No association with the company but this may be useful info for others.
Our electricity and gas meters are at opposite sides of the house and so connectivity between the gas meter and the communications hub, located in the electricity meter cabinet, has always been a bit flaky. Same with our in-home display where signal strength was marginal when located at our preferred hallway table position.
As well as irregular gas readings on the in-home display, I was having to send in manual gas meter readings to our supplier. Not a big issue in the grand scheme of things but annoying when things don’t work as they should…
Googling around for a solution, I came across SmartXtend which is designed to extend the range of any Zigbee Smart Meter HAN. It looked like it could be a solution to our issues, extending the signal between the gas meter and communications hub and also improving the signal strength at our IHD location. I ordered the Pro version which adds Consumer Access Device functionality so I can use the Fuuli app to monitor our energy consumption.
It was easy to setup and install as it just plugs into a standard mains socket. I found a spot in the garage which was near mid way between meters. It’s been in place for a couple of weeks now and does what it says on the tin. We now get regular gas readings, both to the IHD and through to our energy provider. Problem solved.
We’re with Octopus and they gave us a little device that connects to both the house WiFi and smart meter WiFi. It allows us to see consumption on our Octopus phone app.
Presumably you mean the little pink box they give you that’s an alternative to a regular IHD, and gives you current usage figure in the app in addition to the historical usage info that you get anyway?
Hm, that looks interesting. My meters are next to each other, but the IHD does often loose connection. Also getting the data in an app would be pretty good especially if it includes energy exported from Solar panels - perhaps I’ll contact them.
How do you connect it to your meter? Presumably you would need to initiate something from your electric meter?
I wish British Gas could get my smart meter to work reliably again. For my first year in this house, it worked fine. Then they changed the app and for some weird reasons, BG have never been willing or able to explain to me what is going on or when they will resolve it. Two official complaints eventually elicited them saying there was a problem, but not what it was or when it would be reliably fixed.
Ah ok, I managed to delete my reply by accident when editing it, but it looks like you managed to read it before then. I’ll be interested in what you find regarding displaying export data from Solar panels as we hope to be heading that way too next year.
Yes a dedicated Zigbee repeater will work fine, although many other Zigbee devices will relay signals anyway as they are designed to work this way, as in they form a mesh network.. such as mains powered automation devices.. but not all do this particularly battery devices.
When I had my import and electrical meters installed, they are quite a distance apart and a dedicated ethernet type lead was put in between them… I assume that was not an option or practical here?
I also use the little pink Octopus sensor which uses Zigbee to the electrical meters… but I have many Zigbee devices all over my house so have had no issues with communication, as I assume most are relaying via mesh.
We finally obtained a solution to a slightly different Smart Meter problem, that of connectivity with the national network; specifically the radio network that is used in the N of the UK. The S uses the mobile network, although that will apparently be rolled out across the UK at some point. See link.
We live in a rural area where the radio signal is marginal. This meant lots of dropouts and we were unable to use a decent low rate EV tariff with half-hourly billing as a result. After 3 years, 5 meters and 2 Ombudsman complaints (I will spare the details) our supplier eventually sent a senior meter fitter who said that a small separate receiver/transmitter just a few centimeters away from the meter would solve the problem. This is because the meter itself produces a bit of interference that is sufficient to disrupt a borderline connection. Hey presto, it works! See photo, the little box bottom left.
He said most meter fitters have no idea of this trick, and are just trained to fit a regulation meter if a customer reports issues.
Hopefully this might help others with connectivity issues-which is pretty common I believe.
I think this is a different topic to the one the OP raised, which was local smart meter comms, as opposed to external smart meter comms.
As far as the mobile external WAN link for the southern part of GB, then is changing soon. It’s currently 3G which is being switched off, and will I understand move to LTE/5G. Some more recent smart meters I understand may involve a simple module change, others perhaps might need a whole new meter.
Another victim of the smart meter fiasco here! I didn’t actually want one but EON insisted so I let them put it in… and it didn’t work at all. After a few months I complained and they managed to get the electricity side to work after swapping out the first meter. The gas still didn’t work even though it was less than 2 metres away. Following yet more pressure from me they made two more attempts with different gas meters and got it working.
All was well until I changed supplier form EON to EDF and the whole saga started again with the additional complication that EDF wouldn’t accept which gas meter was actually fitted and what the readings were. I had to send them photos of the gas meter on two occasions and they grudgingly accepted that as meters don’t run backwards I had given them correct readings which correlated with old bills from EON. As yet I have a working electricity only smart meter and EDF continue to send me gas bills separately and, for some unknown reason, split into two parts.
Yet to come we will now have the heat pump fiasco and the electric car fiasco. Wonders of the new world!
Curious, your Smart Meter would be isolated without the EDMI 420 Comms Hub if you are in the northern ‘territory’ CSP postcode area. Ie the box in the bottom left of your picture. It is that that connects your smart meter to the DCC radio send and receive network.
So if you are in the central or southern territories - then the comms hub is built into a module on the top of the meter - and uses a variant of 3G. There are two options - a standard 3G and a 3G module with external aerial for very weak mobile areas. In these areas the 420 Comms Hub won’t do anything. The 3G is much more sensitive than mobile use of 3G
So I guess if you are in the northern postcode areas - your meter would not connect to the WAN without the external comms hub being fitted. … at least you got it finally fitted - why it needed a ‘senior’ meter fitter beggars belief… it looks like it was never fitted properly… unless there was more to the story… perhaps your property is right on the zone dividing line?
The narrative of ‘borderline’ reception you were given doesn’t really make much sense to me - given if you are in the northern CSP radio zone I believe you must have a 420 Comms Hub in the first place with that make of Smart Meter for it to communicate the recordings back to your utility provider.
We are in rural N Yorks. Every meter fitter told us that they knew our property would be marginal for radio reception and connection to the WAN due to our location, and that the same applied to neighbours etc. They came along, fitted an identical meter each time, and predictably they didn’t work. We also had issues where each installation caused issues with night storage heaters on the circuit, either failing to activate them at all or failing to do so at the correct time. This latter issue is because you need the WAN connection to set the meter time, it cannot be set manually. There’s more I could tell you but life is short…
After 4 meters we finally got somebody senior who understood what to do. He fitted the box shown as an accessory, said this would solve the issue and our data connection with Octopus is now solid.
Yes - but the box is not an accessory for the smart meter type in your location - it’s the only way it can connect to the WAN on the radio zone. Out of curiosity I looked at the UK installers guide for that meter.
FWIW I have heard of similar tales.
Your picture doesn’t show the top of the meter - to show whether it has the 3G comms hubs, but much of North Yorkshire - ie north of York is well above the CSP dividing line where only the wide area radio network is used. BTW the EDMI 420 has so I understand, an external aerial accessory for very weak reception and transmission areas, I assume they fitted that too? The frequencies are around 420 MHz.
Great its now working - and its a shame you had all that unnecessary grief.
I think this is just the comms hub being fitted a few inches away from the meter instead of being fixed right on top of the meter as normal, so the noise produced in the meter doesn’t disrupt the comms path to the WAN as much. Poor design that this should be necessary…
Only an amateur’s perspective but the first 4 meter fitters seemed to be woeful. They had no access to previous records of our issues, no plan, refused to listen to me trying to explain the problems (including the storage heaters) and basically all said ‘I have been told to swap your meter so that is what I will do’.
It was a very dispiriting process, although the Ombudsman facilitated refunds and compensation. Twice.
