Dumb Economy 7 Smart Meter - RTS Switch Off

inspectorperez

So my recently installed smart meter is not communicating with EDF.

Night storage heaters are coming on at unusual times during the day and I am attempting to establish what the problem is, in conjunction with the supplier who it appears is short on the ground with available meter installers to assist with investigation.

The meter is remote from the property in an inhospitable area, being exposed to elements and generally not a good place to be in terms of observation.

Nevertheless and having been assisted by a helpful forumite I have obtained a meter instruction manual and figured out how to drill down into the various menus.

I have established today that the time and date settings are totally incorrect.

So far as I can see, and understandably there is no way for me to correct these.

Appealing to those with relevant knowledge - should the supplier be able to make corrections despite the lack of communication between meter and hub? I'm guessing a site visit is necessary and hopefully to facilitate a secure change of settings in the meter?

Swipe

The meter will need replacing with one with the correct times pre-programmed if it can't communicate. Unlikely that any meter fitter will have a method or the ability to re-configure it in the field.

QrizB

It's possible that a smart meter engineer can fix the comms problem by rebooting the comms hub. This isn't something a user can do legitimately.

However, as things currently stand you might be in the same situation as someone with a dumb meter with a clock issue. You should be being charged cheap rates whenever the E7 circuit is live. If this is the case, you (the occupier) might benefit from the fault in the interim while you wait for it to be fixed.

Scot_39

If the wan isn't working, not sure it's immediately fixable,  certainly not without a visit - but if multirate am a bit dismayed any fitter would have left it set to wrong times.

The meter may well still have its local IR optical programming / configuration and diagnostics port.  Which many pre smart digital used. But not sure how much access that gives on timing or other smart parameters.

But I suspect swap out might be preferred.

Was the time ever correct ?

inspectorperez

Scot_39 said:

If the wan isn't working, not sure it's immediately fixable,  certainly not without a visit - but if multirate am a bit dismayed any fitter would have left it set to wrong times.

The meter may well still have its local IR optical programming / configuration and diagnostics port.  Which many pre smart digital used. But not sure how much access that gives on timing or other smart parameters.

But I suspect swap out might be preferred.

Was the time ever correct ?

I suspect it was never correct from Day 1.

The date field is similarly incorrect showing a date in 2024.

Reading the meter instructions it would appear that there is an "engineer" mode entered with a security PIN. Perhaps this might assist with a reboot procedure or facility to enter the date and time manually.

inspectorperez

QrizB said:

It's possible that a smart meter engineer can fix the comms problem by rebooting the comms hub. This isn't something a user can do legitimately.

However, as things currently stand you might be in the same situation as someone with a dumb meter with a clock issue. You should be being charged cheap rates whenever the E7 circuit is live. If this is the case, you (the occupier) might benefit from the fault in the interim while you wait for it to be fixed.

I am pretty sure I am benefitting TBH. As the water heating is triggered by a manual clock which can be altered by the consumer, I reckon a dishonest person could maximise this situation for their own benefit.

I actually don't have a conscience about this situation as the whole saga with EDF has been an elongated nightmare despite latterly they have been engaging in a constructive way by means of Whatsapp conversations.

Assurance after assurance before the meter exchange that everything would work seamlessly despite the meter siting, followed by 4 no shows and then dealing with a dumb installation. Could be worse if there was no heating so I'm not going to make a meal of it and do not intend to complain to OFGEM as EDF keep suggesting from time to time.

QrizB

Just make sure that your heating appliances are running when the meter is giving you the cheap rate. That's not any sort of fiddle, it's just using it as intended.

Scot_39

Once the meter fault reported - your arguably only saving them compensating you for billing you wrongly if its 2 hours or more out by keeping things that should be off peak in sync with off peak - 2hrs the point they nominallu have to fix AFAIK.

inspectorperez

Scot_39 said:

Once the meter fault reported - your arguably only saving them compensating you for billing you wrongly if its 2 hours or more out by keeping things that should be off peak in sync with off peak - 2hrs the point they nominallu have to fix AFAIK.

The time clock is 7 hours behind so it's a tad more than the 2 hour threshold you refer to.

Let's see what EDF come up with. I'm interested to know because this cannot be a unique set of circumstances for any property on E7 tariff where the meter is operating in dumb mode.

Just surprised that something as basic as a time setting was not checked our at time of installation.