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Commissioning Process

Once your new SMETS2 meters are physically installed, the commissioning process can start.

The Engineer will use a proprietary App to connect the electricity meter to DCC, the government-owned Data Communications Company. Theoretically this should simply involve taking a photo of the bar codes on the meter. However, the two installations I've seen thus far both involved entering the meter numbers into the App manually.

There are different serial numbers for the electricity smart meter and its communications system. And there is plenty of room for error, such as confusing an 8 with a B. The App is clearly not yet fit for purpose and needs additional features to be added.

Once the Engineer receives confirmation that the electricity meter and DCC are communicating correctly, the new SMETS2 gas mter is paired with it. This uses a wireless signal running at 2.4GHz called Zigbee.

The electricity meter is the master unit. It is the only item with a connection to the outside world, shown as a red wireless signal in the above diagram.

Finally, the In Home Device is unpacked and paired with the electricity meter. The Installer will run through the basic features, which are described more fully in a small instruction book.

OVO are currently installing an IHD called a Chameleon. It also uses the Zigbee wireless protocols. This local Zigbee system can in future be extended to control other smart devices such as washing machines or storage radiators. It's called the HAN (Home Area Network).

Initially, the IHD may not show any data at all.

You can be assured it is communicating with the electricity meter, however, because there is a white signal-strength meter at top-left of the display.

After three days, my IHD suddenly started displaying real data

... but the figures bore little resemblance to the actual energy used.

This is all quite normal. There is a lot of work which continues in the background once the on-site installation is complete.

Not only will DCC be testing and tuning the encrypted communication links, but OVO will be installing your actual tariff data. This is held in the master electricity meter and is only required for you to view readings on the IHD. The actual usage figures are calculated separately by OVO as part of their billing process.

It can take several weeks before the entire process is completed. Only then will your IHD reflect the same information visible on your My OVO page online.

If there are any discrepancies in billed usage in the meantime, these will get automatically corrected because the actual meter readings are cumulative.

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Wifi Interference

One issue which might occur when you have a smart meter installed is poor WiFi performance. Sometimes it can fail altogether.

WiFi can operate in two frequency bands. The earlier standard, still most commonly used, is called IEEE 802.11b and runs at 2.4GHz. The same frequency is used for other wireless domestic products such as door-bells and some remote controls. However, the software protocols for all these devices is different, which is why there is little perceptible interference when two or more are operating simultaneously.

The Zigbee network which connects your smart meters and your IHD is another 2.4GHz standard, properly referred to as IEEE 802.15.4.

Unlike doorbells and remote control units, both WiFi and Zigbee are continuously live. Whether they clash or not depends on the channel number which each one uses.

In the UK, WiFi is assigned 11 overlapping channels. In order to avoid degradation of the signal, we normally employ one of channels 1, 6 or 11 because these have no overlap. You can select this manually by logging into your router.

Zigbee has 16 channels, which carry much less data and can therefore be non-overlapping.

In the USA there is a convention that any new Zigbee device will be configured to use either channel 15 or 20. These have frequencies which neatly sit in-between the commonly-used WiFi channels.

In the UK there is no such convention, and it's possible that a Zigbee device could use any of the allocated channels. So if your router happens to be sited close to your new SMETS meter, there is the opportunity for interference to occur.

All is not lost however. Firstly, you could login to your WiFi router and change the channel it uses.

Failing that, Zigbee itself has an inbuilt Channel Agility. Once it recognises that its frequency has a sufficient level of interference that data is being lost or corrupted, then it will switch to an alternative channel.

This process isn't immediate. Both of your SMETS meters and the IHD will all be using the Channel Agility protocol to find a common channel which suffers least interference. It might take an hour or so before everything gets sorted. In the meantime, don't switch off your WiFi router because this will halt the automatic Agility process. When the router is next re-powered, the interference will start all over again!

