Hi,

Firstly, the ability to remotely disconnect is heavily locked down and comes under the exact same rules as getting a warrant to force disconnection i.e. it is an absolute last resort.

As for meter readings, no these cannot be remotely adjusted or changed under any circumstances. Firstly, there’s not even a SMETS Command for it and no SMETS Command means it can’t be done. Secondly, doing such a thing would be highly illegal and Ofgem would probably catch on rapidly. And thirdly, security measures on the meters themselves makes pulling off such a stunt almost impossible anyway.

Likewise, there is no option to modify, change or adjust the reading locally either. The only way the reading can change is when it is measuring energy in the course of normal usage or while being tested. If memory serves, the ONLY way to modify a reading on a Smart Meter is to return the entire unit back to the manufacturer and have the manufacturer do it. However, by that stage chances are the meter won’t be put back into service in the field anyway.

I know what those measures are, but it’s a bit of a secret so I can’t discuss it here as I don’t want to give away any clues that could enable tampering (nor do I want the liability risks either).

Has anyone's opinion on this changed? My electricity from December and January this past year were double what they were the year before and I have gas heat. No new appliances or hybrid cars or any of that was going on. I just had my electric supplier come out and check my meter yesterday. They haven't gotten back to me but I know they were here. I do think something fishy is going on especially the way they talked to me on the phone

I stand by my word.

Please post photos of your meter.

Yes they can be. Smart meters are another farce so they can charge what they want, when they want, irrelevant of the consumer. If I were you I'd leave and go elsewhere to a company that would respect you because OVI certainly doesn't.

Once again, I stand by my word. The meter readings on the meters themselves cannot be manipulated remotely - that’d be totally illegal. And besides, there isn’t even a SMETS Command for it anyway - no SMETS Command = not possible. Only the manufacturer can do it - and in those cases, the meter probably won’t ever go back into the field after that anyway, making it irrelevant. Even if it did later go back into the field, the new Start Reading for the next customer would commence at whatever is on the meter display at that time, which in turn becomes the new “Zero”. This is the same arrangement as for meters that were removed from service for any reason, deemed suitable to re-deploy, put into the spares cupboard and later deployed elsewhere - the new “Zero” would start at whatever those meters said at the time of the re-install. It’s not like a car where you can just hook up a laptop to the OBD-II port, fire up some software and press a few buttons to clock the mileage back!

Suppliers likewise cannot charge “whatever they want”. This industry is heavily regulated, suppliers have been smashed to pieces in the past for attempting exactly that.

You can believe whatever you wish - I cannot force your hand. However, that doesn’t mean it’s true and you cannot force everyone else’s hand either.

As for using scripts, sure I’ll admit that do use them - I’ve even written a few in my time. However, those scripts of mine do not work here because they’re designed for a completely different use case - batch files to use with Faronics Deep Freeze Cloud don’t exactly work well on an energy related Forum, something to do with the lack of polar bears... But on the Forum, everything I write is totally handwritten, such as in these threads.

The closest thing I use on the Forum to “Scripts” are a few macros I programmed into my mouse to help with common tasks, such as refreshing pages or loading tabs in certain ways - they only affect me though. The closest I’ve ever come to having “automated posts” is a few macros that automatically type out very short phrases that I program in, such as links to stuff that I’m constantly typing out - the Forum Moderators are usually OK with that since I’d have probably typed it out manually the exact same way anyway, but also because I still manually review the content before I hit submit.

Blastoise is correct. The readings are even sent via a central hub with a communication system designed by GCHQ to ensure they are secure.

Do your own research if you don’t believe it (rather than just looking at social media)

Are you referring to the size of your electricity bill or to the amount of electricity you consumed? The cost will depend both on the price you’re paying per unit and per day and on the number of kWh you consume as measured by the meter.

