Can Energy Suppliers manipulate smart meter reading remotely?

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👍