Another Smart Meter thread.

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

This one is mainly about how the things work, rather than the pros and cons of having one.

We had a phone call from our energy supplier today inviting us to have a have a smart meter installed. I explained to the lass on the phone that it might be technically difficult because our gas and electricity meters are located in cellars and are about 1.5 metres below ground level. All I could get from her was 'WAN coverage is very good in your area'. She wasn't able to give me any info as to the frequency and power of the transmitters they use.

So far my researches suggest that the latest generation of these devices use a low-power battery operated (for safety reasons?) transmitter on the gas meter which beams readings to a unit attached to the electricity meter, which then sends both gas and electricity readings on to a government operated* facility for distribution to suppliers – by what mechanism isn't made clear on the gov.uk website. Don't worry your pretty little head about it love!

There is a potential problem with this scheme for me in that the gas and electricity meters are in separate cellars which are divided by a metre thick stone wall. 2.4Ghz photons struggle to get through. And mostly die – at least at Bluetooth Class 2 power levels.

The point of this post is to ask if anyone in a similar situation has got these things working, Whether I want to have a smart meter is another question, but if it's not technically feasible, well, that makes the decision for me.

Robin.

* Government operated means subcontracted to Capita who of course have have an impeccable record of delivering and aren't spooky in the least.

R.

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Firstly: For the last 12 months, Shell have received my usage info from my smart meter.

At the last price increase, they billed me at the increased rates but the meter rates shown on the smart meter were not updated until some time later. Many, with smart meters, may have not cut back usage (like I did) until the later costs became more apparent.

Yesterday I had an email telling me my meter had suddenly failed to transmit and I would need to supply monthly readings again.

Am I cynical in thinking this is just a way to ‘hide’ the real increase in energy costs for the first month, or so?

Am I cynical that Shell are saving money by not using the company that collects the data from these smart meters?

I would not be surprised at either or both of these options. Anyone else received a similar notification?

Part of their charges is currently charged as several pence per day. I somehow think this reduction in their costings may not be passed on to me. These costs all add up.

Like I said, am I too cynical – or am I an isolated case?

Robin,

I don’t know how good the signal strength might be from the meter to the data collector, but if your mobile phone fails to get a signal in your cellar, a smart meter is likely in the same boat.

If I move my meter remote display too far from my meters, it loses contact. It is likely very directional. My display is only about 4m from the meter at about a 60 degree angle, through possibly two 4” clinker-block walls. If I take the display into my kitchen, at a much increased angle (80 degrees?) through a single clinker block wall, it loses signal.

[Clive HartlandParticipant @clivehartland94829]

I am sure my Smart meter lies compared to the bills I get!

[DMBParticipant @dmb]

I am a bit smarter still! Just won't give 'em house room, ha, ha.

I am quite capable of taking monthly readings and transmitting them myself. If I want a hot drink, I'll simply stick jug kettle on and bugger how much it costs. Carrying on as I have for years, use what I want then switch it off, not standby.

Good tech. and rubbish tech. and smart tech falls in the rubbish category as far as I I'm concerned.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Robin,

I doubt that you will get a sensible answer as to whether Smart meters will transmit from your cellars, the overriding issue for the energy industry is to fit as many meters as they can. The fitting of the meters is contracted out to a third party and all they will be interested in is payment for the installation, your energy supplier will only be interested in claiming another installation completed which goes towards building his stats of percentage of customers who have Smart meters fitted. From what you have described then Smart meters will not function in your cellars, the next step in the process will be relocation of your meters to a viable position, this of course will be at the customers expense because he requested the Smart meters, the process of Smart meter fitting is triggered by customer request. I am firmly against my meters being replaced with Smart meters, the process is expensive and in my view totally unnecessary, in the end the cost of this process falls on us the customers, recent events with the energy price cap show how shambolic our public utilities have become in the years since privatisation, latest French increase in electricity costs are pegged at 4%, food for thought. Dave W

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

You might find it useful to trawl through the DCC website, Robin

… maybe jump-in at this page: **LINK**

https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/our-smart-network/current-programmes/dual-band-comms-hubs/

MichaelG.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by DMB on 31/08/2022 08:30:01:

I am a bit smarter still! Just won't give 'em house room, ha, ha.

I am quite capable of taking monthly readings and transmitting them myself. If I want a hot drink, I'll simply stick jug kettle on and bugger how much it costs. Carrying on as I have for years, use what I want then switch it off, not standby.

Good tech. and rubbish tech. and smart tech falls in the rubbish category as far as I I'm concerned.

All fine and dandy as a solution but it only works for people who live like DMB and me. And I'm not happy about the buggering part of DMB's smart answer! The big problem though is that the rest of the world is different and so is the future. Be wonderful if we didn't need to worry about energy supply because fossil fuels were guaranteed to last forever, but they aren't. My children are going to see much higher energy costs than me. Will Smart Meters help or hinder them?

Smart meters open the door to sophisticated charging and load management schemes. For example, on a bright sunny day, renewable energy will be cheap and plentiful. Therefore, Smart Meters can encourage consumers to use it by dropping the price. When cheap renewable power isn't available due to adverse weather, the meter can warn consumers that prices are high.

Dumb meters offer no flexibility, so the people who own them will pay a higher tariff, perhaps up to full cost of the most expensive rate plus a surcharge for the extra admin costs due to processing. I'm sure dumb meters will be around for a long time yet, but they're part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

To answer Robin's question, he may be the sort of customer who has to have a dumb meter whether he wants one or not. My guess is at least half UK homes will have no bother fitting a smart meter with a workable signal. But a cellar is likely to be difficult. I'm not sure what's available for meters at the moment, but a repeater, connection via the home's Local Area Network, or IP over mains wiring are all possibilities. Quite likely the roll-out will target easy installations first, and come back later to difficult cases.

Dave

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

The difficult cases are already in hand, Dave … see my link

MichaelG.

[noel shelleyParticipant @noelshelley55608]

That smart meter installation is driven by consumer request is not entierly true ! Haveing still got an OLD digital meter I'm now being told that it has reached it's end of life and for SAFETY reasons MUST be changed ! A few weeks ago they replaced the incoming lines – it wasn't considered unsafe then ! Who is paying for the power to run the transmitter ? Me ? Noel.

[Speedy Builder5Participant @speedybuilder5]

Our 'smart meters' are called LINKY, transmitting usage via the electricity cable network. No WiFi or radio connection. You can monitor usage via an app on your phone, but there is a 24 hour delay, so you can't see how much the oven or any other appliance takes .

The LINKY meter does have a 2 wire interface which can be 'read' by your own home grown hardware/software solution, or you can buy a WiFi link and pay for an app etc. The data has its own format and this has to be de-coded etc.

Lately, there is a move to additionally add an 'OffPeak' regulator. Obviously, when the off peak period arrives, all of France's off peak devices turn on causing a major blip in supply. That was not too difficult to forecast! By fitting this off peak regulator, it is supposed to see what the supply is capable of supplying, then turn on or off your off peak service but guarantee a certain minimum number of hours at that rate. The blurb says you will save money (Translated this means that in the future, electricity will only be cheap when the supply is not being used efficiently).

Of course, this is only useable for water heaters and radiators. wash machines etc would not work well being turned off and on during the cycle.

[vic neweyParticipant @vicnewey60017]

We have a now useless smart meter originally fitted by npower, we have changed supplier several times since then and are now with British gas. The electric meter has to be read manually by me but a couple of days ago I got the little wireless display thing back out and plugged it in. It originally showed in £ how much you were using but I can't find a way to get that going as you can only select one of npowers now defunct tariffs.

It shows a coloured display and when we turn on the kettle it shows how much leccy it's actually using. The kettle is around two kWh but is only on for one minute and the display goes from green to red. Our 3 tier electric steamer cooks all our vegetables in 20 minutes and also stays well in the green. Using saucepans on the gas would be a bad idea as gas is currently more expensive than electricity

By comparison our 900 watt microwave stays well in the green and I can see that using an electric cooker would be a big user to cook something that could just as easily go in a microwave instead.

