Ah, maybe should explain, Energy Ombudsman said contact Ofcom because it is a comms issue, not an energy issue.

This is a copy of Arqiva’s replay when I asked them in Feb what they were doing to fix the problem.

Dear …..

Thank you for your enquiry dated 2nd February relating to your smart meter.

Unfortunately, Arqiva is not in a position to provide this information directly and we would encourage you to speak to your energy provider and request that they escalate.

Kind regards

Community Relations

Arqiva

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.

I have heard of Powerline Communications (PLC) before. It’s also known as Powerline Networking and is the basis of those HomePlugs back in the day. Except that the HomePlug Alliance has since shut down and the technology is mostly abandoned in that context. It does get put to good use for EV Charging though.

There are some pretty big security flaws though surrounding PLC - especially due to the nature of how it works. It’s fine for completely closed circuits like the short distance between an EV and an EV Charger - but for any other application it’s all too easy to eavesdrop the communications going through the network. In a few cases, I even heard of neighbours being able to tap into someone else’s HomePlugs from next door. While it might work for the HAN, I very much doubt the NCSC would approve of PLC being used for the WAN side of things...

At long distance, PLC also starts to struggle a bit. And there has been previous concerns about it messing up Wi-Fi, let alone other radio signals.

As for Arqiva… I’m afraid there’s not much I can do there as I don’t know their processes.

@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. 

Your comment piques my curiosity, @Blastoise186: what is it about unintended RF emitted by PLC that is less secure than the RF that normal Wi-Fi depends on?
Is it “just” that the encryption that is part of Wi-Fi standards was not designed into the proprietary protocols of PLC?

(Like many such devices, mine combines PLC and Wi-Fi)

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.

Thanks, @Blastoise186 - I'm much better informed than I was.

(I have only an amateur's awareness of encryption, and how some methods are a lot more secure than others. I even got part way thru understanding how public keys work once, and can vaguely see how full on quantum computing would render insecure a lot of what is currently secure. But I'm not in the least surprised to learn that, deep down, manufacturers of kit for consumers don't care much about it.)

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. 

Blastoise186, I wonder if I’m getting something mixed up here. You seem to be saying that Smart Meters CAN’T communicate at a wide area network level by using powerline communications. But as I stated above the French Smart meter network uses this technology successfully. The French company that has rolled out their Smart Network, Enedis, has launched the G3-PLC alliance to explain and promote the technology (see G3-plc.com). 

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...

I’m not familiar with the G3 WAN approach, so I’m talking with limited knowledge.

On the face of it, using PLC/HomePlug for the smart meter WAN comes with some challenges. HomePlug-style communications allow lots of devices to talk on the same cable, but is only good for around 400 metres. It’s possible to transmit many kilometres with data over power cables but only with a single sender/receiver at each end.

In the street I live in, only 25% of the houses would be able to talk as far as the substation at the end of the street with HomePlug. Sounds like they would have to install some extra street equipment to get this to work. Makes sense in big apartment blocks, and places where new infrastructure is going in. Kinda complicated in streets where everything is already under the tarmac.

Using the mobile network for WAN in the UK does seem like a sensible compromise. No cables to lay, and there’s a lot of bandwidth (er… in most places, anyway), and the network has good resilience against all sorts of environmental conditions.

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

Security is important on smart meter infra, right @Blastoise186 otherwise people can fake messages that say they haven’t used any electricity

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.

I didn’t check the dates of my comments about Germany, they did a U turn and are now rolling out Smart Meters, using BPL (broadband over powerline) communications. 

The French rollout is almost complete, just 3 million meters to go after starting in 2016.

Without some pressure on Arqiva (from who?) or a change to allow Northern Territory installations to use a different tech to bypass their network, I can’t see the UK having a Smart Network by the time it really needs it.  We have now had a Smart Meter for 2 years and it has been dumb all that time.

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.

The first solution is for the government NOT to hand out monopolies to companies that just grab the low hanging fruit and then let the courts decide how many of the rest of the market they can be forced to accommodate.  It’s happened too much and it’s got to stop. Anyway,  in my case at least I’m NOT in a remote area.

