Replacing a smart meter comms hub

Ildhund

Reed_Richards said:
... this seems to be a very short (0.5 m) flying lead.

I know that OVO engineers were grumbling that the longer leads were in short supply, but they did get some of the 1.5m variety a couple of weeks ago. Since the hub itself is DCC's headache, perhaps the flying leads are, too, so that may be where the bottleneck is.

Qyburn

More in hope than expectation I put a post on Facebook having a right !!!!!! about all this, and it seems to have borne fruit.  I have just had an email from a "Customer Experience Manager" the important bit saying ...

"I have taken a look over the account and can see you have a kaifa meter, there is a known defect with these types of meters but there is a fix that can be done, I have sent off a few requests to the meter now which should hopefully resolve the issue, it can take up to a couple of days to confirm whether the issue has been resolved but Ill be keeping an eye on it to make sure and will keep you updated!"

So it appears that after months of chasing and being fobbed off with one story or another, today is the first time that the case has been looked at by anyone who actually understands the subject.

Reed_Richards

I also have a Kaifa meter.  Can you ask what this "known defect" is, in case it also affects my meter?

Qyburn

Reed_Richards said:

I also have a Kaifa meter.  Can you ask what this "known defect" is, in case it also affects my meter?

I've asked the question, whether there's a reference number or anything published that would help others with the same issue.

Note in our case Bright stopped working at exactly the same time as Octopus, and they said they had the same with some others with Kaifa meters.

Meanwhile it looks like mine may be fixed as Bright is already working and shows yesterday's import and export h/h data.

It appears the new complaint handler agrees with me that all this signal strength argument was just bollox. His response to my comment that the cs agent had managed, as usual, to manually retrieve the last few days data ..

"Thanks for getting back to me, so being able to request the missing data and these coming back successful is actually an indication that the issue is the Kaifa quirk so that is a good sign, I agree that this is not an issue of signal strength as we are able to communicate with the meter and requests are coming back successful so this is all confirming my suspicions that this is the Kaifa quirk.

The requests I have sent off have come back as successful so far which is a good sigh but we still won't know whether it has resolved the issue for a couple of days"

Reed_Richards

My problem is that I do have a signal strength issue, my signal is quite weak although strong enough for my .meter to function for two years.  So if it is something else I fear that the lack of s strong signal could cause people to give up before getting to the bottom of the real issue.  And if my issue really is signal strength, why did it get weaker?

Incidentally, is the cable part of a flying lead detachable so you could feed it through a hole or are you stuck with a big fitting fixed to both ends? 

Qyburn

How are you determining that you have a poor signal? I must have had at least 20 people from Octopus claiming this was the case, even though the facts didn't support it. Even the guy who came to site said he had no way of measuring.

Regarding the Kaifa issue the answer is not completely clear but reading between the lines it looks like certificates loaded during the commisioning orchestration don't properly install, and the solution is to do so manually. That's my interpretation but the actual answer was ..

"There isn't any specific reference number but we do refer to this as the 'Kaifa quirk' because it happens with Kaifa meters often, but what has happened though is basically when we install or take over a meter we need to apply our certificates to it, this is what tells the meter that it can talk to us as it's supplier. Part of this is also confirming that we are the supplier of it with the network providers (DCC). In this case part of that had failed, so the meter somewhat knew it could trust us but not completely, so we just had to push this through manually."

Reed_Richards

When my smart meter was first installed in 2023, the engineer told me I had a poor signal and left before commissioning had completed, but it must have done so shortly afterwards.  The engineer who replaced my comms hub also told me my signal was weak.  My guess is that they see how long it takes for the WAN light to get to the state of flashing every 5 seconds and use that to form a judgement.  And my WAN light does revert to flashing every two seconds infrequently, which I take to mean that it has dropped the signal and needs to re-establish the connection.  But that has only happened recently, both before and after my old comms hub was replaced.  And it never happens for very long.

What I cannot find out is whether there is any automated process that keeps trying to connect with my comms hub or if it is only done on request.  The installer had to phone someone up and ask them to "push the button" so it seemed like it was a one-off.      

Reed_Richards

I don't know if this is progress; it's certainly a change.  If I now go to https://homebrew.n3rgy.com/ and input my MPAN it says "MPAN Not found / Not Smart".  Hitherto it worked but still had the details of my old comms hub, replaced over two weeks ago. 

Reed_Richards

The Citizens Advice checker https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk/meters/new?fuel_type=electricity also says it can't find my MPAN.  I seem to have been taken off the "system".

molerat

Reed_Richards said:

The Citizens Advice checker https://smartmetercheck.citizensadvice.org.uk/meters/new?fuel_type=electricity also says it can't find my MPAN.  I seem to have been taken off the "system".

It can't find mine or my daughter's so I wouldn't use that as a guide.