Communication hub lost contact with E.ON ?

[Deleted User]

The risking of hacking has nothing to do with someone looking at your usage or mine. Suppliers, in their corporate wisdom, insisted on all meters having built in remote disconnection. Times have moved on and in recent years there have been no disconnections of gas, and only a handful of electricity disconnections.

The risk of a mass cyber attack which results in all the smart meters disconnecting in, say, a small town at the same time is that it could unbalance and cause significant damage to the Grid. Consumers could well be off Grid for sometime whilst DNOs repair the Grid, and suppliers manually update or replace meters. GCHQ’s involvement is designed to minimise but not totally eliminate this risk. Hopefully, common sense will prevail and BEIS will mandate that all remote disconnection facilities are disabled.

MikeE67

@ Dolor 
Very interesting. You clearly know what you are talking about.
I had no idea how much was involved with a smart meter.

I did have a read of your link and I just found out that my comms hub communicates with the DCC using Telefonica mobile masts.

I don't live in Scotland or the North of England

Gerry1

Dolor said:

Hopefully, common sense will prevail and BEIS will mandate that all remote disconnection facilities are disabled.

That would completely undermine the raison d'être for the smart meter project, i.e. restricting usage at peak times when the crumbling network can't meet the demand.

You don't really believe that it's just about spending £475 per household to save you a negligible £11 per year, do you?

MikeE67

Update: My communication hub didn't need a firmware update after all.
Octopus Energy have sorted out my smart meters so I don't have to give monthly meter readings any more.

[Deleted User]

Gerry1 said:

Dolor said:

Hopefully, common sense will prevail and BEIS will mandate that all remote disconnection facilities are disabled.

That would completely undermine the raison d'être for the smart meter project, i.e. restricting usage at peak times when the crumbling network can't meet the demand.

You don't really believe that it's just about spending £475 per household to save you a negligible £11 per year, do you?

Suppliers are on record as now saying that, based on legal advice, it would be too dangerous to randomly turn supplies on and off remotely. Moreover, both Ofgem and SmartEnergy GB have stated that smart meters will only be disconnected AFTER the full legal process has been followed. Smart meters provide both suppliers and DNOs with a better map of household consumption which should enable them to better match supply with demand. Many EV Charing points will, for example, have built in load-reducing capabilities but that is not the same as disconnecting a household from its supplies. 

That said, In my opinion, remote disconnection is a part of the smart metering programme that needs to be disabled. It was a bad idea when suppliers first put it into the technical speciation. It has added un-necessary cost;complexity, and risk to the UK’s smart meter programme.

Getting back to cost. Delete £11 and insert over £100 savings for the past 12 months compared to the cheapest fixed tariffs 12 months ago. Achieved by using evil ToU tariffs - primarily, Octopus Go and Agile. Yes, it has required some changes in household practices but we have been able to accommodate these without too much household disruption. For example, our dishwasher is on at the moment at an average cost of less than 7p/kWh. Leave it until teatime and the average cost would be in excess of 30p/kWh.

MikeE67

Dolor said:

Suppliers are on record as now saying that, based on legal advice, it would be too dangerous to randomly turn supplies on and off remotely. Moreover, both Ofgem and SmartEnergy GB have stated that smart meters will only be disconnected AFTER the full legal process has been followed.

That said, In my opinion, remote disconnection is a part of the smart metering programme that needs to be disabled. It was a bad idea when suppliers first put it into the technical speciation. It has added un-necessary cost;complexity, and risk to the UK’s smart meter programme.

I read about that in a recent article and I had no idea that remote disconnection is possible.
Thankfully, as you say, this is yet to be enforced because of safety issues.


Dolor said:
"Getting back to cost. Delete £11 and insert over £100 savings for the past 12 months compared to the cheapest fixed tariffs 12 months ago. Achieved by using evil ToU tariffs - primarily, Octopus Go and Agile. Yes, it has required some changes in household practices but we have been able to accommodate these without too much household disruption. For example, our dishwasher is on at the moment at an average cost of less than 7p/kWh. Leave it until teatime and the average cost would be in excess of 30p/kWh."

That is an excellent saving there around 23p/kWh !
I am thinking of going on to the Octopus Agile tariff in the future. I think someone said on the forum that now isn't a good time to switch as electricity prices have risen ?
Like you I can work around the time constraints to save money !

[Deleted User]

Yes, it is true that Agile is no longer as cheap overall as it was in the summer but this just reflects shortages of supply - primarily, from the nuclear industry. A number of reactors have not returned on time from their summer maintenance period. Being on Agile is a bit like having money in shares/unit trusts: one shouldn't panic just because the unit prices in any given day are higher than the average. My average unit costs/per kWh were: 7p in April; 7p in May; 8p in June; 8p in July; 10p in August; 10p in September and about 10.5p now.

MikeE67

[Deleted User] said:

Yes, it is true that Agile is no longer as cheap overall as it was in the summer but this just reflects shortages of supply - primarily, from the nuclear industry. A number of reactors have not returned on time from their summer maintenance period. Being on Agile is a bit like having money in shares/unit trusts: one shouldn't panic just because the unit prices in any given day are higher than the average. My average unit costs/per kWh were: 7p in April; 7p in May; 8p in June; 8p in July; 10p in August; 10p in September and about 10.5p now.

That's significantly cheaper than what I pay now !
I just want to see how stable my smart metering system is after the recent 'fix' as I realise that if I switch to the Agile tariff, I can't have 'missed' data on the half hourly data slots as it messes up the system.

My smart meters were stable until the outage around 6 months ago so I am hopeful that everything will be okay.