Note that there is nothing which OVO's Installation Engineer can do about such problems beyond noting on the job-sheet that WiFi was lost when the smart meters were powered up. Zigbee self-allocates channels (eventually) and the Installation App doesn't have a facility for manual channel selection.

Nor are Installers trained or permitted to start logging into your router and manually changing its channel. And you should have it password protected anyway!

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Bills and Statements

When smart meters get installed at a property for the first time, your account goes onto billing suspension until everything is validated behind the scenes.

Direct Debits will continue to be taken, and you won't be able to request that OVO refund any of the amount by which you are in credit until the next full Statement has been issued.

This process is only partly within OVO's control. They don't "own" either the new smart meters, nor the original ones which were replaced.

The UK's central meter databases are ECOES (electricity) and Xoserve (gas). It is they who receive the data regarding the meters which have been discontinued. They serve Notifications on OVO which include the final meter readings. Each Notification includes a delay period, during which an objection must be raised if the Meter Reference Number, house address or readings don't tally.

It isn't possible for OVO to issue any Bill or Statement during this process.

Smart meter communications network

A single Data Communications Company (DCC) has been set up to handle the commands and data flowing within the British smart meter network. (Northern Ireland doesn't have smart meters governed by this legislation).

The first generation of SMETS1 meters were connected by using the existing mobile phone network. DCC then designed its own smart meter network which would take over the data-flow when it was complete. The original projection was for 5.4 million SMETS1 meters to be installed by then.

Delays have meant that an additional 7.1 million SMETS1 meters were installed onto the pre-existing mobile phone network. The intention now is to migrate all of those 12.5 million onto DCC's Smart Network during 2019.

The smart network was put out to tender and contracts awarded in September 2013. Southern and Central England, together with Wales, was won by Telefonica (who own O2). The North and Scotland was awarded to Arqiva who are installing 700 new masts to support a long-range radio network... a contract worth £625m.

The territories are defined along the same geographical boundaries as those used for the electricity Distributed Network Operators (DNOs).

I have highlighted the Northern Territory (Arqiva) in red because, at the time of writing (March 2019) this part of the smart meter network is not operational. That means no SMETS2 meters can be installed there beyond the 3000 which already exist.

In the South and Central Territories, Telefonica have enhanced their existing O2 GSM (mobile phone) network to provide SMETS2 coverage in areas of higher population density. This is supplemented by a Mesh Network serving regions more sparsely populated.

Whether you are in a territory served by Arqiva or Telefonica, your smart meter is connected to DCC using an encrypted protocol audited by GCHQ. There is no direct link between your smart meters and OVO or any other Energy Supplier.

.SMETS1 upgrades

There are three phases of SMETS1 upgrades planned. The first starts at the end of May 2019, the second at the end of Sept, and the third has no time-frame announced as yet.

You can read the Press-release from DCC here

I don't know which phase you will be in, @chrisjw37 . The Energy Suppliers are invited to propose to DCC a number of their customers for each phase. This list is then modified according to technical parameters.

It doesn't matter what level of mobile phone signal your area has. This was only relevant in the last four years prior to DCC's own smart meter network going "live". Energy suppliers negotiated their own data pathways which were based on the 3G GSM network. That's why SMETS1 meters didn't enjoy interoperability between suppliers.

The actual amount of data needing to be transferred to/from a smart meter is very small. Within DCC's new smart meter network, geographical coverage and resilience are more important than speed of communications. The lower the radio frequency, the less data it can carry, but the better is its penetration into buildings.

Telefonica (South & Central territories) will continue to use the O2 3G-network with modifications, augmented by Mesh technology, which can link house-house across large rural areas. This is called a Neighbourhood Area Network (NAN).

In the North of England and Scotland, Arqiva are implementing a new network using FlexNet technology by Sensus in the former terrestrial television 400MHz band, with EDMI providing the meters.

Taking a manual electricity reading

There are occasions when it might be necessary to provide a manual reading of a SMETS2 electricity meter.

The Aclara meter has just two buttons marked A and B. Everything you're ever likely to need can be done by pressing button A. By default the LCD screen displays the cumulative usage in kWh. Press A once and the screen back-light comes on to make it easier to read.

That's the reading you would submit to OVO if they requested it. The meter will continue to count the total usage even if the communications links went down.

Press A a second time and it shows your current Tariff in pence per kWh:

Since my SMETS2 meters were only installed three weeks ago, the picture above doesn't actually show the correct figure for my contract. However, the dummy figure enables the Engineer to demonstrate the workings of the IHD, which is an essential part of the installation process.

Press button A again and the daily standing charge is displayed

This too is a dummy/default figure. It can take around 5 weeks before OVO programs the meter with the actual tariff rates.

Continuing to press button A shows:

• the energy exported to the grid if you have micro-generation
• other Time-of-Use tariffs, such as Economy-7

It is unlikely you will ever need to press button B. It shows the current date & time, provides technical information and has a sub-menu for engineering use only, which is protected with a 4-digit PIN.

Taking a manual gas reading

My SMETS2 gas meter is in a semi-concealed box. It's still possible to read the display because the steel mounting frame holds the meter at the rear of the enclosure and as high as it can, whilst still allowing the lid to close.

The meter has three red buttons, marked A, B, and C. To conserve battery, the LCD screen is normally blank. Pressing either A or B displays the amount of gas used in cubic metres.

If you are required to provide OVO with a manual reading, you would submit the five large figures before the decimal point (00125 in the above example).

The bars at top-right show the strength of the wireless connection to the (master) SMETS2 electricity meter.

Pressing button A again will display the amount of credit balance in £s if the meter is configured to operate for a Pay-As-You-Go customer.

The symbol above button C indicates a menu; press it once to display this

Buttons A & B move up and down the available menu options, whilst pressing C selects that highlighted option. I moved down the menu using B, and then chose Device Info with C:

For those readers who are technically-minded, this display shows me the firmware version of the SMETS2 software and the version of the base operating system on which it runs.

For those reading this description at a later date, please note that this Uniflo meter was installed in March 2019.

Returning to the main menu with Button C, I can use A to move back up and view the current meter status:

Unlike my electricity meter, there was no dummy/default reading held in the gas meter at installation time. Since the tariff details are all zeros I can't see any gas usage on my IHD at the moment.

Downloading my actual tariff data into the SMETS2 meters is almost the final step in the weeks-long commissioning process.

If you want to know a bit more about this SMETS2 gas meter, there is a PDF of the UK version which can be downloaded from the Danish manufacturer's website.

I can smell gas!

It is not unusual to smell gas close to where a smart meter has just been installed. The engineer will have allowed a certain amount to escape when air was purged from the new meter.

You are more likely to smell gas if the meter is in a semi-concealed enclosure below ground level. Some gas components (Methane) are lighter than air and will have drifted away. Others (Butane and Propane) are heavier than air and will stay at the bottom of the meter box.

The smell isn't a natural constituent of mains domestic gas. The odour is a chemical added to natural gas and is chosen to quickly alert your brain that something is wrong.

When I took the pictures above, it was almost 3 weeks after my new SMETS2 meters had been fitted. So I was somewhat surprised to still smell gas when I opened the lid to view the meter display screen.

If this was due to a minor leak, I reasoned that it was most likely to be on the input side of the meter. The Installer had used a manometer on the output side as one of the final checks. So any leak on my side of the meter would have been revealed by the pressure dropping and the liquid-level falling in the u-tube.

As I do my own plumbing, I already had a bottle of gas-leak detector spray available.

I squirted it liberally around all joints and watched for bubbles to appear. There were none.

Having convinced myself that there was not a leak, I left the enclosure lid open for an hour to let the wind blow fresh air around. Then I closed it again.

Four hours later, I returned and opened the lid once more. As expected, the smell of gas was significantly reduced.

So what would I have done if there really had been a leak?

Firstly, I'd have sent a text message to the OVO Installer, Mike, who had helpfully left me his mobile number. Secondly, in case he wasn't working that day, I'd have sent an email to OVO Customer Services.

And if I felt it was anything more than the lingering aftermath of having just had the new meter installed, then I could also have telephoned the National Gas emergency number: 0800 111 999

There's a help-page on gas-leaks on OVO's main website which is worth reading before you ever have to deal with a potential leak!

The one thing you must never do is to grab a spanner and attempt to tighten any joints around your gas meter. No one is permitted to work on gas pipes unless they are Gas-Safe registered.

And finally, if you want to buy yourself a bottle of special Gas Leak Detector fluid, then you can get it at B&Q, Amazon, ebay and most plumbing suppliers for around £6. Do not use other bubble-solutions, like washing-up liquid, because residues can cause corrosion... which is never a good idea!

.Communications Hub - Toshiba

The Communications Hub is a box of electronics which sits on top of the Electricity SMETS2 meter (ESME). It is secured in place with an M4 bolt at the front, which has an anti-tamper seal.

The Intimate Communications Hub Interface (ICHI) connects internally between the meter itself and the Comms Hub. It is a 20-pin connector which transfers data and provides 12v DC power for the Hub.

This Forum Post describes the various Toshiba Comms Hubs which are paired with an ESME manufactured by Aclara. This combination is installed in the Southern and Central Territories of the GB smart meter network, owned by DCC.

The Toshiba Comms Hub contains at least two radio-frequency transmission systems and maybe more:-

A. The Home Area Network (HAN) connects to the SMETS2 gas meter and the IHD. It operates at 2.4GHz using a protocol called Zigbee.

B. The Wide Area Network connects to the cellular masts and thence to the Data Communications Company (DCC). This utilises the O2 network 3G signals at 900MHz. There can also be a MESH network at 869MHz, which may or may not use an external aerial.

There are five green LED lights.

In normal operating conditions they flash at a low-frequency rate of 1:50

SW = software status
WAN = Wide Area Network
MESH = status of Mesh network connection (if present)
HAN = status of Home Area Network
GAS = status of gas (proxy) function

Under fault conditions, or during power-up or testing, these lights will remain on (Solid) or flash at a High- (1:5) or Medium- (1:20) frequency

In general, a High-frequency flash is indicative of an error.

A Medium-frequency flash indicates that attempts are being made to (re-)connect to the relevant network.

The Toshiba Communications Hub contains an internal battery. This allows it to remain live for 3 minutes in the event of a power cut.

If power has been lost for a period greater than 3 minutes, the Communications Hub will perform a restart sequence which can take several minutes. The green LEDs will flash in sequences which show the network connections being re-established.

There is another mode of operation of these five LEDS when an external aerial is connected. This allows an engineer to check the signal strength across the local Mesh network. End-users won't normally see this mode.

Communications Hub Device Variations - South & Central Territories

The SMETS2 meters being installed in Central and Southern Territories of GB have a number of options for the Communications Hub.

The main Variants are:
• SKU1 Cellular
• SKU2 Cellular + Mesh
• SKU3 SIMCH
• Cellular DB
• Cellular + Mesh DB
• SIMCH DB

Any of these may have additional external aerials fitted in order to increase the transmission distance or for object avoidance.

Before I describe each of these types, let me point out that the suffix DB means "Dual Band". This refers to the frequencies used for the Home Area Network which operates within your house. The HAN usually operates at 2.4GHz using a relatively slow data protocol called Zigbee.

If your walls are particularly thick or distances are greater than normal, a Dual Band Zigbee transceiver will use both 2.4GHz and 868MHz. This has greater penetration distance.

At the time of writing (April '19) There is no equivalent Dual Band Comms Hub available for installation in the Northern Territory. So users in Scottish castles are most likely going to not have an operational IHD!

Now lets describe the three main Variants, whether or not they have the DB suffix.

SKU1 Cellular is the Communications Hub most commonly fitted. About 88% of domestic housing will be provided with this variant. It connects directly to the O2 mobile phone network using 3G technology and modified protocols.

There are two manufacturers supplying the SKU1 Comms Hubs. The one on the left is made by Telefonica, whilst on the right is one from Taiwanese company, Wistron NeWeb Corporation.

Rural areas where there is lower coverage by the O2 cellular network may be provided with the SKU2 variant:

This Comms Hub contains transceiver electronics for both the O2 3G network at 900MHz and a Mesh network running at 869MHz (IEEE 802.15.4g). There is a socket for connection of an external Wide Area Network (WAN) aerial.

Radio-frequency coverage maps are used to decide which Communications Hub should be installed. Where communications are particularly difficult, a SKU3 SIMCH can be specified. This is a Special Installation Mesh Communications Hub which operates on the same frequencies, but has higher power and a wider range of aerials available.

SKU3 Variants may be installed by Engineers from DCC rather than OVO employees. Their commissioning sequence is complex and is most likely to depend on relaying the signals through other MESH Communications Hubs in the same area.

DCC estimates show that less than 0.25% of installations are likely to be an SKU3 SIMCH, which has got to worth double-points for any SMETS2 Spotter!

Aerials:

The external Aerial fitted to my own Comms Hub is a T2 Cellular type manufactured by Panorama Antennas. You can see it fitted to the meter-box door in the first posting of this Topic.

Seven aerials have been approved thus far, amongst which are the following

T2 aerials are for medium range extension, and T3 for significant range extension.

Smaller T1 aerials are used for object avoidance, where there is a structure which absorbs radio waves between your Comms Hub and the local GSM mast.

Your OVO Electricity Tariff card states your Economy 7 Peak and Off-peak unit rate times. Your Remote Display shows the current Economy 7 Tariff unit rate OVO is charging you - ours changes to Off-peak at 00:00 GMT and back to Peak unit rate at 07:00 GMT daily. How can consumers check that the correct ECAUL times have been programmed by OVO into their Aclara SMETS2 meter?

Accessing those settings is only possible via SMETS Commands. There’s no way to access them locally for security and anti-tamper reasons. This applies regardless of supplier and regardless of what meter you have

Considering how much data the Aclara SMETS2 meters can display, it seems strange that perhaps the most important information - Economy 7 Off-peak unit times OVO has programmed into your “smart” meter - can not even be viewed by the consumer. Has anybody else figured out which key(s) to press yet?

Trust me. I stand by what I said. I got my information directly from Aclara and have the entire technical user manual for the meter you’ve got.

You can press any combination of keys you want, but it won’t reveal configurations that are purely managed via SMETS Commands like the ECAUL settings.

Also, just so you’re aware… You won’t get any additional SEO to your blog by posting links to it here. Your links get automatically tagged with nofollow, norefer and ugc attributes which tell search engines to ignore them.

Somewhere in 2020 OVO replaced my SMETS1 smart meter (not from OVO) with a new SMETS2 Meter.

24 Hours later the remote display was still showing nothing useful.  I phoned OVO to tell them it wasn’t working and they said I needed to wait 24 hours… 

I waited a week and called back.  This the person on the phone said they ran a test and it was indeed not working correctly….  It was the pandemic… there was no follow up.  It’s still not working.

At Christmas 2022, OVO suddenly found my back dated daily electricity readings. I guess they had rummage down the back of the sofa and found some data.  I hadn’t submitted anything manually for a while so I got a lovely bill at Christmas for an extra £500.  Great timing OVO. Thanks!

Gas readings are coming through daily (at least since Christmas) but electricity meter readings are still not coming through. Despite the fact you clearly know something is wrong because you back dated a correction.

This doesn’t look like a technical fault with the meter

Now I know the way these work is that the gas meter actually connects to the servers through the electricity meter.  So BOTH must have connectivity if the gas meter readings are coming through.

It is possible the electricity meter is sending nothing, but then where on earth did you find the back dated data if it wasn’t.

OVO: This is called a “smart meter”.  You can read it.

When you can’t read it there’s a problem!  Why wait for me to chaise a third time to tell you?

I’ve tried telling you but…

I’ve never once managed to get through on the phone.  Every time I try on the chat line it takes so long that my phone self locks and I’m silently kicked out of the queue.

This is really terrible service OVO.  I shouldn’t have to wait hours staring at a text screen on on a phone call to tell you something you already know!

Hi @Couling and thanks for sharing this negative experience. I’m sorry to hear of the long time these smart meter communications issues have been going on for, and for the difficulties you’ve had in getting through to our Support team. I’d recommend a web chat the next time you need to get Support team help. 

Before that, you should be able to complete a ‘smart meter health check’ form yourself, if the results indicate an issue the results get sent to the right team at OVO:

Thanks @Tim_OVO 

Just a few actionable points for OVO to consider:

• Suggest to your tech team: Identifying anomalous readings should be relatively trivial.  When I worked with metering data we would run scripts monthly to check for weird behaviour.  This saves you money in the long run by taking the pressure of your call staff.  Either of these checks would have identified my meter readings as anomalous with minimal false positives:
  • Smart meter with no data / zero data and customer submission
  • Smart meter with sizeable gas meter readings but missing / zero electricity meter readings.
• The web chat by mobile needs fixing.  Locking the phone should not silently kick you out of the queue, instead it should raise a notification while the phone is locked that it’s your turn (iPhone).
• Do everything you can to never drop a case. If someone reports a fault, that should be on your system and not closed until it is actually fixed.  Benefit of the doubt here that it was the pandemic, but still unacceptable.

• The web chat by mobile needs fixing.  Locking the phone should not silently kick you out of the queue, instead it should raise a notification while the phone is locked that it’s your turn (iPhone).

That sounds like an iOS behaviour. If it is, then I’m afraid OVO wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.

I am surprised to hear of this locked-screen out of the queue behaviour… let me try and replicate

I think it may depend on how long the device is locked for. A few seconds and not much would happen. But more than that and the device probably goes to sleep and cuts the connection.

Yes I wasn’t able to replicate this on my iOS device. I did notice that the queue position didn’t update when I revisited, but opening up the message box again from the same Help page opened up the chat box with the queue updated. I was 2 from the front without knowing! 

No. apps can certainly have network connectivity when the phone is closed and raise notifications.  It might be a wholly different suit of API calls to do this, but other apps manage it. 

IE if whatsapp can ping me when soemone texts me, then there’s no good reason OVO can’t achieve that either.

The current behaviour may well be related to the way IOS is taking the app out of memory.

Websites and apps behave differently on iOS and Android. Apps are able to use Apple Push Notifications and Firebase Cloud Messaging, websites cannot access that stuff directly.

And websites running inside apps definitely can’t touch it.

@Blastoise186 you understand we are discussing the phone app and not the website right?

Yes I realise they probably implemented the app as a thin wrapper around the website. But that’s their choice of implementation…

The app can access those features, so if a hybrid approach is required then so be it. There's no good reason the app cannot receive push notifications and raise an in-app notification to me.  This doesn’t require the in-app browser to interact with those features. It requires some way for the app to inform the website of a return path for notifications.  But that’s a relatively simple matter of cookies.

I really have very little sympathy with something wasting hours of my time just because the developers didn't consider such obvious "edge cases" like long queue times.

I’m aware of that, but it’s not that simple. OVO did build the app, but the chat system isn’t part of what OVO built, it’s third party. Websites running inside apps still don’t have the ability to send push notifications unless the app in question is a web browser.

The current live chat tool doesn’t support push notifications via the web messenger. However, the provider does have a way to integrate chat directly within an app, which MAY allow notifications. In theory, it’d be in-scope for an Idea here. But it wouldn’t be something that can happen overnight.