Smart meter can't connect despite 6 different comms hubs, is there anything else I can do to get the meter to connect?

Thanks for the quick response, that's what I thought but that's not the impression I was given by the SMS advisor over the phone who was an ex Vodafone employee.

After the fourth failed attempt to commission the meters yesterday the SMS operator left and said there was nothing else he could do.

This ultimately I believe means that the meters will always be in “dumb mode” and will never communicate, this will also be true for a small percentage of the population. Given our close proximity to the transmitter I cannot see Arquiva installing more infrastructure one because of the expense and two because of the relatively small numbers of consumers affected.

If this is the case then as far as I am concerned the suppliers will have to start re-employing meter readers. I have not submitted any meter readings for the past eight months and refuse to do so until the issue is resolved. I've already had to pay out for a Shelly EM energy meter to monitor my consumption, I was promised a smart meter and that's what I want.

Note:- the property next door approximately 9 metres away is actively communicating with the Arqiva network and does not appear to have any issues.

Sorry for the rant but neither the energy supplier nor the meter installer seems to be bothered about the people who are slipping through the net and what will ultimately happen in these circumstances

Thanks again

Then this probably needs to be raised to DCC as a No-WAN case. Only your Supplier can do that.

Winter Hill Transmitting Station appears to be in Lancashire, possibly somewhere near Chorley if memory serves.

With that in mind, just because Winter Hill is your nearest Arqiva Transmitting Station, doesn’t mean it’s got DCC equipment installed there. Arqiva installs DCC stuff wherever DCC tells them to - and ONLY where DCC tells them to. If Winter Hill doesn’t have said equipment installed, it looks like there won’t be many nearby as that particular Station is extremely powerful.

Additionally, a failure in one meter on the HAN to communicate won’t block the other - they communicate with the Comms Hub completely independently of each other by design.

OK, you seem to have done what any reasonable customer could be expected to (with the exception of not submitting readings, that is - I don’t understand your reasoning for this).

I take it that you still have the same Aclara SGM 1412-B that was installed in 2022. If this is the case, then I don’t understand at all why it hasn’t been exchanged, if only to rule that out as a cause of your woes. Even though the comms hub* is a separate unit, it is intimately connected to the meter (their term, not mine!) and I can well imagine that a malfunctioning meter could well cause the comms hub to malfunction, too, even though it might work well mated with a different meter. Blastoise knows much more about this stuff than I do, so he might be able to explain why the gas proxy in the comms hub doesn’t communicate with the IHD even if the electricity meter itself is incommunicado. 

How are you being billed? And paying? If you’re seeing estimates, how close are they to the truth? I can imagine a gross discrepancy arising after 18 months of no readings …

One last thought - have you checked that no data have ever got through to DCC? OVO are just one of many actors who can access your data, and occasionally they fail where others succeed. You would have to use a third party to do this; some of them are listed in this article: Energy usage data from third party Apps | The OVO Forum (ovoenergy.com)
  

*  There are only two variants of the EDMI 420 comms hub as far as I am aware. The dual band variant has the ability to communicate with the HAN over the 868 MHz band as well as the standard 2.4 GHz band, with a view to pushing the signal a bit further in difficult buildings. This should have no effect on its ability to connect to the WAN.

Not submitting the meter readings is a point of principal, we as consumers are paying on our bills for the implementation of the smart meter rollout, the smart meter should be sending in the readings not me. It’s a bit like keeping a dog and barking yourself.

As I said before I keep my own records, I know how much gas and electricity I have consumed to date, I know how much that consumption has cost to date and I know how much money the supplier has taken from my account in direct debits. I know therefore that the account is currently in credit and the supplier owes me money. Having read all the horror stories about unscrupulous suppliers increasing direct debits unnecessarily I have taken the decision to monitor and control my own energy finances. If the supplier wishes to increase/decrease the direct debit at any time I have my own records to compare with. In terms of accuracy my accounts show the costs up to the previous day at any one time. The supplier accounts are at least a month out of date because that's their normal billing period.

One of the main reasons for accepting the smart meter installation was the ability for me to receive the information from a third party so I signed up for a Bright account with the intent to purchase one of their IHD’s. I gave them all of my details, name, address, MPAN number etc. Bright have confirmed that the meter is not communicating with the DCS.

You can also check on the Citizens Advice website again you just confirm your address and MPAN number. The Citizens Advice web page has also confirmed that the meters are not communicating with the DCS.

By the way there is a third version of the 420 coms unit albeit just a different method  of installation. The 420 module is removed from the electricity meter and mounted remotely, a cable is then installed between the meter and the remote module. The cable I understand is relatively short just a few hundred millimetres so whether or not this is a viable option is debateable. The guy on the third visit mentioned this but he said it wasn't worth trying.

I still have the original Aclara meter that was installed in November 2022, I still have the original GS-60B gas meter and the original Chameleon IHD7 display (no longer under warranty but has never worked). I don’t know if the 420 module is the original module as it has been changed out several times.

The smart meter engineering menus are password protected and therefore inaccessible to the members of the public. However in the case of the gas meter HAN menu which I accessed, this is already in the public domain. Sites like Scottish Power and Utility Warehouse give detailed instructions as to how to reconnect / re-join an EDMI gas meter 2nd generation to the smart meter network, this requires access to the gas meter HAN menu. Both sites give detailed instructions on how to do this.

Thanks 

Nukecad

House was built in the 60’s so the meter and the consumer unit are on the same backboard. The meter is located next to the consumer unit which is manufactured from steel. In order to comply with the latest edition of BS 7671 (IEE regulations) all consumer units have to be manufactured from fireproof materials eg steel or housed in a metal cupboard. The meter and consumer unit are at the front of the house in a single brick porch, there are no metal elements within the construction that could form a Faraday cage. I’ve already asked the installer if this could be a problem, he said no this was a typical installation for them. 

This morning my wife received a telephone call from the SMS advisor, he said that they had done all that they could and that they would not be making any further visits as it was a waste of resources.

He went on to say that we would have to wait until next year when 4G will be available, he asked my wife to go and stand by the meter and check if she could receive a 4G signal on her mobile phone. 

I have come to the conclusion therefore that the smart meters will always be dumb for any one of the following reasons that is why I posed the question “what will happen under similar circumstances when there isn't any 4G or long range radio signal”:-

1. They have not definitively proven if the original meter is at fault (some one on the forum suggested it could be) or not
2. They have not definitively proven the lack of long range radio signal, they don’t have any suitable test equipment to measure one way or another
3. They are telling me to wait until next year which suggests no pressure will be put to bear on Arquiva to improve the long range radio signal (if this indeed is the problem)
4. They are telling me to wait for 4G which should be available some time next year, we are in the northern part of the country and I’ve also been told that 4G is only going to be available in the south not the north.

Nukecad

Don't really want to go in to the debate regarding the types of materials that domestic consumer units are manufactured from as its a little off topic. Suffice to say the regulations have been changed and I think you will find the vast majority of domestic installers will opt to fit steel consumers units in new installations and in cases where upgrades are required. This is much easier than trying to install a plastic consumer unit in a fire rated cabinet. Our consumer unit was changed because we had an extension built which effectively meant the house had to be rewired.

I think also these days trying to obtain a plastic unit from any of the major manufacturers would be quite difficult most of them have switched to steel.

 The point I was trying to make was that yes we have a steel consumer unit which is next to the smart meter on the same backboard. This will also be true for other older properties such as ours where the consumer unit has or has to be upgraded. 

If this arrangement does have an impact on the smart meters ability to receive or transmit a signal then this is just another example of what the designers and implementers of the smart meter rollout have failed to take into account