Electricity meters are precision instruments, calibrated to tight tolerances. While not unheard of, it’s very rare for a meter to record wrongly. The idea that the supplier is manipulating readings remotely is quite frankly fanciful. If you found that you had apparently been consuming twice as many units as the year before, you should first try to find out what was using so much more than you expected. You’re probably too late to be using the Insights page on your online account, because I don’t think you’ll find data going back more than three months. However, might be helpful to make sure your household profile is completed so you can get an idea of what is using most power.

Did you find out what was wrong with your meter, if anything?

Interesting reading of the above. I wouldn’t have seen this forum had it not been the fact that we were out today for a good few hours and on our return we glanced at our smartmeter remote readout unit in the hall and noticed it reading at least double the load that was switched on. We switched off the heaviest load but that didn’t drop it by the amount of load we had just removed, only two thirds of it. I then decided to compare the readout on the remote unit to that on the meter itself.

The meter read the same, so I scrolled through the meter readings a couple of times and it then reduced its reading & began to read what it should according to the loads we have on. We checked to see what other loads might have been left on, but nothing was, and certainly not enough to double the expected loading that is on. We will now keep a very close eye on this as we are in the throws of monitoring our usage and we are managing to generally keep it to within around 3-4 KWH/day.

After the Post office/Horizon scandal, I have become very sceptical of remote access, so this one will now be more closely monitored. I hope I’m wrong, but one never knows what teccies are doing behind the scenes.

If you request half hourly usage figures from your energy supplier you can see a graph of each days data via your online account. 

I’m not sure either of us understands what you’re seeing here.

The ‘remote readout unit’ (commonly called In-House Display, or IHD for short) can display lots of different things, depending on its type and the way it’s configured. It’s common to have it displaying Used so far today in £ or kWh, or Using now in W or kW. The load is what is being measured in W or kW, and that can change very quickly, as a fridge suddenly switches on or off, for example. 

I don’t know of a meter that can tell you directly what the load is*. It only counts the number of Wh passing through it. What reading on the meter do you think is telling you what the load is? Perhaps you could share a photo or two of the meter itself so we can see what you’re seeing.
  

*   Many meters have a red indicator lamp that flashes each time the number of Wh passes a milestone, e.g. once per Wh. There is usually a marking on the meter near the lamp to say what each flash (pulse or impulse) means, e.g. 1000 imp/kWh. This gives you a way of estimating the average load between flashes, even though the instantaneous load may vary considerably from that average. 

For example, if the lamp is flashing once every 20 seconds, then the load is 1 (Wh per pulse) × 3600 (seconds per hour) ÷ 20 (seconds per pulse) = 180 W.

If the lamp is flashing too rapidly to measure the time between them, count the number of flashes in, say, one minute. A count of 30 would mean that the load is 1 (Wh per pulse) × 3600 (seconds per hour) × 30 (pulses per minute) ÷ 60 (seconds per minute) = 1800 W = 1.8 kW. You will see that this means the load in W is 60 times the number of flashes per minute.

And as I’ve mentioned previously, there is NO remote access feature on any Smart Meter that lets a supplier - or anyone else - mess with the readings on the meter itself. It’s deliberately and permanently locked down so that such functionality can never be added.

The Metrology Firmware is literally baked into the units in such a way that not even the manufacturer can modify it - this is part of the requirements to get the Certifications which are crucial to being able to sell them in the first place. Once the Certification is issued, whatever Metrology Firmware was on the test unit(s) is the one that’s locked in permanently unless the manufacturer submits a new version for review - but even then, only new units would get the new version while existing ones keep the previous one.

If you think the meter is faulty or has been “tampered with” by your supplier, you’re more than welcome to pay the £149 fee to have it tested - this fee must be paid upfront before the test can be booked. However, I MUST warn you that if the meter passes the Meter Accuracy Test just fine, then you lose and sacrifice the test fee and there’ll be no refunds whatsoever for it, no do you get any refunds for the “over-clocking” you suspected. You do get the test fee back (and a refund for any over-clocking!) if the meter fails the MAT, but it’s a gamble you must only take if you’re absolutely certain the meter isn’t recording properly. You don’t get charged for under-recorded usage if the meter was clocking too slow - in those cases you get the test fee back and the under-recorded usage is written off completely. The meter will also be replaced - but only if it fails the MAT. Gas Meters are always swapped out because they have to go to a test lab for OFMAT purposes. But the same rule applies - if the meter passes the test, you lose the test fee.

