UKC

Can anyone shed any light on precisely how smart meters communicate?  I know (I think) that the utility companies interrogate them over a cellphone connection, but how do the separate gas and electric meters communicate within the property?

I ask because Octopus has been largely unable to get readings from my smart gas meter ever since it was installed.  They have had no such problems with the electricity meter, though.  The IHD has also been displaying data from the electricity meter just fine since day one, although the data from the gas meter was a bit flaky for the first couple of weeks or so.  However, after that shaky start the IHD has been displaying data from the gas meter reliably as well.

It was my understanding that the gas meter 'talks' to the electricity meter, which handles all the comms back to the utility company.  Octopus say that the problem they are having getting readings from the gas meter is because the gas meter is too far away from/on the wrong side of exterior wall from the electricity meter.  What puzzles me, though, is that the IHD (which lives just outside the cupboard where the electricity meter resides) gets data reliably from both meters.

What I'd don't know is whether the gas meter 'talks' to the IHD independently of the electricity meter, or via the electricity meter as is the case for the comms back to the utility company.  If the latter then it would seem very odd that the IHD can get reliable data from both meters but Octopus can't.  OTOH if the IHD gets data directly from the gas meter, it would seem odd that the electricity meter, which is only a few feet away from the IHD, can't.

What exacerbates the problem is that the smart gas meter was installed in the original outdoor, semi-sunken meter box, in such a way that it's very difficult to get a manual reading from it.  The display is basically upside-down, low down in the box, and too close to the wall of the box to be able to use a mirror to read it.  I basically have to take several speculative 'blind' photos with my smartphone and hope that one of them has a readable view of the meter display.  Which is pretty crap.

Take a video with the phone instead of photos, wave it around for a while, still frustrating, but maybe a little less so?

Octopus can't read my smart meter either. If I had to guess, I'd say that it's like trying to get wifi to work in a huge house: While there is some science and technology involved, it generally comes down to trial and error with no respect to logic in an effort to make sure the daemons can't eat the hamsters and the signal doesn't pass through too many inverted pocket dimensions.

Except that with the smart meter it's about 100 times worse because you don't have any control over the various companies and hardware involved, so finding the problem is going to come down to chasing the mobile company and the smart meter manufacturer and Octopus and probably the local druids for a spatial map of hell dimensions between your box and the local tower. In my experience of trying to solve problems with one company like an electricity provider or mobile phone provider, it's likely to take weeks to months and dozens of hours on hold and e-mailing. But you want to solve a problem that involves at least 2 companies, this is functionally impossible to achieve before the heat death of the universe.

My 2 cents: Live with it and if it really, really winds you up, get an electrician to move the box to a position where it's easier to read.

This is my understanding too. My feeling is that the IHD communicates with the meters separately. I am having almost exactly the opposite problem to you. Octopus can get readings from my gas meter (although, my former supplier, Bulb, could not - Octopus sorted this out very quickly when my account was transferred). However, my IHD, which sits on top of my electricity meter, doesn't receive gas meter readings. I've stopped caring about that because I can see my usage broken down to the hour in the Octopus app anyway.

I was also initially told by Bulb that the gas meter could not talk to the electricity meter it was too far away or the wall was too thick - however it now seems that the gas meter wasn't registered to the system properly in my case.

Technically, they all communicate via Zigbee which is a meshing network.

Smart homes often use zigbee as one method to join smart devices together.  Anything plugged into mains power acts as a repeater, anything plugged into battery power is an end node only.

So, everything should be able to talk to everything else.  As long as you have enough repeaters you can cover a wide area.  I presume that as the zigbee network is not "user accessible" that it spans multiple households so the energy company only requires one upstream connection every X houses, not every house.

Here's an interesting introductory blurb on zigbee and smart meters -- https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/04/hacking-your-smart-meter-part-1-zigbee/

Interesting, thanks.

My IHD is mains powered in as much as it's plugged in to a USB adaptor.  So perhaps if I positioned the IHD between the two meters it could act as a repeater?  However, I think it does have a battery on board - albeit a pretty small one that runs flat in no time - so maybe it only counts as battery powered, albeit the battery is permanently on charge...