Second, look at what France and Germany are doing and copy it. I’m pretty nonplussed about how you are not engaging with the FACT that these and other countries ARE using CPL/BPL. France has just as many remote communities as the UK, probably more given their overall population density is much lower than ours. They certainly take their security just as seriously as we do - quote “Germany has also moved decisively on the issue of data privacy in connected energy monitoring systems, legislating that a ‘gateway administrator’, contained in a certified ‘smart meter gateway’ device, is required in home to manage the two-way flow of citizens’ energy data, which can be shared or retained as householders prefer.” Perhaps a combination of powerline and LRR is the answer.

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! :) 

Hi, it’s all easy to find with a google search, although I do worry nowadays about how people’s previous searches can affect the algorithm, and subsequent results.

Here are some sites. I’m not really looking into exactly how other countries have implemented CPL/BPL, it’s enough for me that they have done it and therefore it is a practical alternative.

https://enterpriseiotinsights.com/20190816/channels/fundamentals/the-beauty-of-broadband-powerline

https://www.capital.fr/entreprises-marches/compteur-linky-le-deploiement-de-masse-termine-a-la-fin-de-lannee-1390963

https://prix-elec.com/energie/comprendre/cpl-linky

I should have added another method of connecting the meter to DCC, and that is using the customers own internet connection. Again people will cry security but since the alternative is asking the customer to take the readings themselves I can’t quite see why someone who is prepared to hack their meter feed is not capable of simply entering inaccurate data. 

I wonder how many smart meters you need to have working to achieve a smart grid. I guess the fewer the smart meters the more the tolerance required in the grid. So there will be a cost/benefit that says we don’t actually need everyone to have a smart meter. Since for many of these customers it isn’t their fault then it’s unfair to penalise them (mind you - pay as you go...) so perhaps not having a smart meter will be good - at least no-one will be able to cut you off.

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.

You’ve got this wrong. I’m not talking about chucking one single monolithic solution out and replacing it with another one. I’m talking about back ups, if LRR is not working somewhere then use the back up solution, whichever one works.

The most obvious solution is to make sure the LRR WAN fully covers the entire Northern Territory, all the other suggestions are workarounds because hard experience says that our political and corporate system is so flawed that we can’t stop private industry from providing inadequate services so that they can cream off the profit making part of any deal they sign up to, and hold the government to ransom to fill in the gaps.

It was bloody stupid to make Ovo et al install these meters, without giving them the tools to make them actually work.

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.

Cactus, I contacted the consumers association in February about this, they showed some interest, but I haven’t seen anything from them in the media yet. I’m sure that the more people who contact them, the more likely they are to look into this issue.

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. 

Good stuff Cactus.

I just looked at the DCC website, there are 8.8 million Smets2 and 5.4 million Smets2 installed, but only 8.2 million connected homes!. So even if ALL the Smets1 are now dumb (unlikely) 600,000 Smets2 are installed and not working.

DCC are also facing the obsolescence of the 2G/3G network used in the mobile WAN solution and are procuring 4G hubs, odd thing is that they say on Smart-energy.com “ The upgrade will also help improve network coverage for consumers in the North of Britain.”

But customers in the North aren’t on mobile networks… 

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. 

We’ve taken this one to team who’ve confirmed the usual process following us installing a smart meter which can’t receive a signal on the Arqiva network. In this scenario we should report this as an incident to the Data Communications Company (DCC) who are then responsible for contacting Arqiva to improve the WAN signal in your area. The issue is then between the DCC and Arqiva to improve the signal coverage, all we can do is flag it accordingly - the infrastructure is not within our control.

Once we’ve raised the issue to the DCC it can take up to 6 months for them to investigate.  We may be able to schedule an engineer’s revisit once the 6 month investigation period is up, however there’s no guarantee things will be working at this point. It’s worth mentioning that even without a signal your meter will continue clocking your usage and readings can be taken manually and submitted on your online account.

Sorry to hear of the advice you were given to pay for a meter relocation to resolve this issue. We should only be suggesting this as a really last resort option if the meter is in a particularly poor signal location, and all other attempts to improve the signal to the meter have failed. 

Whilst we’re really interested by the discussion this topic has sparked, it's worth mentioning that as a supplier, we are limited in terms of the way smart meter networks function and the security implications of using alternative methods to receive your usage data.