Smart meter lost connection

indigofreeze

I was harassed into having smart meters fitted. I really didn't want them due to the location of the metres and it not being an easy install. There was nothing wrong with the old metres and I always sent monthly readings and paid my bills in full. 

Anyway I gave in and had the metres fitted which went horribly wrong. The engineer insisted on looking at my boiler even tho he didn't have a clue about boilers. Metres were fitted then water started pouring out of the boiler (boiler is only 2 years old). The engineer turned off my water supply and gas supply, told me I needed to get someone qualified to sort it out and left. Gas engineer said it was the smart meter engineers fault.

Anyway boiler got fixed and all was ok. This was in July. 

About 3 weeks ago I had a power cut and since then my smart meters are not sending half hour readings which are needed for the EV tariff I'm on.

Energy company can't fix the issue remotely and have said both metres need replacing because they are out of sync. This seems ridiculous, the metres are only a few months old. I don't want the gas meter changed because I don't want any engineer fiddling with my boiler again but apparently they won't change the electric meter without the gas meter.

Surely there must be some way of resetting the metres without turning off the gas and electric supply or replacing them. Why do they have to be replaced???

Does this mean if I have a power cut again or I have to turn off the electricity myself, will I need new meters each time. 

Does anyone know if metres can be reset and then start communicating with the network again.

They don't appear to be very 'smart' do they?

Qyburn

Smart meters, like any other piece of kit do sometimes fail. But a power cut shouldn't kill them. We've had loads and the only effect is some missing data.

It does sound like you supplier doesn't know what their talking about. Most likely fault to affect both meters would be the comms hub dying. That can be replaced without replacing either meter and without losing stored data. Gas meter is battery powered and won't even be aware of a power cut.

It is a fact though, that if electronics are about to fail then they're more likely to do so at the moment of being powered back in.

By the way you start off with an anti smart meter pitch, saying you never wanted them. Are you aware that you wouldn't be able to get your EV tariff without at least a smart electricity meter?

sheenas

Yes I have been there and the only way to reset the electric is to pull the main fuse. In my case the engineer admitted they recycle meters and sometimes this results in installing faulty ones, so it easier to replace both meters.

MattMattMattUK

indigofreeze said:

I was harassed into having smart meters fitted. I really didn't want them due to the location of the metres and it not being an easy install. There was nothing wrong with the old metres and I always sent monthly readings and paid my bills in full. 

Anyway I gave in and had the metres fitted which went horribly wrong. The engineer insisted on looking at my boiler even tho he didn't have a clue about boilers. Metres were fitted then water started pouring out of the boiler (boiler is only 2 years old). The engineer turned off my water supply and gas supply, told me I needed to get someone qualified to sort it out and left. Gas engineer said it was the smart meter engineers fault.

They have to check the boiler is not leaking gas once they have reconnected the gas supply, that is why they have to look. I very much doubt that the gas engineer said it was the smart meter's fault, being as there is no way for a smart meter to harm a boiler. It is likely it was just the power cycling, something which plenty of boilers seem to dislike for some reason.

indigofreeze said:

Anyway boiler got fixed and all was ok. This was in July. 

About 3 weeks ago I had a power cut and since then my smart meters are not sending half hour readings which are needed for the EV tariff I'm on.

Energy company can't fix the issue remotely and have said both metres need replacing because they are out of sync. This seems ridiculous, the metres are only a few months old. I don't want the gas meter changed because I don't want any engineer fiddling with my boiler again but apparently they won't change the electric meter without the gas meter.

If you are refusing to let them fix them then you cannot complain that they are not fixing them...

indigofreeze said:

Surely there must be some way of resetting the metres without turning off the gas and electric supply or replacing them. Why do they have to be replaced???

From the sound of it they might want to replace them as they have failed, they may not need to replace both (the gas has no connection to the electricity supply), they may just need to reboot the comms hub, but they will reserve the right to replace the meter if they need to.

indigofreeze said:

Does this mean if I have a power cut again or I have to turn off the electricity myself, will I need new meters each time. 