In case it helps you make your choice, over 95% of tested meters end up passing the MAT. Your chances of finding a faulty one are not exactly amazing.

It’s your choice in that regard, but as I’ve said many times, Smart Meters are far more accurate than Traditional Meters and come with built-in self-calibration to help ensure they never go out of alignment.

More info below:

Again, very interesting reading of the above. As a retired electrical engineer from a wide variety of industrepial settings, I do try to approach things with an enquiring and sifting mind. That is why I was careful to fully check what loading was switched on at the time when we noticed this doubling of the expected load.

Anyhow, while I posted my piece on the same day as the spurious reading had shown, I then looked today at the usage for yesterday, and it does show a higher than normal spike for that time.

Regarding the remote readout unit, we have it set to show up what actual wattage of the moment is being used. It is an LCD unit that shows a a dial and needle image with the wattage of that moment displayed below. It can be set for various readout settings, but that is our preferred setting. So for instance, if I switch the immersion heater on, it will immediately show 3000w above what was already on screen, and when we switch it of, again it immediately drops by 3000w, so we can see the wattage being drawn at that time.

As said earlier, I will keep a close eye on this, especially having witnessed first hand that it was displaying at one point double what it should.

I accept that fridge and freezer motors have high starting currents (much higher than induction motors in standard settings) but that sudden current demand is only around 0.5sec so even if the readout unit pulse reading coincided with that, it would only read it out for about 5 seconds until it’s next read pulse.

I will keep a vigilant eye on this, I know the format of meter testing as pointed out above “thank you” I hope it is just a one off spurious glitch, but my skepticism will never be dulled in this very wicked an manipulative electronic world that we have all been gradually funnelled into.

I’m so sorry - grandmothers sucking eggs come to mind. In my defence, I’d point out that this is a forum where all manner of consumers come looking for help and information, so anything I write tends to be as basic as possible, because the next person reading it might not know what’s Watt. 

Most IHDs receive a signal from the meter about every ten seconds, so millisecond spikes won’t show. (It’s different for gas: to conserve the gas meter’s battery power, it only transmits readings to the electricity meter at about 30 minute intervals, so the smoothing effect is even more apparent.) 

I’m still intrigued by your statements “I then decided to compare the readout on the remote unit to that on the meter itself … I scrolled through the meter readings a couple of times and it then reduced its reading & began to read what it should according to the loads we have on.” Where precisely did you see a reading reduce on your meter?

As far as I’m aware, smart meters can’t ‘go backwards’ like some earlier ones. They have different registers for flows to and from the building, so you won’t see the output of a solar PV array, say, causing the meter to reverse when energy is exported to the grid.

The reading reduced on both the main meter and the remote. The actual electric meter shows a digital moment by moment readout, and the remote unit shows both an analogue and a digital readout on its LCD display. Both of these simultaniously  dropped to the expected on load wattage after my scrolling through the readouts on the main meter.

I know that these meters can’t go backwards, that has never been in my thoughts.

Well, strictly speaking the device many people know as an IHD is actually a PPMID - Prepayment Meter Interface Device, which can be used to check Prepayment Credit, push through UTRN (Unique Transaction Reference Number) top-up codes, activate Emergency Credit and (in some cases) re-enable the supply remotely without touching the meter itself.

It just so happens that they serve a dual-purpose/dual-function and also act as an In-Home Display as well.

It is worth noting that for Electricity, the HAN gets updates from the Electric Meter roughly every 10 seconds, so changes to load will NOT necessarily show up instantaneously. For Gas, it’s every 30 minutes and the IHD can only show snapshots of the previous 30 minute period.

I’m wondering if I did the right thing by coming on here and stating what happenned in my case, it seems to have caused quite a stir.
 

