How did your Smart Meter Installation go?

It helps to turn the boxes off from time to time (1-2 months) for 5-10 minutes. They usually come back refreshed.

Phil

Not quite. Zigbee at 2.4GHz mostly.

It can’t penetrate thick stone wall at its limits. The 868MHz frequency is slower and better with walls. Hoping someone has had the fortune to get a dual band hub or knows of other solutions.

Phil

This is correct but the effects from the transformers are smaller in my experience, but who knows…

Dual band hubs are coming, in GB at least.

Best

David

I see from the thread in 2019 that you have been involved. I see SmartThings (reads data from my IHD) supports lots of Zigbee devices. Would I need a Zigbee hub to link other Zigbee devices to it via Wifi. The recent smart meter installation was in our HMO so it helps to monitor a few things! In January and February they left rads on high in some of the communal rooms. So had a few big bills! Obviously the gas meter connecting to the meter hub would help, but as the electric, gas and IHD don’t seem to form a mesh I may have a long wait.

Thanks

Phil

I switched over a couple of years ago, it was a condition on getting the best deal on tariffs. Seems to work fine.

I don’t think the connection between the Smart Meter Comms Hub (known as the Consumer Access Device I believe) and a home energy management system is zigbee, but it may be. I’m afraid I don’t know. But the connection between the home energy management and the things it is controlling could be anything. It doesn’t have to be zigbee.

The UK smart meter system isn’t a home energy management system itself, so you would need to buy something that is and there are products out there for HMO in particular. If it were me, I would start from there rather than look to the Smart Meter system to solve my problem.

Best

David

The issue for me is that because the gas smart meter doesn’t connect to the electric meter my supplier can’t get gas reads, so unless I submit a manual read ( which I do ) I will get estimated gas bills. The home unit portable display unit only works for electric. Apart from reducing the need for meter readers I suspect the rollout was pushed out too early by government more time should have been spent in getting the equipment/system right and ensuring the business rationale was actually valid imho. I think the connection to the supplier is via the mobile network not zigbee

Zigbee is used for the Home Area Network (HAN) . The hub above the Electric meter is either SKU1 (cellular or mobile network) or SKU2 (cellular mesh used in the north where mobile coverage is not as good).

@davidhendon I think the CAD is part of the IHD. It contains the wifi module which connects to the my home hub. The CAD has read access to the IHD data. SmartThings pairs to the CAD part of the IHD. Once paired I can be anywhere and get metering updates every minute.

You are of course right about home energy management systems which can use any type of network to talk to devices, but Zigbee is popular. I thought about some temperature monitors in various rooms. I guess SmartThings would display room temperature against time. Not sure which brand is best.

Phil

Installed in 2016. Worked fine.

SMETS1 though. Eventually had to leave the supplier as they got to be very uncompetitive. So could no longer be used as smart meters.

Now waiting for them to be migrated to DCC and start working again. The date of the project keeps going back. They “Secure” meters - so should be migrated across sometime between now and July.

If they ever do start working again, I’m assuming it will be a closed system - so only the supplied IHD will work. And all integration will be from the supplier side - I’ll have to get data from them in other words.

The electricity meter has the WAN module on it. It just shows a very good signal. The gas meter is about 40cm from the electricity meter and never had a problem connecting to the electricity meter. Old Victorian house. Thick walls. Lots of cast iron and other obstacles. The IHD is in the kitchen and also works fine.

They’re almost completely dumb. Just counting the gas/electricity and nothing else. Even the IHD says nothing - thought it might still show usage but for some reason this must only work if it’s connected to something upstream.

Thanks for your informative reply.

Bulb got our house (SMETS1) rather than the HMO sorted in March. The App makes up for the IHD.

I like the new Camelion IHD with CAD supplied to the HMO because it works with SmartThings so I get lots more monitoring. I would think the IHD could be swapped for a better one but it needs authenticating by the hub. The Smart thing would be to use its ID sent over their DCC to the hub.

Reading the blurb on Octopus from their metering team, the DCC requires the energy suppliers to develop their management software to sort issues out. Sometimes the messages get lost so it requires their protocols to be enhanced. It is a complex system. The connecting of a meter has a large number of steps all of which must complete successfully.

Phil

My installation was quick, easy & trouble free.
As to the usefulness of a smart meter, it tell me nothing I didn’t already know or could easily check.

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If we ever get incentives to consume at certain times of day it may help to work out whether to buy in with help from an App that knows our pattern. It helps now with my HMO. It certainly helps suppliers to know our usage pattern for their provision of power to the network.

Phil

They already know that, NG has all it needs to predict load demand on an hour by hour basis, by local, regional & national.
With the UK now so reliant on wind & to a lesser extent solar, accurate weather forecasting is more important than predicting what is a practically very predictable domestic/industrial demand

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So what are the benefits, financially or otherwise that people have realised?

None that I can find - in my situation
I guess its not helped by me being very up on all things electrical, I don’t need it other than use it as a handy daily monitor

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Probably, not having random people turning up with no notice and demanding access to the house.

Obviously, having reverted to dumb meters, meter reader is a job that no longer exists. It’s all done on honesty.

I’m interested in reducing costs/increasing efficiency. Ideally, every outlet would be metered, but that’s so expensive to do all at the same time, it’s not worth doing.

The most interesting thing is what is possibly the fridge/freezer increasing demand in the summer. There’s an odd blip that needs investigating. It maybe they moving it to the cellar would be the biggest saving I could make.

In terms of gas usage, it’s a proxy for weather/wind conditions. It’s a bit difficult to see the effect of any policy changes without similar detailed wind/temp measurements.

I read my own meters for Octpus Energy who thus far have been a joy to work with. No pressure to take a smart meter and I’ll be damned what it’s going to tell me that I don’t already know.

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Mine was installed early Feb and still hasn’t connected.

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You are lucky to happy a stable life meter wise. If you dealt with letting property you would welcome any reduction in hassle. At least 50% of my tenancy voids even if just a few days involve me having to get the billing right. I take photos and even then they can use the readings the tenant gave 5 days before the hand over.

On one occasion nPower (now incorporated into E.on) sent at least a dozen letters before I got a bill for £3! I really don’t want to open an account to make their lives easier. It just had to be done the way their computer system was programmed. It wastes my time as well. Fortunately, Bulb will just send a bill but 50% chance of being right.

Of course smart meters won’t stop problems until all energy companies make switching slick. But it is a start. Maybe it will be possible to do it in a few days.

So your choice will disappear when you are the one that makes their system need more people! But it won’t bother me to have a smart meter if they don’t screw up the installation.

Phil