S2 smart meters in the Northern Territory using the Arqiva network - why isn't the meter able to connect to the WAN?

Another thing I looked into while researching all his stuff was what other countries have done to get a Smart Grid. Germany for example decided that it wasn’t worth the cost and haven’t progressed the idea. France have gone ahead, their system uses the (obvious?) technique of simply sending the usage data from the meter back down the electricity supply cable. Users can check their daily usage online. Yes, they have some radio hams saying that the data in the power network is causing interference, but the evidence seems to be disputed - just as it is here.

@bingbongovo2021 I’ve flagged your recent comments, which are really helpful in better understanding your experience, and will be back here with the take of the team working within OVO to make the smart meter roll out a success. 

Thanks for updating us, leave it with me. 

It’s not so much the RF itself or any of the signals going down the wire, but more about the way security is/was implemented with HomePlugs in general. Some manufacturers were better than others - and some of them made a completely flawed implementation. Many of the earlier devices came with default encryption passwords that were insecure and could be cracked in mere seconds - or even just bypassed by someone else using the same make and model as you.

Later models that supported at least the HomePlug AV or HomePlug AV2 standards were a little better and a little more secure. But with things like hardwired/hardcoded master passwords that could never be changed… Yeah… Not the best design choice. All versions of the HomePlug Standards had at least some kind of encryption as part of the standard - just like with the 802.11 Wi-Fi Standards. But they just weren’t as well designed or implemented.

There’s been no further development on HomePlug Standards since the HomePlug Alliance effectively closed down back in 2016 and it’s unlikely that there will be any further development anytime soon - if at all. You can still use these devices, but you do so at your own risk and on the understanding that there’s no guarantee of improved security beyond what’s already been developed in HomePlug AV2 back in 2012. That’s a looooong time in the cybersecurity world.

Yeah, this is the unfortunate truth I’m afraid. I think you can start to see why Smart Meters don’t use PLC for the WAN stuff. Similar technologies are/were being considered as possible HAN side options, but only for that side of things.

While some manufacturers are still making HomePlugs and spinning them as being “new” they’re only new in the sense that they’ve recently been manufactured and/or have a handful of new features at best. But they are ultimately still based on the same Standards that were developed in 2012 and that’s the problem. The original version of HomePlug used DES encryption which is now horribly insecure and shouldn’t be used. HomePlug AV and AV2 use 128-bit AES encryption but to be honest… Even that is scraping the barrel a little these days. You ideally want at least 256-bit AES to help with futureproofing… So not ideal for Smart Meter purposes tbh.

Oh, and you also can’t improve basically anything HomePlug related without creating a new version of the HomePlug Standards. Good luck with that. 

I heard about that - the HomePlug Alliance were working on it before G3 did. It seems as if G3-PLC picked up where the HomePlug Alliance left off, but it’s hard to say for sure.

What is interesting however, is that it’s only been deployed in some form in merely 30 countries - most of which are more in the South America, Africa or Asia continents than anywhere else. There appears to be no interest from North America, most of Europe, or Oceania.

Most of the Alliance Members for G3-PLC also appear to be heavily rooted only in the countries where this technology has been used. I never said it was impossible to do, only that I don’t consider it secure enough for the UK and probably not particularly practical either. Let me see if @cybermaggedon and @knight are around though. They also specialise in cybersecurity stuff.

Oh, and G3-PLC also relies on merely 128-bit AES encryption. I wonder where I’ve heard of that before...

Indeed, it’s just that to me, the use of AES-128 for G3-PLC seems a bit too much of a coincidence to be unrelated to what the HomePlug Alliance did with their standards - which also relied on AES-128 by the time it shut down. Somehow, G3-PLC feels like it’s almost identical to the former HomePlug Green PHY specification.

Ahh yes… The good old BPL… Another project that the HomePlug Alliance had their hand in back in the day. When they said that they were handing things over to other partners, I never knew they would split them all up that heavily. Oh well. BPL still has the same snags as G3-PLC though, since it’s basically the same thing for the most part - just a different use case.

I completely agree that Arqiva definitely hasn’t done a great job so far with the Arqiva WAN stuff and I seriously hope they get their act together sooner rather than later. The problem is that there’s not really that many other options for the Northern Territory - especially up in the Scottish Highlands. But there isn’t really much else that could work either. It’s extremely difficult to get a mobile phone signal in some areas of Scotland for starters, regardless of network!