Anyhow, without going into deep technical descriptions of the meter and display units I have, I can catagorically say that when we switch a load on or off, it will show that change in load within about 2 seconds. So whether this meter is different from the ones being talked about on here I don’t know, but I do know that it will show the load demand change within a couple of seconds of either adding or taking away the load, and those changes down as low as just a couple of watts being switched in or out will show up very clearly.

You did absolutely the right thing, because you’ve got people - at least me - thinking about what you’re seeing. 

I would really like to see a photo of this meter, showing the ‘load demand.’ I’m fairly sure we’re talking at cross purposes, so a picture might help me unravel the confusion that’s currently enveloping me. Just to be certain: I’m talking about the meter itself, not the remote IHD.

Well, here’s the photo’s, when just switching a 9W light on, it can be seen as those 9 watts on the remote readout, wheras it shows as close to it as it can get on the meter being only able to jump in 10 watt steps. If you look at the secondary readout, it shows the time to the nearest minute, the main meter doesn’t show the time unless it is scrolled to time mode. As can be seen, these photo’s were taken within the same minute, I took these photo’s of readings while my good lady switched the light on & off as I took the pics. The scrolled up wattage readout on the meter will only stay in view for about 20 seconds before reverting back to it’s normal units readout, but long enough to visually see a load being added or removed. Hope this is helpful

Extremely, thank you so much for going to the trouble of getting those  beautifully clear pictures.

That sort of meter (L+G E470 type 5424) acquired a bit of a bad reputation a few years ago; many of them went into error mode and stayed there. We can hope that that remains an historical oddity. My principal takeaway is the fact that with judicious button-pushing, you can reveal the instantaneous load. Neither my current SMETS2 meter nor its SMETS1 predecessor could do that. I apologize unreservedly for having doubted that you were seeing ‘load’ figures on the meter itself - I have no excuse.

The only mitigating factor I can come up with is that to most people dealing with electricity meters, the term ‘meter reading’ refers solely to the state of the registers, which start at 0 and increment inexorably as current passes through the meter until it’s finally scrapped (or, possibly, refurbished at the factory).  There can of course be negative increments if the current flow is reversed, e.g. when pushing micro-generated electricity back to the grid. Modern meters don’t do this, though, having separate registers for import (from the grid) and export (to the grid). 

Thanks for clearing this up!

I’m so glad that it is now clear what I can readily see on my readouts on both the meter and the remote. It’s a bit concerning that this type of meter had error mode lock ups a while back, this is our first smartmeter that we had fitted about 2-½ years ago. Regarding the day when we saw those readings on our return home, we knew that we had left a total load of no more than 380 watts on give or take about 50-60 watts. When we got home it was reading 670 watts. I immediately removed the highest draw of 280 watts, it dropped on the readout by that ammount to 390W, then I switched that load back on and it again came back up to its 670W. That’s when I began scrolling through the meter itself and saw the same reading on there as well, but the second or third time I scrolled through, it dropped off back down to my expected load, hence why I became very suspicious and asked Google about remote access to these meters.

When we had the meter installed, they had to make sure that it would receive an internet signal from somewhere as we don’t have a landline or broadband, also certain mobile services are limited. Anyhow, it found a suitable signal so all went ahead, so in my mind, if it can send out information, it also can receive information. If it can be shut down remotely if a customer is defaulting on billing, then what other things can be done remotely?

I do have a PV and wind system, but not grid tied. It is a home constructed system, the wind turbine is also home built. The system drives the fridge and freezer directly, also the immersion heater via a reduction transformer to bring the heater element down to around 280 watts. This is from a 12v DC to 230v 50~ AC 1200 watt Victron inverter running from 355AH wet NiCd cells. While this is just something to play with in retirement, it does save us something like 25-30% of our annual usage. When the batteries run too low due to no sunshine, the inverter drops out and the mains takes over via a couple of interlocked contactors. In the summer it provides enough hot water for our needs, and we can mow our little lawn from it, so every little helps “as they say”. In the winter the tubine has more input when the westerlies blow, then the system just does the fridge & freezer. We don’t use the immersion in winter, the hot water is then fro the CH boiler which is also fed from the inverter.

