Tomato Energy TOU tariffs and SMETS2

wrf12345

But would it not be illegal to publish misleading TOU rates if they don't refer to the actual time they apply to but then again you would have thought it illegal for people to break into the country and that dissociation from reality probably now means anything goes...

Largs

Many thanks for this information. Understood completely now.

Veteransaver

JoshinLeeds said:

lohr500 said:

I've just received an email from Tomato Energy confirming that the unit prices in the Contract Document are inclusive of vat

No reply yet to my separate enquiry on if the timings are always GMT and if they will use three registers or one on my smart meter.

Interesting as my contracted stated they excluding vat.

Is yours a business account though? Afaik they have to quote vat inclusive prices to non business users.

Veteransaver

lohr500 said:

Largs said:

I am getting confused, 1 by various tomato 🍅 threads trying to gleem information that is spread about them and 2 GMT and BST is too confusing. We need plain English. (I know what GMT and BST means) But not in relation to electric. Please help the community and use plain English.

There was some doubt initially if the times for the different unit costs on their time of use Lifestyle tariff were always based on Greenwich Mean Time, or if they moved when our clocks move to British Summer Time.

Some suppliers off peak periods are always fixed on GMT, whilst others shift with the clock change.

As an example, my EDF off peak periods were ALWAYS based on GMT. The off peak rate on weekdays was between 9pm and 7am GMT. In the summer when our clocks moved to BST, the off peak time became 10pm to 8am.

Other suppliers work it differently, so the off peak time is based on the local clock time in place for the time of year. So if the off peak time is 9pm to 7am, it is 9pm to 7am irrespective if we are on the winter GMT time, or the summer BST time.

Tomato Energy have now confirmed to me (at least) that their time of use timings are based on the local clock time. So in line with the second scenario above.

Does this help to explain the confusion?

Old E7 meters (ie non smart) usually had actual clocks in them, so it wasn't possible to change the time between GMt and BSt, so they were always based on GMT.
They also often drifted out, J used to have an E7 meter where the off peak 7 hours was sometime in the middle of the day.
The TOU they state must be actual time, eg local time. The same way an airline doesn't run its flight schedule on GMt, only local time

blanik

Interesting Scottish Power highlight an issue with some smets1 meters and BST on their EV tariff where the charging times go forward one hour in the summer ONLY on these meters.

Time of Use tariffs (scottishpower.co.uk)

"*These timings are based on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). However, during British Summer Time (BST), the time periods will change on selected SMETS1 meters [ made by L&G, Itron or Aclara ] to reflect the new time zone. BST runs from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October."

rlatarche

Morning all, interesting thread, as I had exactly the same question regarding the TOU billing, is it UTC, GMT, BST etc etc, if you download the data from myWatts, it would suggest that it is not local time, but GMT as the tariff amount changes an hour out from "local" time.

I'm curious what and how are you contacting Tomato Energy, the email address on there websites, dont work for me, it always gets bounced back saying not available! Very frustrating

lohr500

rlatarche said:

Morning all, interesting thread, as I had exactly the same question regarding the TOU billing, is it UTC, GMT, BST etc etc, if you download the data from myWatts, it would suggest that it is not local time, but GMT as the tariff amount changes an hour out from "local" time.

I'm curious what and how are you contacting Tomato Energy, the email address on there websites, dont work for me, it always gets bounced back saying not available! Very frustrating

TE have assured several of us who have contacted them that the timings are definitely "local time".

They have also confirmed that myWatts is a work in progress and the data shown on it, and in the download from it, will NOT be used for the billing.  At least one person on the Facebook Forum has received a detailed bill and believes the correct local time tou rates have been used for the billing

I am expecting my 1st bill this week and will also be checking it very carefully to make sure that the correct tou, have been applied using "local time". I shall also check the kWh for each tou. to make sure they match with downloads from Bright and n3rgy. 

Yesterday I checked the half hourly myWatts data download for September. The half hourly kWh numbers exactly match the Bright & n3rgy data. All three raw data sets show the time as GMT. It should be noted however that myWatts and n3rgy show the half hourly usage for the 30 minutes BEFORE the timestamp, whereas Bright shows the 30 minutes AFTER the timestamp. 

The cost calculation on the myWatts download is incorrect, both from a GMT/BST point of view and the fact that TE have not recognised that the raw data shows the 30 minutes BEFORE the timestamp. But as mentioned above, TE recognise there are issues with the myWatts data so it is best ignored until they fix it.

However, in my opinion, the fact that they do seem able to extract the correct base half hourly kWh usage data is a good sign, as that has to be the start point for accurate billing.


Are you using customer.care@tomato.energy for the email address? That one seems to work OK for me.

rlatarche

Well when I emailed them to clarify the points you've already made, outlook gave me an error:

Delivery has failed to these recipients or groups:customer.care@tomato.energy (UNDEFINED:customer.care@tomato.energy)
The email system had a problem processing this message. It won't try to deliver this message again.
So I tried another email address:mx-inbound23-36.eu-west-2b.ess.aws.cudaops.com rejected your message to the following email addresses:customer.experience@tomato.energy (customer.experience@tomato.energy)With a different error.

Based on your feedback i'm hopeful it will correct itself, I've resent the emails again, fingers crossed they go through!

wrf12345

do u not get daily usage in your account as per Agile, otherwise it sounds pretty useless...

lohr500

Once they get the myWatts website working correctly, it will be possible to view the daily, weekly, monthly and annual usage and cost information. At a daily level it shows the half hourly breakdown.

Some are reporting that it is already working correctly. Others, like myself, ae still seeing errors.

I'm sure they will get it sorted sometime soon, but I imagine their primary IT focus is making sure they can bill customers accurately.