Effect of smart meters on AV2 Homeplug ethernet networks

A neighbour of ours had a similar concern - he went to Citizens Advice and was told that the meter going beyond its certification period does not require a replacement. Only if the meter is unsafe - for which there is a burden of proof on the energy company would it need to be replaced. 

Energy companies cannot force you to leave, under threat of a smart meter installation or disconnect your supply if you do not have a smart meter fitted - even if your current meter is outside of certification. 

He’s had an uncertified meter for a long time now with no issues.

Your neighbour had bad advice. That’s unusual for CAB...

Uncertified Meters must be replaced by law. Gas Act 1990 and Electricity Act 1989 require Suppliers to use only a Certified Meter and not an Expired one, otherwise they can’t legally bill a Customer.

Yeah, apologies, just spoke to my neighbour and his situation was slightly different. He has a MID electric meter which doesn't expire - his supplier was either unaware or was trying to force him to get a smart meter and had given him the wrong info. They also wanted to replace his gas meter for the same reason and apparently those don't expire at all!

This is useful: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/energy/energy-supply/your-energy-meter/getting-a-smart-meter-installed/

Actually, all meters expire eventually - MID is just the standard.

It sounds like your neighbour has a weird type that might not be used for billing. I’d need to see a photo to be sure.

Thanks for that helpful reply!

I think I will have to just wait and see.

If necessary, I would go for the Cat 6 professional wiring solution despite the expense. Best to lay it along the skirting boards and round door frames I would think and obviously drill through walls only where necessary.

Unfortunately I would have to seek the permission of the Flat Management Company which might not be forthcoming.

I would be very sorry to lose my AV2 network. The Homeplug Manufacturers only supply Management Software for Windows and MAC which excludes me as a Linux only user. Fortunately Qualcomm Atheros provide their free open-plc-utils suite for Linux and I have been able to build my own layer on top of that to give me a comprehensive set of Homeplug management tools tailored to my needs.

As a further question, if post Smart Meter installation AV2 no longer works and I can’t get permission to lay Cat 6, what would happen if I switched to using G.hn devices for my own network? Does G.hn support the same concept of multiple NMK (Network Management Keys) as AV2? I’ve tested that out and it works perfectly with complete logical isolation between the networks. No need to do complicated VLAN stuff with Routers and Switches. So would a Customer’s G.hn network happily coexist with an Alt HAN G.hn network?

​@AGuy thanks for your interesting post.

I’m happy to see you’re getting some great help here from ​@Blastoise186 and ​@woodstok2000.

Just to clarify, from an OVO standpoint, meter certification is an Industry-wide policy and we legally have to change meters that are out of certification, otherwise this can be a real safety hazard. 

Using mains wiring for data transport is a bonus. It's not designed for that.

Smart meters will be certified to RFI/EMC standards that will not cause issues due to RFI radiated from connected cables and from the communications hub and will be required to accept any RFI that will normally be impressed on the cables due to other meters and other mains equipment such as switch mode power supplies, electric vehicles etc connected to the mains. All of these devices are certified to work without interference to each other (ElectroMagnetic Compatiblity) but that does not include devices specifically designed to communicate with each other over the mains wiring.

The issue might not be your meter either but the smart meter from your neighbour especially if you are on a looped supply where one phase is shared between neighbouring houses.

I hope it continues to work properly.

Peter

Thank you Peter E for that helpful response.

Your statement “Using mains wiring for data transport is a bonus. It's not designed for that.” raised a wry smile. Isn’t that exactly what Alt HAN / G.hn is relying on?

The supply to our block of flats is three phase (needed for the lift) and the flats are evenly split across phases to provide their individual single phase supplies. So if two flats on the same phase are both using Alt HAN technology doesn’t that mean that we have two G.hn networks on the same wiring? Obviously protected from each other by firmware keys and encryption but still able to interact at the electrical level? Perhaps I am wrong in thinking that. But for Alt HAN to work with an In-Home DIsplay which is unable to work on 2.4GHz due to range issues it must allow G.hn to pass through the Consumer Unit so the latter cannot act as a G.hn firewall.

Anyway I am slightly cheered by your and other responses. Given that my present AV2 network operates virtually flawlessly it may be that it can take a partial hit from noise without too much degradation.

I might consider purchasing a couple of G.hn adapters and doing some testing with them operating alongside my existing AV2 setup to see how well or how badly they get along. Unfortunately it seems that there is currently no G.hn management software generally available in the Linux domain with such comprehensive facilities as QA’s open-plc-utils suite.

Thanks again.

In theory, Alt-HAN and G.hn should play nice together - you’ve got much higher chances with that than with HomePlug stuff.

As for the configuration utilities… If you’re willing to go to the dark side you could try running them via Wine (and then remove it when you’re done), but I can’t make any promises they’ll play nice even with that.

Otherwise… You might just have to run cables around the property itself. I use Ubiquiti UniFi kit myself - but I’m too lazy to smash through walls, so I also just run 50m CAT6 between the switches in my lounge, hallway and bedroom (secured with 3M Command Strips!)… Cuz I’m that guy… Yeah, my landlord hates me.

And yeah, it’s totally normal to be replying at 2am with tech geek stuff that the Forum Moderators have no idea about! XD

Thanks for the update.

I’ve since discovered that Devolo have a free-to-download software utility named Cockpit with Windows, Mac, and Linux versions. It works with both their AV/AV2 and G.hn products. It will also partially work with other manufacturers’ products probably to the extent of recognising them in a network but not allowing configuration changes. Devolo’s Magic2 kit is well specced but more expensive than most and I’ve seen a number of comments that the UK versions of their G.hn pass through plugs run hot which can have a negative effect on their performance (whereas the plugs for the German market with a different form factor are likely OK). Also trawling through comments on Amazon and the like I’ve seen some posts saying that replacing AV2 by G.hn didn’t improve matters significantly and sometimes actually made things worse. Of course there were plenty of other posts saying the reverse.

I’m not sure that Cockpit would work under WINE though. When you suggested removing WINE after use was that for security reasons? Windows Malware can do damage under WINE but only to files to which it has write access; usually just the local user’s home directory hierarchy rather than to the OS. So one could run in a dummy user which had no other purpose.

Although I use the QA open-plc-utils suite, I have experimented using Solwise’s own AV utility in a Windows VM under VirtualBox. It worked fine - needed to set the Virtual Network Adapter to Bridged Mode and allow Promiscuous Mode. However I prefer the QA software with my own scripts on top.

Are you using Flat Cat 6 cable to get under doors? And if so what is the minimum clearance they need?

Many thanks.

If mains wiring was set up to transport data then it would be twisted to minimise RFI both outgoing (leading to signal attenuation) and incoming (preventing it acting as an antenna). The fact that it works is probably due to the clever noise dodging algorithms built into the protocol but as a radio engineer I know of plenty of sites where this would stand no chance of working.

Peter 

My comment was made tongue in cheek and not intended to gainsay anything in your original reply so apologies if it came over badly.

It just struck me that the unfriendly environment of a mains network would be the same for superimposing a G.hn data network on top as it would for an AV2 data network.

So the argument for G.hn being superior to AV2 rests on it having even cleverer noise dodging algorithms and possibly a wider frequency range.

Having both G.hn and AV2 having to dodge one other on the same electrical network would be the worst possible situation.

Not at all. So many people don't understand the technology that they use (that I use as well)  and sometimes don't understand why it stops working when it used to or never worked at all when a friend of theirs has no problem. It's  a minefield even to the extent where there is evidence that a smart meter communications hub was tripping an RCD in a nearby consumer unit every day in the early hours. It was cured (I think) by choosing a different make of RCD and the likely cause was most likely resonant mains wiring and an RCD that was susceptible to that frequency. So interactions with other tech happens all the time and sometimes you never find the root cause.

