Can Energy Suppliers manipulate smart meter reading remotely?

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.

@knightbeat I think we would be interested to know where you heard this or if you have any link to a document or site which is the source of what you’ve heard. As you can imagine there is currently a ‘sensitivity’ surrounding issues of this nature and it would be useful to trace the source to see how this was followed up. It’s unfortunate that rumours spread from casual comments and the truth is that Smart meters are an accurate and very useful way of monitoring and controlling your energy usage.

OVO encourage customers to enrol in their Power Move initiative that enables customers to get a significant discount on their bill for moving their electrical energy use out of the peak load times and this is only possible with a Smart meter. In the future flexible tariffs will enable even greater saving over the year by users targetting their energy during times of low wholesale energy prices with the usage captured by a Smart meter.

Peter

Gonna comment on the Remote Disconnection functionality.

Yes, it is true that the feature feature does exist. HOWEVER, the use of it has been locked down so tightly that it’s almost impossible to use - and pretty much all suppliers have mutually agreed not to use it outside of the most extreme last resort cases.

The same rules apply to Remote Disconnections as for Force-Fit Prepayment or Warranted Disconnections - the supplier MUST try absolutely every other possible solution first and even then, there’s another 50,000 years of red tape first…

TL;DR it’s a thing that exists, but in reality almost never gets used.

I am dealing with a UK energy company where I have a A1700 / Elster PB3 HH meter installed (large house as opposed to a commercial building).  This meter has recorded continual usage for several years and I am disputing a specific billing period over several years , as their billing invoices are far in excess of the actual meter reading, by a factor of some 20 - 50% and far above.  A few years back the local utility engineer said it seemed the meter was pulling estimated usage every 30 minutes rather than an actual reading. I will add here I am not an electrical utility specialist though do have a software and tech background.

When querying this we get the following reply “For HH supplies, the meter records a reading for each half-hour interval throughout the month. This data is stored and collected remotely. XXX then receives the interval data and bills you for the total consumption for the month. The meter automatically resets for the next month.  Invoices shows the total units consumed for the billing period, not a single meter reading.”

I cannot understand how a meter reading can be manually adjusted or reset remotely.  Further, I am not sure on reading the specs of this meter we have it’s even possible to do remotely.  I get “An analysis of the Elster A1700 commercial and industrial energy meter (specifically model variant PB3CABYCT) confirms that the utility company does not possess the functionality to remotely reset the main cumulative kilowatt-hour (kWh) reading, either partially or fully on a periodic basis. 

Analysis of Monthly Resets

The only data points that reset on a monthly basis are related to demand management and billing cycles, not total consumption:

Has anybody heard of UK utility companies having the ability to manually adjust meters in this way?  My argument is why are we paying you any more than what is on the meter, their argument is we billed you for your actual consumption (which I paid until we checked it) and we reset your meter monthly to what you see today.  I didnt check all the meter readings monthly in those days.  any advice , feedback most welcome.

If @Blastoise186 can help as he seems to be the meter guru, I would welcome his comments.

Meter readings are directed via DCC and from there to the energy provider.

What can happen is that the energy provider uses estimated readings rather than actual if readings are not regularly reaching them.

There should be a continuous register on the meter where you can look at total usage. The only ‘reset’ available is internal where the meter would record daily, weekly and monthly usage.