Technically speaking Satellite Comms can reach almost anywhere… But they’re really slow compared to everything else and massively more expensive to implement. Plus, it’d involve a lot more complexity and cost for every single install - not least because it’d probably involve a lot more kit to be deployed and more resources to get it working. It’s just not viable for this purpose.

For similar reasons as previously mentioned, PLC probably isn’t ideal either, especially because it would involve modifying infrastructure in remote locations and doing that is probably something that’s best avoided if possible. Plus, if the sub-station serving a small village or hamlet happens to be more than a mile away, then it’d be pretty much impossible to use PLC anyway.

The only technologies I can think of which stand any chance are Long-Range Radio (which is what Arqiva uses), microwave radio (which is too expensive for the use case), Free-Space Optical Communication (FSO)/Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) (which is really complicated stuff that doesn’t really do well in bad weather) or Wireless Broadband style connections (think satellite broadband, but completely ground based).

Oh, and I’d have to eliminate FSO and OWC almost immediately, since someone could just block the transceiver with just about any solid object on one side of the connection and sever the entire link completely. That’s without even factoring in that they can only do Point-to-Point links so you’d need like… Millions of them all perfectly aligned with transceivers at every house in the country to make it work at all.

It’s not ideal, but until someone can invent a super-reliable and extremely resilient communications technology that doesn’t destroy everyone’s bank balances and actually works at long distances… Then the Cellular, Cellular + Mesh and Long-Range Radio methods are basically the only feasible technologies for the UK right now.

I’ve been finding it interesting to learn about the different approaches taken by France and Germany. @bingbongovo2021 would you be able to share the sources you’ve found with more info on this?

Thanks for your patience whilst we confirm some advice on your experience as well. We’ve not forgotten, it’s on my list to check for an update daily and when it arrives, I’ll post it here! :) 

I can see where you’re going with the internet connection option, but the NCSC has already considered that one and permanently killed it for security reasons.

However, I also see more practical concerns here - none of which are security related.

Firstly, ZigBee and Wi-Fi are completely incompatible with each other - in fact ZigBee, Z-Wave and Wi-Fi are only compatible with themselves and you’d need a hub to act as a bridge between them. The best we’ve currently got are CAD enabled IHDs, but the CAD features aren’t intended to do the full Smart Meter stuff.

The second issue is that it means making sure customers connect their meters to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. Not everyone will remember to reconnect the meter if they change ISP and have to switch out the existing ISP router with another one. While people who are like me and use our own kit wouldn’t have that problem (unless I choose to upgrade my router myself), it’s still not that easy to make sure people reconnect existing devices, let alone the meters. Oh, and if you change the password… Good luck reconnecting the meters.

It’s also a bit of a nightmare to enter anything into current meters as-is, especially if it’s an L+G meter with terrible buttons - or any meter where at least one of the buttons is locked out with an Anti-Tamper Seal or Tamper Evident Seal (which is possible on the Aclara SGM1400 Series). Entering Wi-Fi Passwords into the meter would be almost impossible without a full QWERTY Keyboard.

And then there’s range. Most people don’t have extremely overpowered Wi-Fi at home - and there’s a very low chance that most ISP routers would stretch far enough to cover the meters, especially in a block of flats. It’s already difficult enough to get a ZigBee HAN signal to cover this use case, let alone Wi-Fi that runs on the same frequencies. Even my crazy overpowered setup isn’t powerful enough to reach Raichu’s meter cupboard downstairs - and I’m running kit that’s so powerful, it’s almost at the legal limit of 30dBm TX Power!

In actual fact (and this is the only security one I’ll include here), my very same overpowered Wi-Fi kit gives me so much control over my network, that I can literally block, modify and re-route pretty much any network traffic as I see fit. It would be all too easy for me to block firmware updates from being downloaded to the meters in order to prevent security vulnerabilities from being fixed for example...

The next one is pretty obvious… But if you’re using a PAYG Smart Meter and you go off-supply due to the credit running out… How would you be able to top up without using a UTRN if the internet connection that would have transferred the credit to the meter is down because your router lost power through being off supply - and the only way to get it to transfer the top-up is to restore the supply which you can’t do without topping up. Classic chicken and egg scenario there.

