Better Smart

Smart meters are energy-saving dream machines! By allowing you to track your energy use, smart meters encourage you to make small changes to waste less energy – cutting bills and carbon emissions. A win for the world and your wallet! Check them out here.

Remember, Better Smart is for new members who already have, or would like a smart meter installed. If you’re getting one installed, you need to book a smart meter appointment within 3 months of your plan start date, to stay on the Better Smart plan. All Better Smart members will get the latest generation smart meter (SMETS2).

You can find out all about smart meter installations here – including what happens on the day, and who installs them.

We're committed to giving our members the best smart meter experience around – in fact, we won the ‘Best Smart Meter Experience’ at the 2020 Uswitch Energy Awards.

If you’re getting a smart meter installed, you need to get it fitted by us within the first 3 months of joining, to stay on our Better Smart plan for the full 1-year contract. If this doesn’t happen, you’ll automatically join Simpler Energy (our variable rate plan) from the start of the 4th month. Don’t worry – there’ll be no exit fee. And you’ll be free to choose one of our other plans, or leave OVO. Although of course we hope you’ll stay!

If the smart meter isn’t fitted because of a technical issue outside of your control, or lack of availability on our part, you can stay on Better Smart for the rest of the contract.

Smart meters come with an optional (and free of charge) In-Home Display, which shows you how much energy you’re using – and what it’s costing. You can see how much you’ve used over the last hours, days, weeks or months.

The Smart Metering Installation Code of Practice (SMICoP) is a set of rules and standards that make sure that you get a great experience and quality of service when you’re having your smart meter installed.

At OVO, we've signed up to this code of practice (of course). And naturally we always do our best to ensure our engineers are fully trained to give you an excellent service.

The code covers many parts of the installation process, like:

• Helping you understand how to use your smart equipment, so you can get the most from it.
• Making sure our engineers are trained to the highest standards.
• Giving you all the info you need.
• Giving extra support to anyone who is vulnerable or who might need special help.
• Showing you how to check your energy use – so you can spot patterns and make small changes that could help you save energy.
• Keeping you informed, quickly, on progress if something's not right with your smart equipment.

Smart meters have been thoroughly tested for safety. They’ve passed all the UK and EU regulations that make sure a product is safe. All the same regulations that your phone, microwave, and TV will have had to pass too.

Check out more on smart meter safety here.

Your smart meter automatically sends us readings. This means your bills are accurate. And if there’s any interruption to your supply, we can spot it and fix it faster.

We can check the info from your smart meter, and use it to:

• Manage your energy supply, and quickly spot problems
• Give you tailored advice to help you reduce your energy use – and bills.
• Improve our service – for you, and everyone!
• Manage energy ‘supply and demand’ better.

If we need to use the information for anything else, we’ll get in touch to talk it through with you and explain why.

Smart meters are super secure. We use safety measures agreed with the government (like encryption) to make sure that any data your smart meter shares with us is always safe and private. We also follow strict rules set out by the industry regulator, OFGEM, and all your personal data is safeguarded by the Data Protection Act too.

Smart meters don't use the internet and have their own closed communications system. It's been designed with top cybersecurity experts, including the government's security and intelligence organisation, GCHQ. This means your data can't be seen by anyone but you and us.

Yes, you can absolutely switch energy suppliers. Here are a few things to know before you switch;

• If you have a next-generation SMETS2 meter, you'll be able to switch without an issue. All Better Smart members will get the latest generation smart meter (SMETS2).
• If you have a first-generation SMETS1 meter you might find that your meter loses some of its whizzy smart benefits. This means you'll have to submit readings for a short while. But the good news is that thanks to a remote software update planned to finish by the end of 2021, all smart meters will soon work properly with all suppliers.

We ask you to choose how often your smart meter sends readings when you first book an appointment. You can change this anytime after the installation, by calling us.

The more often you share your readings, the more feedback we'll be able to give you... which can help you save energy.

• Sharing half-hourly readings can help you understand more about your energy use. (Most OVO members choose this option.)
• Sharing daily readings means you won't get as much info about your energy use. (It's the default option if you don't tell us otherwise.)
• Sharing monthly readings means you won't receive feedback about your energy use on a day-to-day basis.

If you have a smart meter your readings will update automatically, so you don’t have to submit meter readings yourself – easy!

Our priority is the safety of you and our teams. All our engineers are specially trained to follow safety measures – they’ll call ahead before the visit and wear PPE. Read more about the precautions we’re taking here ovoenergy.com/coronavirus-update.