WARNING SOLAR PANELS & some Siemens S2AS-100/ Siemens S1AS-100 Meters

Terrylw1

Espresso, thanks for that.

To add my own experience of this from the other side:

- call centres are not always connected to metering teams via location or even reporting channel. This means they develop some experts but they are only exposed to the customer, not the data/agent side so they only know so much. They get to a point where they hand you off as you said but in large companies that's often an electronic process where you go into a queue to a metering dept who may not have direct incoming lines they are allowed to give e to customers. Stupid, but its how management try to streamline problems by making customers & problems "widgets" instead.

- metering teams don't get trained on micro generation. They may get a poor brief about it but management leave it to the cold face to sort it out.

- contract people talk to high level managers who decide not to tell those on the cold face who need to know more than they do!

- compliance people/industry/regulation, same as contract people.

To be effective in the metering game in a big suppler, you build your own network and keep watching what's going on.

In terms of microgen and even smart, I know zero training & hardly even any metering experts ever make it onto such projects since management treat them as "widgets" to.

So, its just bad management in a lot of cases and the staff tend to be as annoyed on the other side. Some of these places experience a lot of staff churn due to this environment.

It was the same in deregulation. All the experts didn't end up on the supplier side.

For me, you find someone who is trying to help and knows what they are doing. Anything less and you're a widget...

The optical reader is very interesting. Easy, simple, low cost. I wonder if there is any regulation on accessing this way? If not, customers need to insist on this.

In terms of meter accuracy cases though, the data isn't in there from an out of tolerance point of view and there is the weather/seasonal factors and process and stopped meters wouldn't work but for blank displays it could work.

espresso

Terryw1, thanks for sharing your experience on this.

I totally agree with you that it is due to bad management and that this leads to very poor customer service, however I am rather surprised that the basic lack of knowledge on micro generation has not improved by now, because the FIT scheme was announced in 2008 giving the industry plenty of warning and started in April 2010.

Surely if any call centre operator gets a query on something that they don't understand, then they should at least know how to direct the call to the correct team that handles that problem and log the fact that this customer has a problem on their account - it appears that these expert teams simply don't exist and this obviously causes frustration for both sides!

Once the supplier is aware of this logged problem, it should continue to be escalated as necessary until the problem is fully resolved, without the customer having to make repeated enquiries as to what is happening month after month.

I do not have a meter with an optical port, if I did I would have likely made a probe by now so that it could be read remotely, as my meter is on an external wall.

I really do hope that jkpaul can find somebody who is willing to take ownership of this metering problem and see it though to a satisfactory conclusion without resorting to estimation - the solar PV generation meter shows how much has been generated to date and the export register in the Siemens meter would show exactly how much has been exported and incorrectly charged for.

I am surprised that these suppliers are not breaking the terms of their licence to supply, if they cannot demonstrate that they can bill accurately when micro generation is fitted. They should know if the customers meter is suitable for micro generation.

Terrylw1

That leads me to another problem that the industry itself has caused.

The directive by Elexon states the supplier should fit a backstop meter where they detect this backwards running issue. This is based on incoming readings and possibly customer contact.

This is a backwards process that actually causes these customers to go through all this account mess. I can't understand why this isn't determined when fitting the meter. The Meter Operator knows what the meter will do and the supplier can also see what meter model has been fit, but sadly doesn't train its staff on these to spot it or even understands the meters.

The only other contact the supplier would get is a data flow from the distributor to confirm the site is capable and the obvious customer contact to agree the FIT.

This backstop issue is the reason this is all happening and its obvious it needs an industry process to stop it prior to occurring, not 12 months down the line.

To answer your points from my experience, call centres have what is referred to as a 2nd line support which is basically more experienced people with more time and what they can't handle gets sent to back office teams who have no incoming call pressures. The problem that has happened with some suppliers is that they have moved their offices frequently (local or far away and even outsourced in some cases) so they've lost a lot of these experts. You also tend to find that due to poor management you have a small group of experts who can't answer all the support questions, do their own work, train others up and try to convince their own managers that there is a problem (some don't even care as long as targets are achieved). Such experts just leave.

In terms of microgen, I've never seen any real metering training and these experts are assumed to upgrade their knowledge since its how they've got where they are.

Very poor management. I don't know if its like this everywhere, but from my experience on the supplier side...it certainly is.

jkpaul

Well I don't have any startling news, good or bad, yet, but I have started blogging about this problem: http://johnston-knight.blogspot.co.uk/. There's a lot of info about our system but having been asked to guest blog about this issue on a micro-generation resource & blog site, I thought it would be a good idea to start getting my thoughts down in black & white ...

Thanks again to Terrylw1 and espresso for more help recently, sadly utility_csa I got no joy from speaking to npower, but thanks for pointing me towards them as our meter operator, erm, meter asset thingy ... or whatever! I have to say I'm still very confused by the whole industry organisation structure.

I'm currently trying to get back onto Ovo to tell them no I don't want to go back to E.ON and they need to fix this!
:mad:

Terrylw1

Well if its any help, below are the main agents you could interact with in some way, I've left out the settlement side, supplier, distributor and anything gas:

- Meter Operator - often known as Meter Operator Provider (MOP) or Meter Operator Agent (MOA) but the real new world term is Meter Asset Manager (MAM). These are the guys that come out to do any site works involving the meter, meter fuse, fitting isolators for the meter, checking meter details, addresses, meter accuracy & fault investigation. The office end do the processes between the field guys and the supplier.

