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Smart meters in the North not working properly due to connectivity

There are a couple of issues with the smart meters for me, one is more of a threat than reality.

First is that supplier can remotely switch off supply without the need to gain physical access. Part of the process to switch off at the moment requires at least to go through the motions of the risk of harm or vulnerability of the customer, with a remote switch off a physical visit is not required and I am not sure what safeguarding process is in place. Whilst energy needs to be paid for, some consumers may need help.

Secondly, the technology in smart meters also permits the meter to switch from metering real power to apparent power. It's not really a smart meter thing, but because the meter is smart the metering the way it's measuring power consumption can also be changed remotely.

Real power is what meters traditionally meter, it's the amount of energy converted into useful work. Back in the day when loads were purely resistive like heaters and filament light bulbs most loads were in phase with the supply, the main exception might have been motors.

Apparent power takes account of whether the load demanded is in phase with the supply. With most loads now being electronic the phase of these loads usually lags the supply, and for some cheaper power supplies the lag can be significant where if you to be billed on apparent power you might be paying more than 50% more.

This is more of a theoretical risk, as we're all supposed to be metered on real power, but with the option being available to do it otherwise in modern meters you could imagine mistakes could happen....
It really is not simple for a supplier to switch off your electric supply at all with a smart meter. They have to have contacted you, visited you and even then they can't switch off vulnerable peoples electric supply. It's really not much difference to coming to your house, forcing their way in and cutting off the meter.

If you are not going to communicate with electricty suppliers why should they not be able to cut you off?

Don't forget in case of national emergencys they can remotely shutoff everybodys meter in an area. Similar to the 70s, I remember where I live they would cut off power to half our city one day and then cut off power to the other half the next day. I can remember my mother cycling to my grandparents house to watch Coronation Street when ours was cut off.
 
@peteb999 I doubt they'll do mass shutdowns via the meters, that'll happen via the substations etc.
 
Ours is still a dumb meter.
They've tried to force us into having one 4 times now but it's not happening until the meters themselves are more reliable.
I have to say that in the three houses I have lived in (different parts of the UK but all in the North) I have never once had a problem with a smart meter. For me they are incredibly reliable.

We have 2 EVs and having a smart meter allows us to charge at home overnight for 7p a kWh. This means it costs us 1.2p per mile as opposed to a petrol/diesel with an average of about 19p per mile.

I don't really understand people's massive aversion to them. Even if the smart part of it doesn't work you just read the meter exactly the same as you would a dumb meter so why not have one? As for waiting for the technology to get better, you could just end up waiting for ever. It's like not buying a PS5 as no doubt a better one will be along in a few years.
 
@peteb999 I doubt they'll do mass shutdowns via the meters, that'll happen via the substations etc.
Haha, yes, that's what I mean. They remotely shut off everyone's meters by doing a whole area. Do you think that in the 70s they went round each house and turned off the meters?
 
I watched the BBC program last night and it appears the Smart meter project was, from the start, doomed to failure. Why have a mixture of Technology's, why wasn't the Network provider allowed to carry out the provision and installation of the smart meters. What a surprise that RF signals don't reach all locations 😤
 
@peteb999 I doubt they'll do mass shutdowns via the meters, that'll happen via the substations etc.
Correct, it's already planned in via area and you can find your Postcode area alpha identifier on your bill :)

Disconnection areas.webp
 
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The same legal protections exist for remote cutting of power as physical, physical access doesnt block it from happening, it is a year or so ago in the news that british gas had homes broken into, to enforce meters being disconnected.

Found it on iplayer, watching it now.
 
It really is not simple for a supplier to switch off your electric supply at all with a smart meter. They have to have contacted you, visited you and even then they can't switch off vulnerable peoples electric supply. It's really not much difference to coming to your house, forcing their way in and cutting off the meter.

Exactly this, the process for cutting a supply off is the same whether it's a smart meter or not. Last time I asked, the codes for cutting off a supply remotely had not even been used outside of supplier testing.

If they want to cut you off (and you refuse), and you aren't a protected user then they will request attendance from the court bailiffs or police (which you would be charged for), so in the end whichever meter you have, you will get taken off supply, so it's a moot point.
 
So it appears that the safeguards are in theory in place to prevent the use of remote switch off without any physical attendance. But it's a theoretical process, that could be circumvented be that by cockup or conspiracy.

The same applies to the metering standard applied. Theoretically it could be set incorrectly and that could be also instigated remotely.

I agree it's all a bit whataboutery, but with a non-zero number of meter swaps being left with dangerous installs, meter point numbers being messed up with incorrect meters being attributed to the wrong supply, no easy means for consumers to request replacement of the in home display in many cases, and smart meters going dumb for various reasons including due to failure of the Comms access network, it's all a mess that doesn't need to be a mess if it were designed and implemented better. And we're all paying for this mess.
 