No, it is rare for a meter of any kind to need replacing after a power cut, even more so the gas meter because it is not connected to the electricity supply. 

indigofreeze said:

Does anyone know if metres can be reset and then start communicating with the network again.

They can be reset, it may or may not make them start communicating again. 

indigofreeze said:

They don't appear to be very 'smart' do they?

That would appear an odd conclusion to draw.

luci

Installation totally depends on the fitter you get (not "engineer", as they've only been on a short meter fitting course). Our original SMETS1 meters were fitted by Scottish Gas and the fitter was useless. Instead of the 1.5 hours it should have taken, he was here for 4 hours.

He said there was a leak after fitting the gas meter and that the boiler dropping 6 Bar. He capped it and said we couldn’t use it until we got it fixed. I got my own Gas Safe engineer to check it out. He said it was only dropping 3 Bar, not 6 Bar, and you are allowed 4 Bar. He replaced the solenoid valve and it cost us almost £400 to repair a boiler that had been working perfectly.

We got the SMETS1 meters replaced with SMETS2 6 years later. The fitter was in and out within an hour and we had absolutely no issues.

Reed_Richards

I had a smart meter that stopped communicating after 2 years.  At the first attempt for a fix the comms hub was replaced but the new comms hub would not communicate.  At the second attempt, two months later, the comms hub was fitted on the end of a flying lead (about 0.6m long) and it the new position it was commissioned as normal and it has been working again for about a month.  If you do have a communications problem suppliers seem to know very little about the cause and will assume it is a poor WAN signal if replacing the comms hub does not work.  Fitters have no independent means of measuring the WAN signal strength so if there is a problem they are working blind when trying to find a fix.

Ectophile

luci said:

He said there was a leak after fitting the gas meter and that the boiler dropping 6 Bar. He capped it and said would couldn’t use we got it fixed. I got my own Gas Safe engineer to check it out. He said it was only dropping 3 Bar, not 6 Bar, and you are allowed 4 Bar. He replaced the solenoid valve and it cost us almost 

It was leaking gas.  Maybe not as much as the meter installer thought.  But it was still leaking.

luci

Ectophile said:

luci said:

He said there was a leak after fitting the gas meter and that the boiler dropping 6 Bar. He capped it and said would couldn’t use we got it fixed. I got my own Gas Safe engineer to check it out. He said it was only dropping 3 Bar, not 6 Bar, and you are allowed 4 Bar. He replaced the solenoid valve and it cost us almost 

It was leaking gas.  Maybe not as much as the meter installer thought.  But it was still leaking.

Yes, I appreciate that, and I would have been grateful to him for finding it, but we have strong suspicions that the fitter may have been the cause of the leak.

The boiler is in the loft and he was up and down to it umpteen times and spent a long time up there. It took him 4 hours before he told us the pressure was dropping for a job that was supposed to take 1.5 hours. It was after 6pm by that time and I think he couldn't stay any longer.

mmmmikey

Ectophile said:

luci said:

He said there was a leak after fitting the gas meter and that the boiler dropping 6 Bar. He capped it and said would couldn’t use we got it fixed. I got my own Gas Safe engineer to check it out. He said it was only dropping 3 Bar, not 6 Bar, and you are allowed 4 Bar. He replaced the solenoid valve and it cost us almost 

It was leaking gas.  Maybe not as much as the meter installer thought.  But it was still leaking.

And both could be true - it could have been losing 6 bar when the meter installer checked and 3 bar when the boiler engineer checked. It's obviously frustrating, but this is the process working and the installer doing their job properly - i.e. detecting a leak and reporting it to you. It seems highly unlikely that the installer would have done something that caused a solenoid valve fault, it's more likely that they were the unfortunate enough to be the first person to work on your gas since the solenoid started to fail.