Smart meter fiddle by new energy supplier?

Qyburn

EssexHebridean said:

If you are on E7 then a rate transposition can happen regardless of meter type - the “smart meter” part of this is irrelevant I believe. 

I can't find the reference just now, but at one point people were reporting register assignments being changed in service. Eg meter working with R1 registering daytime, but at some point reprogrammed so that R1 registers night. I can't see how that could happen except with a smart meter.

Ildhund

Qyburn said:
... people were reporting register assignments being changed in service. Eg meter working with R1 registering daytime, but at some point reprogrammed so that R1 registers night. 

I'm sure I've mentioned this before somewhere. It's not just a question of which of R1 and R2 is peak and which offpeak. A meter configured for E7 has two registers, normally with IDs 1 and 2, perhaps displayed on the meter as R01 and R02. Somewhere internally they're referred to as Tiers. You'd expect Register ID 1, R01, to be Tier 1 and Register ID 2, R02, to be Tier 2. However, I noticed that (somewhere) the tiers were part of a Javascript array. JS arrays have their first element labelled '0', so the second is '1'. This leads to all sorts of confusion of the sort we're talking about here.

DCC was choking on my data, and suspicion landed on this confusion. When things weren't working right for me with my Secure SMETS1 meter, I hunted around and found a JSON resource giving details of my supply point. This is an extract from it:

            "registers": [

                {

                    "tier": 1,

                    "clockingTimeId": 40,

                    "timeOfUseLabel": "peak",

                    "meterRegisterId": "R1",

                    "timePatternRegime": 40,

                    "measurementQuantityId": "AI",

                    "switchedLoadIndicator": false,

                    "meterRegisterMultiplier": 1,

                    "registerMappingCoefficient": "1"

                },

                {

                    "tier": 0,

                    "clockingTimeId": 206,

                    "timeOfUseLabel": "offpeak",

                    "meterRegisterId": "R2",

                    "timePatternRegime": 206,

                    "measurementQuantityId": "AI",

                    "switchedLoadIndicator": true,

                    "meterRegisterMultiplier": 1,

                    "registerMappingCoefficient": "1"

                }

            ],

You'll see that the first tier, Tier 0, in fact represents R02, while Tier 1 is R01. I asked for this to be changed; it was, so Tier 0 was reallocated as Tier 2, DCC was happy and data started flowing again. I'm not sure that the supplier didn't have to make some adjustments to billing because of this, but it all came right in the end.

I was prepared, then when the Secure device was exchanged for an Aclara (SGM 1416B). Sure enough, the tiers were the wrong way round, with the first mapped to the offpeak register. I grumbled and got it changed. I've not looked back since. I'd stress that this is all derived from personal experience, so it's quite possible I've got some of it wrong.

So yes, the peak/offpeak register configuration can be changed remotely. 

EssexHebridean

Qyburn said:

EssexHebridean said:

If you are on E7 then a rate transposition can happen regardless of meter type - the “smart meter” part of this is irrelevant I believe. 

I can't find the reference just now, but at one point people were reporting register assignments being changed in service. Eg meter working with R1 registering daytime, but at some point reprogrammed so that R1 registers night. I can't see how that could happen except with a smart meter.

Yes, that situation could only be caused remotely via a smart meter fas far as I can think, although the potential for it to happen with a non-smart could still be there if it was done manually, perhaps. I suspect that is theoretical though as after all, who would?!