Having now watched the panaroma episode, yeah what a mess.

Imagine how bad FTTP would be in terms of expense, if they did a rollout to one house at a time when it ordered it, I think we can guess, with the cost of FTTPoD.

It does make sense that instead of going to one home at a time, they do an entire area in a sweep, and I think it could even have been done in a way where all meters are in a building or cabinet somewhere for a block of properties, so any servicing doesnt need property access.

Splitting of networks to capita yet another private company, creates a liability headache, customers deal with suppliers, who deals with capita? Then we got the situation which reminds me of the wasteful approach to broadband faults, where these suppliers are just mindlessly replacing meters for a communications issue. Interestingly after panaroma stepped in, that northern case was able to be resolved with a cellular communications module, which proves my earlier point I made, it is an option.

I expect no one wants to own up to it, and instead of grabbing the bull by the horns and getting on with fixes to the communications, they just carrying on as is, wasting resources on replacing meters when they not what is broken, the communication system is what is broken. The communication hub should probably have had both forms of connectivity implemented so it could be switched without a hardware replacement as well. I think one of the guys interviewed mentioned that.
 
I worked for a commercial heating controls company when it was first announced that all homes had to have smart meters installed by 2020. My trade was IT and I was creating the programs for retro installing heating controls in commercial premises. The biggest contract I worked on was for a certain banks branches throughout the UK.

The problem the bank had was that branch managers would not allow meter readers in to read the meters. This was because usually the meters would be in the basement directory next to the vault and the manager would be very nervous about letting anyone in. This meant some branches didn't have meter readings submitted for 7 to 8 years and as you can imagine it wasn't great getting a bill after all this time.

I used to get a clamp installed on the meter and our system would read how much electric was being used and the bank would have access to the data using a 3G modem (which was a bit of a nightmare trying to get a good 3G signal from a basement - I learnt a hell of a lot of how mobile phone networks operate).

Anyway, this obviously was not ideal but the electric company would accept our figures and charge the bank as appropriate. Then the smart meters were announced and I was tasked to interface with the meters etc. which was fun. It soon became very apparent that the people creating the smart meters and the regulator had no idea at all about IT and were just not capable of dealing with such a new idea - they had no interest in either learning about IT or listening to me.

At this point all the meters were being fitted with thier own mobile SIM cards by Vodafone and again because they were in basements it was very challenging.

I went into so many meetings about this and literally the regulator couldn't give a monkeys and just kept re-iterating the same mantra that it had to be done by 2020. I was astounded about the first meters they created and they just wouldn't listen when it was pointed out to them that they couldn't be transferred from one company to another - they just thought that it was very rare that anyone changed electric company (they were so out of touch) and the electric companys were quite happy thinking that it would prevent people from moving. The people I met honestly thought that if people moved the electric company would swap out the meter - can you imagine the cost. Still it kept me employed in a very interesting/challenging job for a while.
 
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It really is bonkers that the regulator didn't appear to know that customers change supplier. After all, that is a regulator imposed requirement in the industry, but obviously a different bit of the regulator so a typical a right hand / left hand / nothing in-between situation there.

But just imagine our commercial heating controls supplier should be able to order a smart meter for their customer that just works, gives the networks their readings, the customer their readings, and can provide a local feed of data to onsite equipment for energy optimisation.

But of course the last bit is lacking, so it usually means some kind of overlay hardware with current clamps and additional cost.
 
It is not just the North, no matter what the Bloated broadcasting Corporation has to say, may people in the south and midlands have the same problems.

Can we just agree that the government roll out of smart meters have been a disaster and cost us the public far too much and have been going on for far too long?
I would say there's an issue here but there isn't (we had ours installed in 2019 and somewhere around October for reference)
 
I think the experience with smart meters is a bit binary. Either your smart meter works well or it doesn't. It's just the list of reasons why it might not end up working well or stop working has too many reasons and excuses in it and there is no interia or regulated KPI on the suppliers to fix these problems.

This understandably leads into the public's mistrust of the solution - why be persuaded by Einstein to have a smart meter when there is a significant chance it will be not end up being so smart.
 
It really is not simple for a supplier to switch off your electric supply at all with a smart meter. They have to have contacted you, visited you and even then they can't switch off vulnerable peoples electric supply. It's really not much difference to coming to your house, forcing their way in and cutting off the meter.
I had smart meters fitted a couple of weeks ago after holding out for years and ignoring the constant nudging from energy suppliers. I asked the installer (who was a really knowledgeable chap) about this topic - and he basically said the same thing. He also mentioned of cases where he didn't go ahead with disconnection because he saw evidence that vulnerable people lived in the premises.

However, I believe what they can do remotely is switch you over to a pre-paid plan without changing any hardware. The installer chap also mentioned various technical issues with the previous generation of meters. Apparently there was a battery fault with the gas meter (it is not mains powered) where the battery runs out far quicker than the stated 10-15 year lifetime. And apparently when the battery runs out, the meter shuts out the supply.

I delayed mainly because I heard of issues with first gen meters not playing nice with solar panels (we have them) and reverse energy detection. But apparently these latest gen devices have all those gremlins sorted out. If your gas meter is quite far away from the electricity meter (which is the "master" in the system), you could have connectivity issues - and sometimes a faster battery drain.

But the big driver for me is the upcoming decommissioning of the Radio Teleswitch Service in June 2025. We use the cheaper night time tariff for EV charging.

So far so good - the indoor display is quite a neat device (which has a battery backup) and gives you tons of information. Previously a bit of guesswork was involved to figure out when the tariff would switch but now the meter lets you know. It also has a 1 hour countdown before the rates change. For us it happens at 12:30 AM (and lasts 7 hours I think).

So far no connectivity issues for us (we live in the South East). I believe the meter uses GSM and the O2 network. Indoor unit uses Zigbee I think.

I need to figure out how to access the raw data so I can store and graph it - anyone know how? We are not with Octopus.
 
I had smart meters fitted a couple of weeks ago after holding out for years and ignoring the constant nudging from energy suppliers. I asked the installer (who was a really knowledgeable chap) about this topic - and he basically said the same thing. He also mentioned of cases where he didn't go ahead with disconnection because he saw evidence that vulnerable people lived in the premises.

However, I believe what they can do remotely is switch you over to a pre-paid plan without changing any hardware. The installer chap also mentioned various technical issues with the previous generation of meters. Apparently there was a battery fault with the gas meter (it is not mains powered) where the battery runs out far quicker than the stated 10-15 year lifetime. And apparently when the battery runs out, the meter shuts out the supply.

I delayed mainly because I heard of issues with first gen meters not playing nice with solar panels (we have them) and reverse energy detection. But apparently these latest gen devices have all those gremlins sorted out. If your gas meter is quite far away from the electricity meter (which is the "master" in the system), you could have connectivity issues - and sometimes a faster battery drain.

But the big driver for me is the upcoming decommissioning of the Radio Teleswitch Service in June 2025. We use the cheaper night time tariff for EV charging.

So far so good - the indoor display is quite a neat device (which has a battery backup) and gives you tons of information. Previously a bit of guesswork was involved to figure out when the tariff would switch but now the meter lets you know. It also has a 1 hour countdown before the rates change. For us it happens at 12:30 AM (and lasts 7 hours I think).

So far no connectivity issues for us (we live in the South East). I believe the meter uses GSM and the O2 network. Indoor unit uses Zigbee I think.

I need to figure out how to access the raw data so I can store and graph it - anyone know how? We are not with Octopus.
There is an API system, where you can generate a code allowing other software to access your data, some apps can use this e.g. the octopus compare app (this is 3rd party not made by octopus). I dont know of the other stuff people use but it is out there.
 
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I delayed mainly because I heard of issues with first gen meters not playing nice with solar panels (we have them) and reverse energy detection. But apparently these latest gen devices have all those gremlins sorted out.
Interestingly, my dumb meter had that exact issue. I had solar fitted then all of a sudden my bill shot up in summer and the penny dropped that the meter was charging me for export as well as import. Though can't fault Octopus for swapping it out very quickly.

I understand their paranoia but it is annoying that you can't service/swap batteries as needed, or they're not using an open standard like the Dutch that you can access locally.
Home Assistant DSMR (NL)

I need to figure out how to access the raw data so I can store and graph it - anyone know how? We are not with Octopus.
Is this just so you can trend analysis etc? If it doesn't need to be *too* accurate then you can use any CT-Style clamp meter that supports directionality. It won't be perfect but it'll be a good indicator.

Shelly make an off the shelf solution you can use.
Home Assistant - CT Clamp

Or if you dont mind getting your hands a bit technically dirty then ESPHome can do this quite easily.

A bit more detail around what you're trying to do/achieve will help give you some steer, though. I do love HA for this but it's quite the rabbit hole :)
 
I need to figure out how to access the raw data so I can store and graph it - anyone know how? We are not with Octopus.
I've got one of these CADs which combined with the free app Bright app will provide a good overview down to 10 second resolution for elec, 30 minutes for gas. The app alone will provide DCC data which is only updated once a day and only to 30 minute resolution.

The CAD will also provide a local MQTT raw data stream, updated every 10 second.
 
I use the Hildebrand combined display and CAD device and this flow
IHD -> mqtt -> telegraf -> influxdb v2 -> grafana working on both energy streams and the signal strength

I live north of the M1/M6, in a hilly area, but have had no issues so far (~ 2yrs), the meter has two indicators so I assume its LRR?. Are the non LRR meters on the 3G mobile system?
 
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