- Data Collector (DC) - deal with reading validation for the supplier. Provide Deemed readings based on consumption e.g. for a switch.

- Data Retriever (DR) - takes your readings and pass them to the DC.

- Meter Asset Provider (MAP) - a new world term that came from the industry finally privatising the MOP side of the business under REMA a few years after the industry privatised. They own the meter.

A supplier takes up a contract with all of them for services. Its a free market.

However, its not as simple as appointing a MAP. You first need a physical contract with them...the old fashioned way.

Years ago, the supply companies contracted to the incumbent providers as they were the only ones in the regions. These days lots of companies have come into the market so suppliers have been contracting to who they want for regions they never existed in a couple of years ago.

Another concept that may be of interest is that you can become your own MAP, not by starting a registered MAP company up but by purchasing your meter. This concept is how the Half Hourly (HH) market works but Ofgem do allow it in the Non Half Hourly (NHH) market which covers residential and businesses with NHH metering.

I do know that there are residential customers that have done this but the NHH market is very different to the HH market so I don't know how the processes would work. Its something Ofgem really need to publicise but from the supplier end of the market, there are risks which most customers would not understand or be prepared for.

With all the hassle with microgen, it makes me wonder whether this should be considered?

utility_csa

espresso wrote: »

The meter does not require reprogramming to read the internal registers in order to recalculate jkpaul's bills accurately and that is the first priority.

All that is required to interrogate the meters internal registers e.g. import, export is a simple optical read-out probe that complies to IEC 1107/EN 61107. This is connects to a netbook/laptop etc. to display the contents of the various non-volatile internal registers.

Example Optical reader here

Data sheet here

Another optical probe here

It really is pathetic that the electricity suppliers resort to making inaccurate guestimated recalculations, when the information is stored in the meters internal registers. It is easy to access this data and the bill can then be recalculated accurately i.e. actual exported units not added to imported units.

Issue is if the meter is actually recording anything on those internal registers though. Ill give you an example, all of our meters have the capability to record import / export. its just turned off on most of them unless customer is specifically paying for it.

Yes the easiest way is via probe and just to check the meter yourself, I found the correct software within 5 mins on Google. Only issue is I didn't feel like divulging it, as much as I let on to people on the forums about smart meters or meters in general I am not going to explain how to openly gain access to your meter. Hell even accessing the meters internal config or memory is actually a grey area, technically you are accessing the meter operators equipment which as an end consumer you aren't allowed to do. You have to remember almost all meters have a nice tamper log which takes roughly a second to download if they see someone is accessing the meter via opti and the mop haven't sent anyone they are not going to be happy.

Terry to elaborate on the NHH part. A customer can request their own preferred mop / map, its becoming very very common. How do you think companies such a first utility / bglobal / g4s get so much work on smart metering? :cool:

Terrylw1

utility_csa wrote: »

Terry to elaborate on the NHH part. A customer can request their own preferred mop / map, its becoming very very common. How do you think companies such a first utility / bglobal / g4s get so much work on smart metering? :cool:

The supplier can but the customer is restricted by the suppliers contract in NHH.

For instance, Npower contract LBSL for MOP in various regions. If the customer wanted the old incumbent, Npower will refuse and the old incumbent won't accept it anyway without a new contract.

Their strategy has been to reduce the number of agents they use in terms of MOP/DC/DA/DR/MRA/MAM but have often removed incumbent for MAP.

utility_csa

Terrylw1 wrote: »

The supplier can but the customer is restricted by the suppliers contract in NHH.

For instance, Npower contract LBSL for MOP in various regions. If the customer wanted the old incumbent, Npower will refuse and the old incumbent won't accept it anyway without a new contract.

Their strategy has been to reduce the number of agents they use in terms of MOP/DC/DA/DR/MRA/MAM but have often removed incumbent for MAP.

Doesn't matter any decent supplier or mop have valid contracts with each other, Npower for instance are hardly going to reject a customer just because they aren't using their preferred mop, even on nhh. :rotfl:

The smaller suppliers seem to be really understanding this.

Terrylw1

utility_csa wrote: »

Doesn't matter any decent supplier or mop have valid contracts with each other, Npower for instance are hardly going to reject a customer just because they aren't using their preferred mop, even on nhh. :rotfl:

The smaller suppliers seem to be really understanding this.

In this case though, Npower take you as a customer but you default to their agreed MOP for your GSP.

All their previous contracts with incumbents are no longer used. They initiated projects over the past few years to reduce their agents.

They use the inherited MAP though.

espresso

utility_csa wrote: »

Issue is if the meter is actually recording anything on those internal registers though..................... :cool:

Sorry but that is rubbish! This particular meter can be programmed to display what is required but the total registers always store imported and exported units and this data is actually duplicated in backup registers.

They can be programmed to add the import and export registers together as in the cases in this thread but these two separate internal registers always record and there is no problem in accessing this data - no grey area as you put it, it's not secret and is safely stored in non volatile read only memory.

No wonder the poor customer has problems!