I’ll never get back what we spent on it, but in terms of satisfaction and well spent time & interest, something to fiddle with, it keep me out of mischief.

Thanks. Don’t worry about my scary error mode remarks. Landis + Gyr have a very bad habit of giving the same designation to different devices, so even if they look the same (and some don’t even do that), their innards and particularly their firmware and software can vary widely. 

One common misconception: neither the WAN (the Wide Area Network that connects smart meters to the outside world) nor the HAN (the Home Area Network that connects meters and IHDs together within the property) use the Internet. The WAN runs on a system similar to but quite separate from that used by mobile phones (south of Manchester, that is), using the Virgin/O2 infrastructure. The HAN uses a low-power, short-range protocol called Zigbee, ideal for passing the sort of data that needs to be passed from device to device at home. There’s a pretty good guide to smart meter communications here: Technical information on UK SMETS 2 Smart Meters. Yes, there is two-way communication between the supplier and the meter, enabling remote control of the meter. However, what suppliers may and may not do is pretty clearly defined in the SMETS2 code, and this certainly doesn’t include tampering with the meter’s measurement functions.

Last, your DIY journey towards a greener future sounds pretty much like @Peter E ‘s, so now you’ve found your way to this forum, you might have a look around, starting with Peter’s journal here: A New Chaos - A Greener Future: Part One | The OVO Forum.

Haha. @Firedog , you managed to neatly include me into this discussion.

Firstly, irrespective of the issues presented on the forum we are all independent volunteers from all walks of life, some retired, some still hacking away at the coal face and we all cast a critical eye on each other’s comments to make sure customers receive the best information on their issue. We do this to ensure customers get the service that they contracted to receive. We will champion issues to the correct part of OVO on issues that do need addressing but it is right that you came on here to ask the question in the first place.

Energy metering comes under the extremely draconian Weights and Measures Act that has severe penalties for suppliers who fail to meet the standards laid down under the law. For this reason, as has been mentioned, meters could never be certified for use that do not accurately measure the quantity of energy delivered within the required limits. This includes NOT having the ability to remotely adjust values that are recorded by the meters. The only adjustment that can be made is for gas meters that record cubic metres of gas used and in the conversion to the cost on your bill a calorific value factor is used by the utility to convert to kWh of energy supplied. Apart from occasional meter failure, which is very rare, the meter readings are within the statutory limits of accuracy. I have been to the test lab where the walls are completely lined with gas and electricity meters of all generations and types simply for the purpose of ensuring they will continue to work properly for the customers.

In the past I’ve put a comment on the forum about half hour (HH) readings that were clearly not correct as I have a pattern of EV charging that simply wasn’t reflected in my HH readings. It turned out that when we change from GMT to BST two of the HH readings are displaced to another time as metering is done according to UTC which is a fixed reference. The readings were still there, they just weren’t being shown in the correct place. When I returned these readings to their correct time then everything made sense and my total bill still accurately reflected what I had used. I’m not saying this is related to your issue @Rocksteady but in the end I was able to see that all the readings were there and the bill was accurate. On returning to GMT last year everything slotted back into place. We had quite a discussion amongst ourselves on the forum and we worked out what was going on.

@Rocksteady  It’s great to see someone take their own path to making the best use of renewable energy in a similar way to my green energy journey, starting with an EV and then progressing onwards from there. If you follow the link that @Firedog (Hi Noel – has it been a week already!) has given then that may give you ideas as well. My only comment would be to do everything safely and follow codes of practice. Also document and label where mains voltages are present for your safety and other people’s if they have to work on the system.

Peter

One final point, given @Blastoise186 encyclopaedic knowledge of energy meters, if he should ever make a mistake on that subject I’ll think you will find that Hell has frozen over as well.