Smart Meter in Scotland woes

Ildhund

Scot_39 said:

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

Apparently a dual-mode (LRR/LTE) comms hub like the one Octopus naughtily installed for the vocal Glasgow doctor has recently (4 April?) been certified for installation in Scotland, although I can't find the reference. The DIY solutions are discussed at length here:  There is hope for anybody trying to get a smart meter in a poor signal area | Speak EV - Electric Car Forums. Several users have reportedly had success with a simple dipole repeater.

Scot_39

Ildhund said:

Scot_39 said:

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

Apparently a dual-mode (LRR/LTE) comms hub like the one Octopus naughtily installed for the vocal Glasgow doctor has recently (4 April?) been certified for installation in Scotland, although I can't find the reference. The DIY solutions are discussed at length here:  There is hope for anybody trying to get a smart meter in a poor signal area | Speak EV - Electric Car Forums. Several users have reportedly had success with a simple dipole repeater.

I don't think his was dual mode WAN - just cellular.

The BBC just said in link above

However, in what they described as “a highly unusual move”, Octopus told us that it had in fact decided to break the rules and fix his meter by connecting it to the mobile network. It added that “regulation has not moved with technology”.

I assumed that was replacing Arqiva with cellular hub - haven't read about a dual band WAN - only that 4G defaults to dual band HAN.

Be interested to know if exists though. 

My uncle in NE Aberdeenshire near Cairngorms waited nearly 3 years for lrr coverage, but also struggles still with cellular.

And not sure if was even the 4G dual band HAN - that started trials in Staffordshire late 2024 - with a target for 10,000s by Feb and some said as early as summer 25 for mass roll outs if goes well.

From DCC

"To streamline and simplify the installation process, a Dual Band Communications Hub solution has been developed for use in all premises, extending the reach of the Home Area Network and delivering a simplified installation process for energy suppliers, compared to the current solution which offers both a Single and Dual Band Communications Hub."

Which is why I thought it was HAN only.

But your April date is fare more recent.  But a quick google for lrr lte comms hub found nothing in last month.

Of course people will then need Vodafone 4G rather than 02 2G coverage.

Ildhund

@Scot_39Terminological bamboozlement again. Dual-band is the term used for CHs that can use either 2.4 GHz or 800 MHz band to get around HAN communication problems. I don't think I've seen a consistently applied term for CHs that can use either LRR or 4G LTE to connect to the WAN in the Northern CSP region, so I used dual-mode.  

Lots of public money has been spent in the last couple of years to fill in 4G gaps particularly in the Highlands and Islands, with new provider-independent masts which are available on an open access basis and could potentially be used to site smart meter radio infrastructure. I suspect that none of this will be in place before the RTS shutdown, though. The best punters can hope for is a pre-configured smart meter that has to be read regularly just like a traditional one, but which could be brought into the DCC fold once the network hardware is in place. 

Ildhund

I tracked down this post in the Facebook THTC Customers group, giving OVO's reply to a question about what measures were being taken to deal with the RTS shutdown in Shetland:

We continue to push the Data Communications Company (DCC), who manage the communications infrastructure and are responsible for the signal strength, to improve Wide Area Network coverage nationwide but by the end of March, following approval by DESNZ we will be able to use cellular technology for RTS customers in Shetland. This will increase the coverage we can provide and our engineers will start using them right away. If neither of these solutions work in a customer's homes we have other solutions we would use to remove and replace the RTS meters before the switch off.

Gerry1

On 3 Oct 24 Ofgem said there were 800,000 RTSs left.   A debate in Parliament revealed that 108 working days later (7 March 2025) there were still 521,892 Radio Teleswitches in Great Britain.  That means around 2,575 RTSs had been replaced each working day.  At that rate it will need another 202 working days from that point to replace them all, which takes us to 22 Dec 2025.

Interestingly, although the BBC is still publicising 30 June 2025 as the switch off date, the 'drop dead' date is actually the end of December 2025, so it seems that for quite a while everyone has known very accurately what would be a realistic timescale !

If all the scare stories had been true (e.g. heating left permanently on or permanently off etc), it would mean that Long Wave couldn't be switched off on 30 June 2025.  But the reality is that, although there are some on / off commands that take effect almost instantaneously, RTSs will always revert to their stored switching times afterwards.

In other words, if R4 LW were switched off on 30 June 2025, all the remaining domestic RTSs will happily carry on indefinitely, as I've always said.  The only drawback would be that some legacy tariffs such as THTC would no longer update their switching times according to the weather, but as it'll be mid-summer that wouldn't matter much; on the last day they may even programme them with an autumnal switching schedule.  Ofgem would also look a bit silly because their predicted dire effects had never materialised !

Of course, there could theoretically be a 'scorched earth policy' whereby all remaining RTSs were deliberately programmed on 30 June 2025 never to switch on at all, or to stay live on peak rate 24/7.  However, that wouldn't be a sensible thing to do because they couldn't sort out hundreds of thousands of complaints all at the same time.

Scot_39

You also though have to wonder given several examples in threads here - with rts emails sent for pre smart self timing digital, old electromechanical clock etc - how accurate any of these figures really are.

Sadly engineers - hardware or software - arent always allowed to design things properly.  Bean counters, customer requirements etc.

Gerry1

Scot_39 said:

You also though have to wonder given several examples in threads here - with rts emails sent for pre smart self timing digital, old electromechanical clock etc - how accurate any of these figures really are.

Sadly engineers - hardware or software - arent always allowed to design things properly.  Bean counters, customer requirements etc.

The RTS specification is very comprehensive and was well designed by real Engineers, dating back to the early 1980s well before there was any competition in the domestic energy market.  Today those tasked with promoting smart meters are unlikely to be Engineers.  They have to achieve targets so they won't be too concerned about all the fine details, of which they're probably unaware if it's not on the script they have to follow.

If scaremongering gets results then scaremongering it will be.

Scot_39

Having only skimmed the smart meter specification on the gov website.

There are things I certainly wouldn't have made as flexible shall we say.  Not by default anyway.

Like the issues with tariff rate and alcs switching using different presets / parameters - so getting out of sync on luckily rare occassions as reported here by some.

And if half hourly billing to become norm as move to HH settlement and then domestic billing - will alcs loads properly be billed from 1/2 hrly.

I wonder if they will all get set to 0 offset switching ?  Or if our energy suppliers will play dumb and ignore the issue ?  My guess the latter.

Afaik 1/2 hrly data is always 00:00 - no adjustment as per alcs and tou timing table offset - but I'd have to read the spec.

QrizB

As the sadly-missed Dolor would always say, it would have made much more sense for the UK to adopt a single reference design of smart meter and Comms hub. Through life management of the installed base of meters would have been vastly simplified.

Sadly the government of the time decided to leave it to "the market", and we are now where we are.

Ildhund

Scot_39 said:

... if half hourly billing to become norm as move to HH settlement and then domestic billing - will alcs loads properly be billed from 1/2 hrly. ... Afaik 1/2 hrly data is always 00:00 - no adjustment as per alcs and tou timing table offset - but I'd have to read the spec.

Can anyone explain how tariffs like Snug Octopus actually work? Are the ALCS timings changed dynamically, overriding the stored calendar like an HCALCS would? So the 'reaction time' I've seen mentioned could in fact be the randomized delay, meaning that the last < 30 minutes of 'offpeak' usage could in fact be billed at the peak rate?

The spec is fairly clear: