LOL, the last place that I lived was originally built in 1604, in the shadow of our medieval castle and reusing the stone from it,  Such recycling of old structures was common back then.

As you can imagine the walls in my last place were pretty substantial, 3 to 4 feet thick in a lot them, so a smart meter HAN would probably have very little chance.

PS. What remains of the medieval castle standing, which is quite a bit despite the dressed stone being reused all over that part of the town, is still a  scheduled monument,  and there is even a famous poem about it by Wordsworth.
https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1020455
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egremont_Castle

PS. And now you know where I live, at least the town that I chose to live in.

I’ll get some clarification for you @Nukecad 

Thanks @Emmanuelle_OVO 

However I think that I’ve already found the answers I was looking for and it does appear that this TCSO trial is about WAN and not HAN.

It is also mainly about the Central and South Regions, but should also include some trials in the North Region too.

I have posted what I have found, with a link and quotes, on the TCSO trial page itself:
 

Hey @Nukecad 

I’ve been advised it’s more about HAN but it’s about the process of transferring data across rather than the act of just changing the comms hub. 

As explained in the link, Trust Centre Swap Out (which is a Zigbee term), is about swapping the Comms Hub without having to recommission all the HAN Devices. The Comms Hub is the ‘Coordinator’ and ‘Trust Centre’ of the HAN, which means that when it is replaced, it has to restart the HAN and securely restore the Zigbee network key to all the HAN Devices. This is done by the Service User (Supplier) sending an 8.12.1 SRV (Restore HAN Device Log) to the new Comms Hub, which restarts the HAN and provides credentials to the Comms Hub for secure restoration of the network key to all the orphaned HAN Devices.

Hello,

I hope that this is helpful for others in the “north”…

...It took 6 engineer visits, but eventually the comms to my smart meter is now working. I posted details here:

https://homeeneryefficiencyukreallife.blogspot.com/2024/09/smart-meter-3-my-smart-meter-journey.html

A neighbour was having problems with his smart meter comms; Ovo is his supplier and had made several visits to try to get it working. He shared the above link and the solution also worked for him.

It would be interesting to hear if this works for others.

Best regards

Dave

​@daveharding Thanks very much for that informative link. Success stories are always good reading!

​@Bradley_OVO Can we make sure everyone involved is aware of this possibility? I keep mentioning it in situations when it looks like it might help, but we rarely hear any feedback.

Agree with ​@Firedog - ​@daveharding We love a good success story around here and this one is very exciting!

Yes ​@Firedog - I’ll pass this on internally to the Smart Operations team and beyond! Thanks for the flag 👍

Hi ​@Bradley_OVO,

Thank you for your kind response. 

I am intrigued that this option is not already widely known at Ovo/with Ovo customers in the “North”. I just stumbled upon another Ovo forum post:

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

In the discussion one customer reported that the standard FL100 cable length did not work, but the customer/installer was able to extend the cable further and get the comms working.

Surely Ovo could save a tonne of money by having the FL100 as part of the standard install kit/process where comms does not work 1st time.

How many engineer visits would that save?

How much does each engineer visit cost Ovo?

Why not roll out the extended cable length solution and make Ovo the go to supplier in the “North” (for people with EV’s, solar, etc)?

Just my thoughts

Dave

​@daveharding Great points and I agree, a lot to be achieved and streamlined for all involved.

I’ve forwarded this on to a few stakeholders that work within the engineering and smart metering areas of the business to see if this can be of assistance to us. 

I’ll respond here if I hear anything back 😊

Hello, my smart meter signal comes from winter hill also. Where is your property? 

Hi,

How do you find out where the base station is located? None of the engineers who visited me knew where the base station is…

...it strikes me that if this information were publicly available then it would help engineers optimise signal strength.

...have you found where the North Region base station location information is published?

As it happens we live not far from Winter Hill, but not in line of sight.

Best regards

Dave

DCC doesn’t like giving that information out for security reasons. All we can say is that their equipment is on most of the main towers in the Northern Territory and that line of sight is not required.

… with great difficulty!

The location of the SMWAN antennae  seems to be a closely guarded secret, but apparently Arqiva mount them on some of their TV transmission towers. It’s likely that there will be one on each of the towers north of Manchester on this map, but whether that includes Winter Hill and/or Emley Moor is anyone’s guess. The boundary between the Northern CSP and the Central and Southern CSP regions is necessarily fluid, and we’ve heard of customers in Lancashire who couldn’t connect to the Arquiva (LRR) network but could to the O2 (cellular) one. To frustrate detection still more, a particular property’s TV aerial may well be pointing towards a different repeater mast closer than the nearest full-fat one, but there’s not likely to be a WAN antenna on that mast.

We’ve also heard of otherwise dodgy connections being secured simply by shifting the communications hub a metre up, down or sideways by means of a flying lead - that’s all it takes in some situations.

Just an update to say the electricity meter has been diagnosed “faulty” and has been replaced.

The long range radio communications module has also been replaced with a “mesh” communications module.

The electricity meter appears to be working correctly ie “in smart mode” but the gas meter for whatever reason will not connect to the HAN.

Thanks

Morning ​@MASSO and thanks for letting us know.

Did the engineer advise whether they’d be scheduling another appointment to try and fix things?

No, another visit has not been scheduled, hopefully I can resolve this myself by asking the DCC to “allow” the gas meter onto the electricity meter HAN network and me pressing the appropriate button on the gas meter. 
With regard to the electricity meter just wanted to advise that if after several failed attempts to find a long range radio signal (my case) then they can and will (with permission from your electricity provider) fit a 4G communication hub if appropriate.

Morning ​@MASSO I hope you had a good weekend.

Just to confirm, you’ve been in contact with the people at the DCC since the installation? I’ve asked for some advice from one of our Metering experts on this as well, and will get back to you as soon as I’ve heard from them.

Hi Ben

I haven't contacted the DCC yet in case my assumptions are wrong.

Thought I’d leave it a couple of weeks to see if the gas meter miraculously springs into life.

I know there is a HAN as the led on the electricity meter is “flashing” and both my Chameleon IHD3 and my Glow CAD are displaying my electricity usage.

However when I try and connect the gas meter to this same HAN using the “information” menu and “OK” button, the gas meter display returns a message saying that it cannot find the HAN.

The gas meter is installed approximately one metre away from the electricity metre. there is nothing installed between these two meters, no walls, no obstructions etc with a difference in height of about 300mm.

I had a good weekend, thank you for asking, trust yours was equally as good.

I wonder if this little utility would give any clues: homebrew.n3rgy.com. It just queries the DCC for details of your connected equipment, so any communication faults should become apparent. Insert your MPAN, tick the tiny little confirmation box and click Check meter. You can ignore any warnings about expired certification, but other warnings and any errors may help diagnosing the problem.

Hi again ​@MASSO,

I did have a good weekend thank you. Just to double check, can you see any gas readings coming through on your online account / app, and do the meter details on your online account / app match those of both meters?

This article shows you how to navigate around the ‘Meter Readings’ page, where your meter serial numbers are displayed. You can cross-reference these against your meters. 

Just poking my nose in again.

​@MASSO  Is your current gas meter SMETS2 or is it SMETS1?
A photo of it, or if yiu can tell us the Makers name and model number, should help identify it if you are not sure.

A SMETS1 gas meter cannot communicate with a SMETS2 electricity meter/coms hub.

I was in that situation myself last year so had to keep sending manual readings for gas, but I got a shiny new SMETS2 gas meter last November and all is communicating fine now and both meters are providing half-hourly readings.

The gas meter is an EDMI GS-60B, it was installed in November 2022 with an Aclara SGM1412-B meter, EDMI 420 communication hub and Chameleon IHD7 display, with everything operating in “dumb” mode.

I still have the same gas meter (EDMI GS-60-B) but the electricity meter has been replaced with an Aclara SGM1411B, the communication hub with a dual band hub and the display with a Chameleon IHD3.

The only information displayed on the IHD3 is the electrical energy in kWh, electrical power in W, electrical standing charge in pence and electrical unit cost in pence. I cannot access any information from the gas meter.

I also have a Glow CAD connected by the supplier (at the time of purchase)to the electricity meter HAN ZigBee network and my Wi-Fi network, this allows me to import the energy values into my home automation system using MQTT protocol without having to use the internet or DCC cloud servers. Again unfortunately only the electrical values are displayed and not the ones from the gas meter. If I do go onto the suppliers website I  can download the energy history in the form of a csv file but it only shows the electricity information and not the gas. The only meter ID on this webpage is that of the Aclara SGM1411B.  

Of the five LED’s on the dual band communication hub the only two that are permanently off are the “Mesh” and “Gas” LED’s.

Great, that is a SMETS2 gas meter so it should just need to be reconnected to the communications hub over the HAN (Home Area Network).

You can try doing it yourself.

I found instructions and a video here, the video shows an EDMI GS-60B being joined to the HAN

https://help.uw.co.uk/article/energy/how-to-reconnect-my-edmi-gas-smart-meter-to-the-smart-network

Once joined then I think that after a while  it should show up on your IHD without further intervention, the others may know more about that.
Then I believe it should just be a case of waiting for the readings to trickle through DCC to OVO and your bills, again the others can advise better about that than I can.

(Mine took a while to do that fully even though I could see them on my IHD. You might also want to make sure on your account that you are set to half-hourly readings for gas, at first my newly replaced gas meter was set to send monthly even though the electricity was sending half-hourly readings daily, a quick phone call to support got that sorted out and now both meters send half-hourly data each day).

Thanks, but I was already aware of the instructions to “reconnect” the gas meter, I've been trying to do this for the past eighteen months or so.

Each time I try it fails and I get the error message on the gas meter screen “cannot find HAN”.

I have therefore come to the conclusion that in order to get the gas meter onto the local HAN the DCC will first of all have to input the gas meter ID into the electricity meter software, it should then hopefully be just a meter of connecting the gas meter locally as per the instructions.

I don't think there is any more that can be done other than to contact the DCC/supplier and arrange for another site visit, this will be the seventh if I remember correctly.