Energy smart meter issues creating north-south divide

Olly_J

Tried to have a smart meter fitted twice now, in London, first time with EON in 2022 they installed it under the stairs, couldn't get a signal so took it back out and put the dumb one back. 

Second time this year with Octopus,started taking the old meter out then stopped as the previous engineer had sheered a screw head off the back board, and he wasn't authorised to fix it being from the supply company..he logged a ticket with the electricity network provider..never to be followed up or heard from again, so great experience so far

bob2302

I don't see why they don't create a standard device like the Octopus Mini, and allow it to report usage via broadband. The security concerns with metering aren't really about fraud and clearly there is no national security concern about devices that connect via zigbee and send through the internet because they already exist.  

mmmmikey

bob2302 said:

I don't see why they don't create a standard device like the Octopus Mini, and allow it to report usage via broadband. The security concerns with metering aren't really about fraud and clearly there is no national security concern about devices that connect via zigbee and send through the internet because they already exist.  

On the face of it that sounds reasonable, but (a) it introduces a whole heap of support challenges about whether any issue is with the customer's internet connection or elsewhere, etc. and (b) the Octopus Mini type devices only deal with outgoing data and there is a need for an inbound connection as well.

None of this is straightforward :-)

bob2302

mmmmikey said:

bob2302 said:

I don't see why they don't create a standard device like the Octopus Mini, and allow it to report usage via broadband. The security concerns with metering aren't really about fraud and clearly there is no national security concern about devices that connect via zigbee and send through the internet because they already exist.  

On the face of it that sounds reasonable, but (a) it introduces a whole heap of support challenges about whether any issue is with the customer's internet connection or elsewhere, etc. and (b) the Octopus Mini type devices only deal with outgoing data and there is a need for an inbound connection as well.

None of this is straightforward :-)

It wouldn't need to accept incoming connection, it would just create a persistent outgoing connection - this is probably how the Mini works. Lots of software does this and it's very lightweight over UDP. 

DCC could present the same interface to the energy companies - not much would have to change. 

double_dutchy

I saw the report on the BBC news yesterday. My "takeaway" was that of 36 million smart meters 90% are working fine. It's not great that so many are not working but out of the remaining 3.5 million that "don't work" isn't that largely because they don't communiacte properly?  As long as the customer is aware of the issue she is no worse off than previously (with an old dumb meter). Is it time for smart meter sceptics to give up the ghost?

Scot_39

10% failure is 10% - whether WAN, HAN to IHD, HAN Gas to Comms Hub etc etc

No one involved should be proud of that statistic.

Smart meter skeptics must love having that 10% figure in their armoury - when a supplier badgers them to go smart.

mmmmikey

Scot_39 said:

10% failure is 10% - whether WAN, HAN to IHD, HAN Gas to Comms Hub etc etc

No one involved should be proud of that statistic.

Smart meter skeptics must love having that 10% figure in their armoury - when a supplier badgers them to go smart.

Is it better to have rolled out 30 million of which 27 million work perfectly and 3 million need some follow up work, or to have slowed the pace, dealt with issues as they arose and have 10 million smart meters rolled out all of which work perfectly? There isn't a right or wrong answer. There are technical solutions for most of the issues that have been identified but the decision has been made to prioritise resources on maximising the number of customers that can benefit by doing the easy ones first and coming back to the more challenging ones later. Not sure I would want to argue this one way or the other but l think it's important to recognise that there is some logic to the approach that has been adopted.

My biggest gripe is around the marketing which in my view focused too heavily on the IHD rather than the benefits of TOU tariffs. 

Scot_39

I would say that the 90:10 is looking at it in some respects purely from a blinkered "the total installed target is king" mentality.

Targets are only truly useful if they produce a significant benefit to those impacted by them - its clear for a minority this one is not.

And for much of the 90% - not convinced the benefit is all that significant.

Filter those out - and compare the number of those benefiting significantly - from tariffs that only a smart meter can handle - say agile / tracker / intelligent variable TOU EV (but not fixed TOU EV) etc  - and I suspect those suffering detriment are far more significant percentage.

As to marketing variable TOU - politicians / regulators have been aware of objections to risks posed by variable TOU pricing for years to the success of the roll out - hence the consultations on data privacy in late 2000s / early 2010s - resulting in DAPF.

Which in part is designed to specifically placate those worried about the imposition of variable TOU charging.  By giving them the legal right to block suppliers access to not only 1/2 hourly (a default opt-in) or even daily ( the default but with an opt out to monthly frequency) - to prevent suppliers ability to impose such tariffs upon users.

But given pushes by some big players - like EDF load shift and B Gas weekend saving periods are advertising heavily right now - and in past many signed up to last years Demand flexibility service (load shifting trials and real events) - their is creeping growth in acceptance and active supplier if not regulator marketing going on.

Chrysalis

double_dutchy said:

I saw the report on the BBC news yesterday. My "takeaway" was that of 36 million smart meters 90% are working fine. It's not great that so many are not working but out of the remaining 3.5 million that "don't work" isn't that largely because they don't communiacte properly?  As long as the customer is aware of the issue she is no worse off than previously (with an old dumb meter). Is it time for smart meter sceptics to give up the ghost?

Its likely dominated by communication issues yes, which is why the standard routine of swapping the meter is seen as wasteful.

MattMattMattUK

Chrysalis said:

double_dutchy said:

I saw the report on the BBC news yesterday. My "takeaway" was that of 36 million smart meters 90% are working fine. It's not great that so many are not working but out of the remaining 3.5 million that "don't work" isn't that largely because they don't communiacte properly?  As long as the customer is aware of the issue she is no worse off than previously (with an old dumb meter). Is it time for smart meter sceptics to give up the ghost?

Its likely dominated by communication issues yes, which is why the standard routine of swapping the meter is seen as wasteful.

My understanding is the vast majority of issues with "smart meters" are actually issues with the IHD, followed by comms issues, with the issues with the meter not working as a meter well below 1%. 

Swapping the meter is seen as the easiest solution because anything else would require an element of problem solving which takes time and may or may not solve the issue, so the choice is made to just swap the meter out along with the comms hub. It is the problem with the random nature of the rollout, this could have been dealt with much easier if it was compulsory and done street by street.