Smart Meter in Scotland woes

peewit2

We are in Highland Perthshire and had a Smart Meter installed back in early 2022 - and started on Octopus Go on the 24th March 2022 - with half hourly meter readings being recorded by Octopus and billed accordingly. We had invested in an EV and in a home battery system with the expectation that we would be able to take advantage of the Octopus Go tariff combined with our 10 year old Solar PV system. Total investment in the EV and House Battery system was over £38,000. The Smart Meter connection seemed to have a bit of a glitch during the spring 2023 but eventually Octopus successfully got the data and billed us half hourly as per Octopus Go. However since 23rd October 2023 the readings received by octopus have been intermittent. I have downloaded the spreadsheet of data that Octopus have on my account and can see that it has been very intermittent since then. I have been onto Octopus about this and they have tried remotely to connect and we have just had the second engineer to visit who has tried everything. He says that due to the type of network used for smart meters in Scotland we cannot have an antenna on the roof of the house - if we were in England we could have this. Does anyone have knowledge and experience of the particular issues in Scotland. It seems totally barmy to me that we have a mobile phone mast on the top of the hill within line of sight but in Scotland apparently the system used for the smart meters is radio waves, rather than using the blinking infrastructure which is already there - or at least piggybacking on it. I am planning to write to my MSP as I am pretty furious about this fiasco. The engineer also said that an alternative system which is being used in England - is only in the development phase in Scotland - is this correct? 
Any information which would be useful regarding the Scottish Smart Meter communication system would be really useful. Thanks

MartinGreenwood

This page will tell you how things are set up https://www.smartme.co.uk/smets-2.html.
Unfortunately there is little you can do but hope that additional radio masts are put in when the comms provider sees that coverage is patchy.
There are no alternative systems in development for the WAN; perhaps the engineer was talking about the HAN?

QrizB

peewit2 said:

... I have been onto Octopus about this and they have tried remotely to connect and we have just had the second engineer to visit who has tried everything. He says that due to the type of network used for smart meters in Scotland we cannot have an antenna on the roof of the house - if we were in England we could have this.

There's no good reason why there couldn't be a Scotland-and-nnorth-of-England LRR smart meter comms hub with an external aerial, much like the cellular ones used in southern England (see example in this Ovo forum thread).

Alternatively, this guy made his own by ad-hoc modification of his LRR comms hub. Not that I'm recommending this for anyone who isn't a radio engineer, and be warned there are live mains terminals exposed when the comms hub is removed.

QrizB

And I'm going to post this link here for general refrence:

https://www.edfenergy.com/sites/default/files/ifaq-migrated-files/1637_smets_2_install_and_leave_-_sku_2_installation_-_final_v1.1.pdf

It's EDF's training material on when and how to fit a SKU2 comms hub (one with an external antenna) in the south of England.

mac.d

No idea if this is due to network issue in Scotland or not, but this is three different accounts all in different parts of Glasgow.

1st customer with SMETS1 smart meters, once they were adopted onto DCC, both have worked very well, electric is almost perfect, there are some gaps in the data from the gas meter, fairly minimal, though there are the odd days when it gets nothing at all.

2nd customer had SMETS2 meters installed, electric worked well, but no data from gas. Eventually the supplier updated the comms unit and installed a new gas meter to try to fix it. Result, gas meter now working with no problems, no data from electric (no details of any half-hourly data for either).

3rd customer previous SMETS1 meter working pretty well for electric (rarely missed any data), but no smart gas meter. Supplier installed new SMETS2 meters, both worked well to start with, but electric meter suddenly stopped sending any data, remote fix hasn't helped. Gas appears to be working with minimal gaps.

molliekati

Scotland should come together in a collective complaint to push for Broadband connection. Let me know whom you wrote to and I'll add my name.      I posted on the fb Octopus Smart Tariff  Chat page (I'm Mollie Kat).  Got a lot of not useful replies. I'm inbetween Falkirk and Bathgate,  near Radio/TV Masts and mine doesn't pick up signal.   Also,  search on that page 25 Mar, post slated Martin Lewis for saying Smart Meter not working.   Many replied they aren't.     It's frustrating in Scotland  being surrounded by wind farms, now a proposed battery farm yet I cannot utilise  heap Octopus off peak electric Tariffs for my EV

Qyburn

molliekati said:

Scotland should come together in a collective complaint to push for Broadband connection. Let me know whom you wrote to and I'll add my name.   

By "Broadband" I guess you reply mean "Internet". I'm not sure it makes sense to add a third WAN option but would you do it by asking the home owner to run Ethernet to the meter location, or arery you assuming there'd be wireless LAN coverage to the meter. Neither would be easy in flats with the meter downstairs, or a indeed stone house with external meter cabinet.

Without inventing a new WAN I wonder how difficult it would be for meters in Scotland and the Northern half of England to have a choice of 3G or Aquiva, whichever has best coverage at their location.

bob2302

Qyburn said:

By "Broadband" I guess you reply mean "Internet". I'm not sure it makes sense to add a third WAN option but would you do it by asking the home owner to run Ethernet to the meter location, or arery you assuming there'd be wireless LAN coverage to the meter. Neither would be easy in flats with the meter downstairs, or a indeed stone house with external meter cabinet.

I'm sure WiFi access would solve a lot of problems and, if the WiFi hardware is there for IHD range extension, it may just be a firmware update.

I doubt it's ever going to happen on security grounds.

Qyburn

bob2302 said:
I'm sure WiFi access would solve a lot of problems and, if the WiFi hardware is there for IHD range extension, it may just be a firmware update.

Security shouldnt be a concern with the right hardware, software and firmware. Consider how many credit card terminals communicate over the Internet. For a strict analogy the homeowner would need to create an isolated Ethernet or wireless network used only for the smart meter, similar to PCI requirements. The DCC would of course need at Internet gateway with all required hardware and software as well.

Communications between comms hub and IHD use Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4) a specific protocol and standard for low bandwidth low-power short range communications. Although it can use the 2.4GHz band it's not the same as the 802.11 wireless LAN standards. I've no idea whether the comms hub hardware could support both, I suspect it will use a dedicated Zigbee chip. But even if it does it would still need to support an IP stack and other software to allow communication over the Internet. It wouldnt be a trivial change.

gordonhibs

peewit2 said:

We are in Highland Perthshire and had a Smart Meter installed back in early 2022 - and started on Octopus Go on the 24th March 2022 - with half hourly meter readings being recorded by Octopus and billed accordingly. We had invested in an EV and in a home battery system with the expectation that we would be able to take advantage of the Octopus Go tariff combined with our 10 year old Solar PV system. Total investment in the EV and House Battery system was over £38,000. The Smart Meter connection seemed to have a bit of a glitch during the spring 2023 but eventually Octopus successfully got the data and billed us half hourly as per Octopus Go. However since 23rd October 2023 the readings received by octopus have been intermittent. I have downloaded the spreadsheet of data that Octopus have on my account and can see that it has been very intermittent since then. I have been onto Octopus about this and they have tried remotely to connect and we have just had the second engineer to visit who has tried everything. He says that due to the type of network used for smart meters in Scotland we cannot have an antenna on the roof of the house - if we were in England we could have this. Does anyone have knowledge and experience of the particular issues in Scotland. It seems totally barmy to me that we have a mobile phone mast on the top of the hill within line of sight but in Scotland apparently the system used for the smart meters is radio waves, rather than using the blinking infrastructure which is already there - or at least piggybacking on it. I am planning to write to my MSP as I am pretty furious about this fiasco. The engineer also said that an alternative system which is being used in England - is only in the development phase in Scotland - is this correct? 
Any information which would be useful regarding the Scottish Smart Meter communication system would be really useful. Thanks

Did you ever get this resolved? We have a similar issue in Plockton. 

Scot_39

You could attempt a DIY dipole relay extension yourself. There's a couple of threads with links on the forum and elsewhere.

Or if with Octopus and have 02 cellular reception see if they will break the north Arqiva Radio / South cellular rule.  As in this rare case.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq52382zd1no

Avoiding those the future is iirc 4G cellular north and south comms hubs according to tge BBC article. 

And those 4G and dual band HAN by default  (to help HAN range and so ihd and gas meter comms) are now being installed with trials in 10,000s of homes by now was plan , and if succesful for mass rollout later this year.