New smart meter not working - insufficient WAN

NewHighlander

We have a new house in the Scottish Highlands and had a meter put in by British Gas in the build phase; we switched suppliers to Octopus once we moved in.  Octopus tell us that smart meter is not able to communicate with them due to lack of WAN in the area.  It's frustrating as we put in solar panels and want to export unused power.  (Separate issue is battery not yet working so can't charge that up but expecting that at least to be resolved soon.)

Can anybody advise if there is a way round lack of WAN or if not, there is any way to export without a functioning SMART meter?  Thanks!

FrugaiMacDugal

Provide regular monthly meter readings to your supplier, and keep a record of them,

Can't help with solar panel question, sorry.

QrizB

NewHighlander said:

.Can anybody advise if there is a way round lack of WAN or if not, there is any way to export without a functioning SMART meter?

Welcome to the forum.

Your smart meter will have an export register. This is all you need to be paid for export, although it will rule out some of the smart tariffs.

Speak to Octopus and see which export tariffs are available to you.

catclaires

I'm assuming, as your house is new, that you have a smart meter actually installed and reading your import/export (and the problem is just that it can't communicate, i.e. cannot send back the readings remotely)? If so, we're in the same position. I'd recommend switching to E.ON Next because they allow export readings to be submitted manually and (at least this was true when we were looking) are the only supplier to pay a decent export rate (16.5p/kwh exported if you are also with them for your import) for this method. Our smart meter was originally installed by Octopus but never communicated - the decent Octopus tariffs all required a smart meter to be communicating automatically, and Octopus weren't particularly bothered about helping or about sending an engineer to look at our meter, which does seem to communicate extremely sporadically so evidently does have some signal sometimes, just not enough - so we eventually switched! We will have been with E.ON Next for 2 years in August and haven't had any issues with them - we just have to submit a photo every now and again of the export reading on the smart meter. Their default payment for export is by cheque and not very often (possibly once a year?), but you can easily change both the frequency and method of payment.