[KWILParticipant @kwil]

Vic,

"Using saucepans on the gas ……as gas is more expensive than electricity"

Mine is 1/4 of the price per Kwh, what price is yours?

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Posted by vic newey on 31/08/2022 12:27:56:

Using saucepans on the gas would be a bad idea as gas is currently more expensive than electricity

By comparison our 900 watt microwave stays well in the green and I can see that using an electric cooker would be a big user to cook something that could just as easily go in a microwave instead.

Where do you live? Or are you jesting?

Gas is far cheaper to use than electric – electric is a higher grade of energy than gas – some (one at least) on here may need to look up the meaning of ‘grade&rsquo – daytime use of electric is currently around four times that of gas. That may well change in October as gas appears to be possibly doubling in price.

I know that preparing a mugful of boiling water with gas costs around 0.5p currently, whereas the cost of that same amount of leccy would cost over 2p. Gas is less efficient – but not that much! Even on E7 leccy the cost is still over twice that of gas. Automatic kettles do not even switch off immediately the water boils.

BTW, your 900W microwave uses far more electric than that. Think about it – they don’t fit a powerful fan, to cool (ie remove heat from) the magnetron for no good reason. It may only be 65% efficient, but doubtless the machine will have its power rating marked on it. Microwaves are good for cooking, but most certainly not for heating (fairly mobile) liquids.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

NDIY … you may be interested to know that [after your previous insult] I did look-up the meaning of ‘grade’ in this context; and was disappointed to find that it means very little.

I was expecting to see some sort of scale [c.f. Centigrade], but it turns out to be binary

… Fuels are either ‘Low Grade’ or ‘High Grade’

< sigh >

MichaelG.

[John HaineParticipant @johnhaine32865]

I'm fairly certain that the link to the gas meter uses ZigBee at around 860MHz, not Bluetooth at 2400. ZigBee was chosen after a fairly thorough propagation survey of UK building stock, but of course all radio systems will have places nominally in range where they won't work, cellars being a good example!

Also the WAN referred to may not cellular but a system set up specially for covering places where cellular doesn't work, or that was the idea originally. Built by Arquiva I believe.

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Is this a record?? First reply and we are off topic.

Tony

Edited By Tony Pratt 1 on 31/08/2022 17:53:37

[Robin GrahamParticipant @robingraham42208]

Posted by Michael Gilligan on 31/08/2022 10:01:31:

You might find it useful to trawl through the DCC website, Robin

… maybe jump-in at this page: **LINK**

https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/our-smart-network/current-programmes/dual-band-comms-hubs/

MichaelG.

Thanks for the link Michael. From the info DDC give it seems that with newer meters the gas meter 'talks' to what DDC call a "Comms Hub" which they say is "usually built-in to the electricity meter". This is now dual-band, 2.4Ghz and 868Mhz (apparently the older single-band systems are 2.4GHz only). However when it comes to the Hub sending the data to DDC they say only that is 'through radio waves', not giving any data about frequency. Nowhere do the give the Tx power of the transmitters.

My scepticism about the technical possibility of a smart meter working in my house was based on the observations that my mobile phone (EE 4G, which uses 1800 and 2600 Mhz bands) doesn't get any signal in either cellar, and my wireless router (2.4GHz, 100mW) , located on the ground floor, isn't 'visible' from the cellars either. Class 2 Bluetooth (2.4GHz 2.5mW) obviously hasn't a chance. However my (non-Bluetooth) wireless headphones with the base unit on the ground floor work fine. I have a dim recollection that they use something in the region of 800MHz, so it may be that the dual-band 'Comms Hub' would work, assuming the "radio waves" that the Hub uses to send data to the DDC use Band 20 (800MHz) or Band 8 (900Mhz) of the 4G network.

Anyway, I now understand the issues much better than I did before posting, and will be in a position to ask some sensible questions when I next get a nagging call from my energy supplier (Good Energy). Whether they will be able to give sensible answers is another question of course.