I would be happy to be in that position myself!  The data that Octopus gathers is accessible for much longer than the data on the IHD.  (The manual that came with the IHD encouraged me to download and use the ivie app, but AFAICS that uses data from Octopus, not the IHD, so it's just as useless for gas usage data when meter connection is flaky.)

Octopus are making similar noises about the relative locations of my two meters.  They assure me that their metering team has double- and triple-checked the meter connections - though no-one has ever been to the house since the meters were installed, which makes me think they can't have done a complete job (nothing beats eyeballing a recalcitrant bit of hardware IME).

Funnily enough, in my case Bulb did send an engineer out, who failed to resolve the problem. Octopus resolved it remotely within 45 mins of me emailing them. Of c ourse, it could be that the root of your problem is different, or that they are just very willing to please and retain new customers arriving from Bulb at the moment!

Octopus told me that they can't get meter readings from my gas meter, even though it's about 2 feet to the side of the electricity smart meter and that I have to submit manual meter readings for gas usage!

Quite a bit covered already, fundamentally in most single dwelling locations there is a comms hub deployed (usually very near electricity meter) that then uses zigbee to communicate with the gas meter. 

The comms hub collects the data from both gas and electric, then sends it to the central system (operated by Capita, which the energy retailers (e.g. Bulb, Octopus) integrate into) via either cellular (O2 network) in most of England and Wales or a proprietary wireless technology called Flexnet operated by Arqiva in the north of England and all of Scotland. 

The in home display also connects to the comms hub. More here:

https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/our-smart-network/network-products-services/comm...

The Capita systems are the security hub for the system as well as I understand it? Where the various keys sit and where the ability to revoke the keys from meters lie.

The same Capita who just had this happen

https://www.uss.co.uk/news-and-views/latest-news/2023/05/05122023_important...

The information potentially accessed includes: 

Their title, initial(s), and name; their date of birth; their National Insurance number; their USS member number.

Capita have also informed us that retirement dates were contained in the files.

The details, dating from early 2021, cover around 470,000 active, deferred and retired members.

Ouch!

I'm surprised that reports of this haven't appeared in the press yet.

It’s been reported in the FT for weeks. 

It's all right. USS members have been given a year's subscription to a identity theft service that requires entering all your data to Experian. All solved 

Thanks. I don't often see that paper, unfortunately. But I have noticed that the recent data theft involving staff and/or customers of BBC, BA and Boots has been fairly heavily reported in the general media, while, on the other hand, I have seen nothing about the USS data theft.

I know. It's rather weird to receive, in connection with a theft of personal data, an invitation via email to a web service which immediately asks you to enter a lot of personal data. Very reassuring.

This of course can't be the end of the matter.

No doubt after the year is up they'll be wanting them to pay for next year etc. I've been ignoring unsolicited MyIDCare emails along these lines for years. So far my financial world hasn't imploded.

Are you the victim of a known data breach?

The interest in the USS case (and other cases) is establishing where the responsibility lies. For example, if any of these 'identity theft' services shows that personal data is being misused, who has the legal responsibility for dealing with any consequences of that? The company/person responsible for the loss of data in the first place? Or the individual affected?

It’s an unusually potent set of data that has leaked from the USS.  Given the others data identity thrives have gathered, I expect they’ll be able to join plenty up with addresses.

I’m contemplating putting a restriction on the title deeds of our house following this - the stories of property theft through identity theft are horrific - you get financial redress not the property back.  I intend to bill USS for all costs incurred.  I expect I’ll get a hand washing letter about their identity theft protection, ironies as noted up thread by others.

I’ve got a situation where my gas meter sends reading through the comms unit attached to my electricity meter just fine, yet the electricity meter does not. My supplier refuses to do anything about it, claiming my property has no signal, ignoring how that is such a moronic statement it’s not even funny. When I ask them why if I have no signal I have gas readings and the comms unit LEDs indicate a connection they don’t have an answer to that, but tell me “they’ve tried everything in their power” to resolve the issue and don’t book an engineer.

