aclara in early August, with an assurance that they were still investigating in cooperation with DCC. Your March outage will be unrelated.

As a matter of interest, are your March data still missing if you check what n3rgy are able to retrieve? If they are, it sounds like there was a meter fault.  

Ildhund

wrf12345 said:

... if there was no data then they could not charge customers, 

'Data' covers all sorts of things. In my FYI post, I was referring to lohr500's comment about half-hourly data. 'Other users' like Bright aren't able to retrieve meter register readings, which are the basis for billing. Missing usage data has no bearing on the supplier's ability to charge.

This becomes a bit of a grey area when ToU charging based on half-hourly data comes into play, but I think you'll find that the only acceptable basis for billing remains the meter advance. 

Reed_Richards

Ildhund said:

As a matter of interest, are your March data still missing if you check what n3rgy are able to retrieve? If they are, it sounds like there was a meter fault.  

My data is still missing.  Since meters store 13 months worth of data I am waiting to see if the fault recurs in April 2025, 13 months after the last time it happened.

MP1995

Anywayback to the main thread reason, just asked to join the tomato Facebook group myself as I did some calculations and we could make this work for all but the coldest of days for our all electric house. 

coupleuk

MP1995 said:

Anywayback to the main thread reason, just asked to join the tomato Facebook group myself as I did some calculations and we could make this work for all but the coldest of days for our all electric house. 

Forget the FB Group - far too many have waited over a week for approval.

I messaged Admin and was told people just have to wait until he's got time.