Regarding off topic posts, well I did say I my question was "mainly" about technical matters, so to that extent I invited wider discussion. For me it's been useful to read about people's experiences with smart meters, and given what 's been said and the fact that it's not a problem for me to submit readings monthly there doesn't seem to be any real advantage (for me) in going down that route at present. So maybe the whole technical thing is moot, but I still like to know how stuff works!

Going off topic myself now, in reviewing all things energy-related I have discovered that Good Energy are exempt from the price cap (because they're so Good) and have been charging me ~39p /kWh for electricity against a cap of ~28p/kWh. That's nearly 40% over the cap! They didn't mention that when they were wooing us! I don't mind doing my bit for the environment but if they maintain the differential when the cap goes up to 51p/kWh I'm off. The reason it took me so long to pick up on this is that the cap is normally expressed as 'annual cost for an average household' and I assumed that I was paying over par because mine was an abnormal household, which it is in some ways. It's a very vague and potentially misleading way of quantifying the cap.

My thanks to all for replies, Robin

[David George 1Participant @davidgeorge1]

I don't know if this helps but when at work part of my duties was the supply checking and meter reading. We were fitted with smart meters which were supposed to send remote readings of the 20 KVA 3 phase supply but the signal would not penetrate the double metal skin with insulation of the factory which also had a foil layer. After a few months a new meter was installed which had a cable and antenna outside the building connected which was successful in sending readings. This was only for electricity the gas meter was never changed a dumb mechanical huge box.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Robin

Youre not alone in paying what appears to be a charge in excess of the perceived cap 28p/kWh, my current supplier, Shell Energy, charges me 34p for day rate and 18p for off peak, I have an Economy 7 tariff. I have tried to find a published figure of what the maximum charge per KWh is when energy is capped, all I find is the figure quoted for an annual charge that an average family could expect to pay. The maximum charge that a supplier can charge per KWh must be laid down somewhere but I haven’t been able to find it, the only reference to charges per KWh is on your bill from your supplier and nowhere does it state what is the maximum unit charge that can be charged. Has anybody been able to find the official maximum charge per unit that a supplier can charge? Dave W

[Alistair Robertson 1Participant @alistairrobertson1]

We had a smart meter installed in our Railway Museum but as there is no mobile signal around the meter installer said "this thing won't work here but I will phone my boss"

The bass replied "We are paid £45 to fit them, They don't have to work!" Well of course it wouldn't and they said as their meter wouldn't work we would have to pay £28 a month for a meter reader to call! A quick call from our MP soon put a stop to that! We now take a photo of the meter when they ask for it and a correct bill comes by letter. They say they are happy with that and don't intend to examine the meter readings in detail, a digital photo is enough evidence for them!

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

Hi Robin,

When we had our "not so smart" meter fitted first. It was sited in the Larder, a) to be out of the way visually and b) it was the only available plug.

The Larder is about 3 m from the main fuse box / meter, and 1 m from the outside gas meter, but of course there is a cavity wall in the way.

This set-up would work, but very intermittently. One such period of non operation involved switching the mains off and re-booting.

The smart meter is now sited less than 1 m from the main fuse box but 3 m, plus wall from the gas meter. Even here it has not been without problems. The last time it was going to need a new meter fitting. However the threat of having it all taken out and going back to the old system seems to have sorted it out.

The meter never displays the correct tariff and is thus always priced higher than our actual consumption.

Don't you just love progress, the old meter had given 50 years of trouble free service.

Regards

Gray,

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Dave W

This link to Ofgem may help with your querry.

**LINK**

Emgee

[Martin ConnellyParticipant @martinconnelly55370]

Noel, one of the gas suppliers has just been told off by the ombudsman for incorrectly telling customers that the old meter had become unsafe.

Martin C

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/bills/article-11152613/Fury-Eon-tells-customers-meters-unsafe.html

Edited By Martin Connelly on 01/09/2022 13:02:40

[Mike PooleParticipant @mikepoole82104]

The old electro mechanical meters must at the very least need a calibration check at some regular interval. Considering my completely solid state Fluke multimeter was called in for an annual calibration check I would be rather suspect of an old style domestic meter, of course if it was reading in your favour then well worth hanging on to.

Mike

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