I think a lot depends on the sharpness of the support pencil that you contact.

I've had very good results with Octopus on the phone, however I have recently moved house and the new one has a SMETS2 electric meter recently installed by EDF, and oil not gas. Easy peasy, I thought, switch to Octopus.

On the phone the efficient switch-to-Octopus lady said her records showed I had a conventional meter, but after a brief discussion we figured it out and she said she could process the switch.

• EDF sent a bill for the few days remaining to them; so far so good.
• A month later EDF sent a bill for the month.
• I phoned Octopus again and another efficient support person said no doubt the switch had been rejected; let's try again. Pay the EDF bill.
• Both companies informed me that the switch succeeded. Hooray.
• Octopus then emailed me that they needed me to give them an initial reading.
• I wrote back and said it's a magic meter which doesn't appear to show metered amounts.
• Zack from support replied, and said our records show you have a regular meter. I replied that no, it's a smart meter, and the IHD says "Octopus Energy"; here are some photos. Your move.
• Zack's next attempt was that WE (my capitals) have now looked and we can see you have a smart meter. Therefore the issue must be with the IHD; please carry out a couple of tests.
• I replied that I was glad that he had managed to identify the meter, but that I was having no issues with the IHD, which was showing me lots of useful information like how many ergs I am consuming each day, etc. What did he think was wrong with it?
• "Hi freeflyer, I have had a look at your account and your smart meter connection and it seems like it was an issue with your meter not being connected properly to your account! We seem to have been able to fix this as I can now pull readings from your meter so you should be good to go now."

On the plus side, they were quick to answer the phone and responsive even on the email, and eventually managed to fix their own problems. Fortunately I don't have gas so things are simpler, and it's a relatively recent meter.

Reminds me a lot of That's Life!

This reminded me of one of my student bedsits. It had been split at some point, so there were two phone lines, one for each bedsit, but BT thought there was only one. 

Cue 6 months of me calling BT (from phone boxes in those days) to get my phone reconnected. In the process, the occupant of the other bedsit would get disconnected. Then she would call, and I would get disconnected. Took us around a month to figure out what was happening, and BT 6 months to resolve. On the plus side, the other occupant and I are still friends!

That's a good idea - I've also heard those stories. I've looked into this. The Land Registry make it easy and no legal assistance should be necessary - see this link:

https://www.gov.uk/protect-land-property-from-fraud

I already had notification property alerts to see if anyone was doing a search, but as you say, there's also a restriction on sale or mortgage you can put on for £40. Seems worth it, but make sure the property is registered first. Also you're likely going to get charged for a certificate from the conveyancer if/when you sell.

An ideal situation for the government to step in and provide some useful and clear legislation! Here is a superlative discussion of the legal issues - as usual deeply shrouded in history and complexity:

https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/pure-economic-loss-in-the-law-of-tort-lord...

If Octopus can't get data off the gas meter remotely but you can using your consumer-display then you'd have to conclude the display is reading the packets from the gas meter but the electricity meter which is Octopus' connection point, isn't.

I'd assumed my gas meter passed all it's data through the hub (the electricity meter in my install) because it can't communicate directly with the provider for battery life, power reasons. Hadn't occurred to me the display would be equipped to decrypt the gas meter's packets.

Why they don't make the actual meter readings available on the consumer display for just this type of situation, I have no idea!

Mine is flakey at times despite all the bits being within a few meters of each other.

The hub-provider link is via a dedicated radio network (I'd guess around 900MHz) rather than using a cell phone network. At least mine (installed 2022) is.

Yup. Good luck getting anyone to fix it

Hmm, from a quick look at the Land Register of Scotland web site, it looks like such facilities are not available north of the border.  Must be because everyone up here is scrupulously honest and would never dream of committing any kind of identify theft or property fraud...

https://www.ros.gov.uk/our-registers/land-register-of-scotland