What makes a smart meter go offline?

MWT

squirrelpie said:

I'm on an E7 tariff which I think counts as a TOU tariff. Fortunately I've got ten years of daily data (day vs night) if they need to make estimates.

E7 just needs the two register readings which you can still get from the meter even if the comms hub is not working.

Just check how to read them with your particular meter type and submit them manually if you have to.

tfhnota

I think most of the Smart meters having flashing LEDS (not the flashing red light that just shows the meter is aware the house is consuming energy) usually on the upper half of the meter, so if they have gone then it is a communications hub failure in the meter but if still there then signal failure or a mess-up at the other end of the system. My LEDs are completely dead and it won't connect to anything, took a few days of emails to get past Octopus's AI and be referred to their tech team, lots of irrelevant questions so I did wind the AI up a bit. Not TOU at the moment so not a big problem for me, be interesting to see how fast they are to sort the problem. Meter readings are as expected but making a daily note to estimate my consumption. Luckily, I have made it easy to access the electric meter, though the contrast on the display is not very good, In believe they have to pay £40 if not fixed within 90 days.

squirrelpie

MWT said:

squirrelpie said:

I'm on an E7 tariff which I think counts as a TOU tariff. Fortunately I've got ten years of daily data (day vs night) if they need to make estimates.

E7 just needs the two register readings which you can still get from the meter even if the comms hub is not working.

Just check how to read them with your particular meter type and submit them manually if you have to.

Hi thanks, yes I have a somewhat strange Kaifa MA120B and I saw earlier that Octopus now have instructions for reading it on their site, so I've just been out to try to read it. But when I looked at it, the display seems to be scrolling through screens that include ones title Rate 1 and Rate 2 and the kWh values look like they're my day and night readings. So it seems all I'll need to do is go to the meter and stand there for a while

While I was out there I looked at the comms hub and it's a Toshiba SKU2 Cellular + Mesh, which sounds hopeful. It has a row of status lights which are all OFF. The legends are: SW  WAN  MESH  HAN  GAS so it seems wrong that they're all off. I don't have gas so I'm not surprised that's off but presumably the HAN light and at least one of WAN and MESH ought to be on? I just found a document that says they should be flashing, and that all off means it has no power? 

MWT

squirrelpie said:

While I was out there I looked at the comms hub and it's a Toshiba SKU2 Cellular + Mesh, which sounds hopeful. It has a row of status lights which are all OFF. The legends are: SW  WAN  MESH  HAN  GAS so it seems wrong that they're all off. I don't have gas so I'm not surprised that's off but presumably the HAN light and at least one of WAN and MESH ought to be on? I just found a document that says they should be flashing, and that all off means it has no power? 

That does sound like your comms hub is dead.

I assume it is mounted directly on top of your electricity meter? 

QrizB

MWT said:

squirrelpie said:

While I was out there I looked at the comms hub and it's a Toshiba SKU2 Cellular + Mesh, which sounds hopeful. It has a row of status lights which are all OFF. The legends are: SW  WAN  MESH  HAN  GAS so it seems wrong that they're all off. I don't have gas so I'm not surprised that's off but presumably the HAN light and at least one of WAN and MESH ought to be on? I just found a document that says they should be flashing, and that all off means it has no power? 

That does sound like your comms hub is dead.

Agreed; a happy comms hub has green LEDs that flash every five seconds, and unhappy one has a different  colour and flash pattern, no LEDs at all means a dead comms hub  ☹️

squirrelpie

FWIW Glow have just sent me the list of devices the DCC show as connected to my HAN. There's too many, but quite how that kills a comms hub I'm not sure.

QrizB

squirrelpie said:

FWIW Glow have just sent me the list of devices the DCC show as connected to my HAN. There's too many, but quite how that kills a comms hub I'm not sure.

I think that's a coincidence.

One of the things that Octopus can do is sent a signal to the comms hub to tell it to soft reset and reboot.

It's possible that your Energy Specialist sent this signal but for some reason the hub never came back up again; a physical fault, perhaps, or corrupted firmware. This isn't necessarily what happened, but it fits the symptoms you've reported.

I suspect you're going to need Octopus to send out a smart meter engineer to replace the comms hub and re-link your various devices to the HAN.

Scot_39

squirrelpie said:

MWT said:

squirrelpie said:

I'm on an E7 tariff which I think counts as a TOU tariff. Fortunately I've got ten years of daily data (day vs night) if they need to make estimates.

E7 just needs the two register readings which you can still get from the meter even if the comms hub is not working.

Just check how to read them with your particular meter type and submit them manually if you have to.

Hi thanks, yes I have a somewhat strange Kaifa MA120B and I saw earlier that Octopus now have instructions for reading it on their site, so I've just been out to try to read it. But when I looked at it, the display seems to be scrolling through screens that include ones title Rate 1 and Rate 2 and the kWh values look like they're my day and night readings. So it seems all I'll need to do is go to the meter and stand there for a while

While I was out there I looked at the comms hub and it's a Toshiba SKU2 Cellular + Mesh, which sounds hopeful. It has a row of status lights which are all OFF. The legends are: SW  WAN  MESH  HAN  GAS so it seems wrong that they're all off. I don't have gas so I'm not surprised that's off but presumably the HAN light and at least one of WAN and MESH ought to be on? I just found a document that says they should be flashing, and that all off means it has no power? 

1 flash every 5 secs is the healthy state on comms hub leds iirc.

You might need a meter tech visit to pull the fuse / hard reset, if it used to work OK.

Ildhund

squirrelpie said:

Glow have just sent me the list of devices the DCC show as connected to my HAN. There's too many, but quite how that kills a comms hub I'm not sure.

We've seen cases where a new IHD refuses to play regardless of the HQ agent having paired and the customer having rebooted and waited hours for the anticipated connection to take place. It turns out that the agent had failed to unpair or otherwise disengage the original IHD before trying to add a new one. Once that has been sorted out, everything works as intended. I wonder if this is why you're seeing 'too many' devices on your HAN.

The fact that none of the LEDs on the CH is lit indicates that there's no power to the CH. If the WAN isn't working, it won't be possible to do anything remotely. Scot's suggestion about a hard reset of the meter is one potential remedy. I'd be inclined to suggest removing and re-seating the CH on its ICHI, having checked that the 12V power supply pins are properly wired. I think any competent electrician should be able to pull and replace the main fuse with the DNO's approval and permission; breaking the seal on the CH would require a meter engineer but on the other hand it doesn't demand interrupting the supply. 

tfhnota

Super high humidity and cold placement seems to be the culprit in my case as I went to the garage to start the motorcycle only to find that warning lights came on for traction control and ABS malfunction, luckily they went away after five minutes of running and restarting the beast (having previously mentioned the dead LEDs in the comm hub).