The final one is the elephant in the corner… Not everyone has internet at home. In fact, I know a lot of people who don’t as I’m a Digital Champion volunteer at a library. So in those cases, the broadband option would be completely impossible.

The current systems definitely aren’t perfect, but they are designed to solve or workaround almost all of those challenges.

My utility supplier is EDF who fitted a smart meter to my home in Harrogate 2 years ago and it has never been able to communicate to the WAN despite several attempts by EDF in that time. I have found the information on this forum very useful as I was of the understanding from smartme.co.uk that booster aerials could be fitted to improve reception but from what I’ve read on this forum that is not the case with the Arqiva WAN.

What a rediculous state of affairs where a system is being installed at a cost being born by the consumer which has no tangible benefits from the old meter. Also, no one seems to be accountable for rectifying the situation. It’s disgraceful that consumers are having to cover the cost of having a meter relocated to get better reception. I’m surprised this hasn’t already been investigated by a consumer watchdog on national media. I’ve a mind to submit a request to one to see if any pressure can be brought to bear.

Well done Bingbongovo, I'll give them a try. In the mean time I've messaged BBC radio 4's You&yours consumer programme to see if they're interested. 

Welcome to the OVO Forum @Cactus ! It’s good to meet you. :)

We’re really glad you find the forum useful, I’ll definitely make sure the moderators see your feedback.

I’ve just had another look at the Network Data Dashboard and I can see where you’re coming from there. It's worth noting that those graphs are not updated in real-time. They’re actually only usually updated either daily, weekly or monthly depending on the individual graph and the Last Updated date below each one will give you some clues there.

I think I’ve figured out the discrepancy, but I might not be right so apologies to DCC if I followed the wrong trail! When it comes to SMETS1 meters that are now connected to DCC, I usually refer to them as being SMETS1+ or S1+, but I’ll skip those references this time to keep things consistent with the DCC’s dashboards.

I think it’s easy to agree that the listed numbers of connected meters seems about right - and all three of these graphs (total connections, S1 connections and S2 connections) are updated on at least a monthly basis (but could be more often). I suspect it’s probably sometime around the start or end of the month that this gets done. At the time I write this, the last refresh of those graphs was on the 27th August 2021. However, the Connected Homes counter was last refreshed on the 1st August 2021 at the time I wrote this, so that technically means it’s not quite the latest data and is slightly behind the others. I’m not sure why it’s not refreshed at the same time, but I guess there’s a reason for it.

I also get the feeling the Connected Homes counter only considers S2 meters rather than S1, which might further explain some of the gap. If I take the average weekday new S2 connection rate of 16,085 meters and multiply that by 22 (the gap between the two graphs), I get 353,870 which is (probably) a somewhat reasonable guess as to how many new S2 meters have recently been connected - but I can’t say for sure as I don’t have the raw data. That still leaves around 300k-350k outstanding, which I could probably guess are either still commissioning or not communicating. But again, this is only a rough guess based on the publicly available data. The other five million or so that aren’t accounted for are likely S1 meters that don’t get put into the Connected Homes graph.

You are bang on regarding booster aerials though. While they can - and do - act as a bit of a lifesaver for some of the trickier installs in the Southern Territory where the Cellular based Telefonica WAN is used, I agree that it’s a missed opportunity that they can’t be used on the Arqiva WAN. I’ve never known why this is, but I guess some kind of decision was made not to support such upgrades? The booster aerials definitely can give you a get out of jail free card in that they’ve prevented the need for expensive meter relocations in loads of houses after all! I’d definitely be interested in what happens if you go to the media though, feel free to keep us posted on that one.

I did manage to find one reference to 4G Comms Hubs on the DCC website, I’ll share that here in case anyone’s interested. I get the feeling that it’s more likely to happen on a future SMETS3 specification rather than with SMETS1 or SMETS2, given the technical changes that would be involved, but you never know (and maybe an S3 spec will use 4G in the Northern Territory as well?). It’s worth noting however, that while the Telefonica WAN does run via O2 infrastructure, it doesn’t directly run on the same O2 network that your smartphone uses. Technically speaking, that could allow O2 to deprecate stuff like EDGE, GPRS, 2G and 3G from the general purpose O2 network, while still retaining it for special purpose networks like the Telefonica WAN used by Smart Meters. Strictly speaking, it can’t easily be shut down while something is still using it anyway.