If you have a smart meter fitted I think it is highly unlikely it will cause an issue (I run internet over mains with a smart meter and it doesn't seem to be an issue) but individual circumstances vary and you can’t tell until you try it.

As for EVs charging, some push so much noise back up the mains wiring (a 7kW switch mode power supply ~10kHz + harmonics) that it can even make a consumer unit ‘sing’ much to the annoyance of the home owner.

The conclusion I draw from this is that an Electricity Smart Meter on its own may degrade an existing AV2 Homeplug network but it’s relatively unlikely to be serious. However you can’t tell in advance and a lot will depend on the quality of the mains wiring.

However an Alt HAN G.hn system is very likely indeed to degrade an existing AV2 Homeplug network possibly to the point of rendering it completely unusable. Further, the AV2 network may itself degrade the Alt HAN G.hn network but probably to a lesser extent.

Legally one cannot refuse meter replacement when the existing meter reaches the end of its certification period. I suspect, but don’t yet know, that one could legally refuse an Alt HAN G.hn installation on the grounds that it would be likely to damage an existing expensive AV2 network. Of course it might be that there is no electricity point available near enough to the Gas Meter for Alt HAN G.hn to work. Or, even if there is, the customer might simply decline to provide mains electricity to the bridging device and instead supply manual gas meter readings on a regular basis. Perhaps there will be test cases fought over this.

Actually, there’s another option - Dual-Band Comms Hub. Gets rid of the entire problem if your setup is eligible.

Alt-HAN will still blast stuff via G.hn even if the bridge is unplugged.

Unfortunately… With HomePlug completely dead, there won’t ever be a fix for this. You’ll have to find an alternative option if Alt-HAN messes things up. There’s nothing OVO can do - HomePlug died before G.hn was a thing so they never got to collaborate.

Dual Band Comms Hub sounds interesting. Presumably the engineers have test kit to check signal strengths on site before committing to installing it?

I have no knowledge of G.hn but I’d rather thought that if there was only one device in a network then it would only be sending out Beacon messages repeatedly looking for any new devices wanting to join. These Beacons would be sent several times a second but would be very small amounts of data and have little effect on overall network throughput. But from your post it would seem that’s not the case at all.

In addition to my main AV2 network I have two additional AV2 networks all with unique NMKs. One is for a restricted Subnet of untrusted “IoT” devices such as Smart TVs. Most of the devices on this Subnet are in the same room so use direct wired Ethernet. But if I want to be able to send Video from a DLNA server to another room I switch those Homeplugs on. The third AV2 network is used exclusively to connect a BT Hybrid Connect Device (uses EE 4G network) to the BT SmartHub2 Router to maintain Internet service if the landline broadband goes down. So those two plugs are almost never switched on. 

Even so, testing has shown that with all three sets of Homeplugs powered up, if only the main network is passing user data then the effect on the other two networks is not measurable.

Quite a number of years ago (before Smart Meters were a reality), I was contacted to replace my mechanical rotary dials Gas Meter. They put in a new meter with an LCD screen. It wasn’t as easy to read but never mind.

A couple or so years later they contacted me again to say they wanted to replace the Gas Meter again. They reverted to a mechanical type this time with “Car Odometer” type numbers. I asked the installer why they needed to do this and he said that the LCD meters had turned out to be not as good as initially thought - their internal battery ran down too quickly.

This third Gas Meter is the meter I have today. I regularly submit readings to the OVO web site with no issues. As OVO are only proposing to change the Electricity Meter at this time I think I will just carry on with the existing Gas Meter for as long as I can. It seems that Gas Meters do not expire in quite the same way as Electricity Meters and as I am in my late 70s the existing Gas Meter may hopefully see me out.

That's quite a set up you have there. I just have a pair of AV600 powerline adaptors for my DVR that doesn't have WiFi and I've only just found out that it is HomePlug and AV2 compliant. Didn't even bother to find that out before now. It works fine with my new SMETS2 meter as I've just checked if there was a software update for the DVR.

I'm guessing the odometer gas meter is purely mechanical but they do wear out eventually so it will have an expiry date. I had my electric and gas meter changed to a SMETS1 device in 2014 and the battery was still ok when they changed it about six weeks ago.

I don’t have any AV600 adapters. According to the chart I have from Solwise they did make them and they are described as AV2-SISO. I think they were fairly rapidly superseded by the AV1200 AV2-MIMO plugs which are the ones I mainly have. 

With the AV1200s I can achieve a data transfer rate of 350 Mbits/s but on a very long run to a Utility Room on another floor and on the other side of the flat block (completely unreachable by WiFi) this drops to 160 Mbps. Still usable and I use that link to transfer backups for a measure of physical separation.

I also have a few AV500s which on the Solwise chart are described as AV500 so not AV2. These are not usually powered on but even they can get up to 250 Mbps over the shorter distances.

Drop-outs just don’t occur - well possibly one about every six months. And then it’s just usually a matter of sending a command over the network to reboot the errant plug. The QA open plc utils has the raw facilities to allow you to write your own software layer (I just use Linux shell scripts - as someone who was brought up on an Algol 68 like language that’s painful but needs must) to do this sort of thing. Absolute worst case is a power cycle but that’s even rarer.

I think perhaps my electrical network is not in too bad condition.

It’s very heartening to hear that your AV600s work with your new SMETS2 meter. Many thanks for that info.

I'm FORTRAN IV, Basic, 6502 assembler, C and Unix V but I gave those up sissy jobs to be a lumberjack (sorry) railway man.

I have always had a deep interest in Railways but not professionally.

I originally wanted to be an Electronics Engineer. I left school at the end of 1964 and had about 9 months before starting University. I managed to wangle a temporary job through a friend’s Uncle in the Research Lab of a Computer Manufacturer. The lab covered both HW and SW activities and on Day One still at the tender age of 17 I was asked if I’d be happy to do some programming as they had a need. Of course I said “fine”. There was no Assembler so the programming was done in absolute machine code. Every time you wanted to add any instructions you had to manually recalculate any affected jumps.

Three years later there had been some mergers and I joined what had then become the parent group of that original firm. By now Assembly Languages were in vogue but in the early 1970s they switched to the Algol 68 like language. Its compiler produced extremely efficient object code.

Not sure how relevant this is to the OVO forum so I’ll stop here!

Not sure how relevant this is to the OVO forum so I’ll stop here!

Good news for ya - the House Rules are actually pretty chill about that as we go off of context. Since you’re talking about network stuff anyway and how it plays nice (or not) with Smart Meters, we’re cool about it. In fact, we actually LOVE these technical discussions here.

We’re always chill about it because it actually helps other users out (you’ll be surprised!). Since you’re not trying to use it as a chance to plug your online store or make money out of the Forum, that’s one of the things which makes us way more OK with it. :)

If you’d like to get official word from the Forum Moderators, we can totally request that for you too, but hopefully this unofficial explanation helps for now.

Good point about going off piste but it's sometimes nice to make a bit more of a connection with a customer. It compensates for the ones who have no respect for people trying to help them. A machine code junkie. You don't meet many of those. Punch card progamming. What was wrong with that?

Thanks for those reassuring words!

Back in 1965 the lab was using paper tape (rather than punch cards) mostly to input programs. They had high speed paper tape readers on the computers and slightly less high speed paper tape punches. There were no magnetic discs yet but several magnetic tape decks. Paper tapes were prepared on typewriter-like machines called Friden Flexowriters. These displayed what was being typed on a paper roll and a paper tape could be loaded and its entire contents printed. It could also be copied to another paper tape (there was a slow paper tape punch attached as well as the reader) and there were some rudimentary editing facilities. I remember writing a program which would read the paper tapes on a computer reader at high speed and back them up to mag tape from where copies could be made using the computer’s card punch much faster than a Flexowriter could copy. Also by copying from one mag tape to another you had secure backup on an arguably more resilient medium than the paper tape which was prone to tearing. Happy times!