Introduction
A decent Return on Investment (ROI) for a solar system relies on variable tariffs and variable tariffs rely on a working smart meter to report back half hourly meter readings...
...it turns out that this is not straight forward (at least for my installation)
A 'brief' history:
- My smart meter journey started in 2021 when, while I was aware of smart meters, the only benefit that I knew of was that meter readings could be automated.
- At the request of Octopus (ie several phone calls from Octopus it just seemed easier to give in and say “yes”) the smart meter was installed on 30th June 2021. This was year 2 of the pandemic and I was working from home, so it was not too much effort wait in for the meters to be installed. The meters (gas and electric) both gave readings that seemed in line with the old meters, but
- The Home Area Network (HAN, ie connection to the gas meter and in house display) and Wide Area Network (WAN, ie connection back to base) wireless connections did not function.
- The engineer did not have any equipment to measure the WAN signal strength but told me that it was weak - it is not clear how he came to this conclusion.
- He said that the providers of the communications network would be notified and in a few weeks and, when they had done the work to increase signal strength, the meter should spring into life.
- At the time I was being billed on an Economy 7 tariff but the electric meter was set up to provide just one electric meter reading for 24hours a day (as opposed to night-time and day-time use)
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EDMI ES 10B Electric Smart Meter with EDMI CS010A-08-92 Zigbee Comms Hub mounted on top |
EDMI GS-60B Gas meter - this should communicate to the comms Hub via the Zigbee HAN. |
- Subsequent engineer visits:
- I just got on with life, every so often submitting meter readings on the Octopus web site, until I realised that I was being over charged because Octopus were billing for Economy 7 and charging the single electricity meter reading (ie all my electricity consumption) at the (higher) daytime rate. Octopus did resolve this after several months and they were always friendly and helpful (eg I was never asked to pay the £2,500 over charge, it just sat as a debt on my account). However, as part of the resolution Octopus suggest that my smart meter was fixed....
- 19 May 2023: a new engineer visits - he did not have any equipment to measure the signal strength but told me that it was weak - it is not clear how he came to this conclusion.
- After this visit I was moved from the Economy 7 tariff to a single rate.
- Soon after the visit the WAN connection to my electricity meter sprung into life. I was able to see half-hourly readings via the Octopus app and website. The gas meter and In Home Display (IHD) wireless connections did not function and I was told that this was the HAN not functioning.
- The electric smart meter continued to communicate via the WAN over the next few months; this turned out to be a requirement for a solar system installation (or at least variable rate tariffs), so good news. Neither Octopus nor me put any further effort into getting the gas smart meter and IHD working.
- In March 2024 my solar power system was up and running and I applied for an export/flux tariff - this was up and running by the 23rd March (see post on application process).
- In subsequent weeks I was able to see import and export data in the Octopus app and this matched the values in my solar power system app (GivEnergy), but on odd days data was missing on the Octopus app, eg:
- Export: Wed 3rd April
- Import: Tues 2nd April
- Import: Sat 6th April
- My observations:
- It always seemed to be a whole day that was missing (ie either no data for that day or all 48 half hourly readings were showing in the app, or sometimes just a couple of readings for the day would show, perhaps a British Summer Time display and underlying data is held as Greenwich Mean Time?)
- Import and export data missing events were independent (ie most days had data for both, a few just import and a few just export)
- Roughly 3 or 4 days per month had missing data
- If the data did not show up in a few days then it would not show up without me contacting your customer service team - they had the capability to request the data to be uploaded. They could also do a quick search for missing data (as opposed to my manual scanning from the bar charts in the app). Typically this request resulted in the missing data showing up within a few days.
- 14th May 2024: I spoke with an Octopus customer service representative who suggested an engineer visit to resolve the missing data issue (and, as a 2nd priority get the gas meter and IHD connected).
- 24th June 2024: another engineer called - his information for the job was:
- Recommission the gas meter
- Replace the electric meter
- Nothing about the issue symptoms or diagnosis just the prescription.
- We discussed the symptoms and his diagnosis was weak signal (most likely) or faulty communications hub/hardware (least likely). His suggestion was that he replace the whole system (communications hub, gas meter, electric meter). Given the low rates of hardware failure that he sees then we agreed that if the system still did not work then faulty hardware was very unlikely to be the cause. He did not have time available that day to replace the whole system, so we rebooked a new slot...
- 27th June 2024: the engineer returns to replace the electric meter, gas meter and communications hub. This involved lots of safety checks etc, and the result was:
- He could not commission the WAN (ie comms hub to Data Communications Company (DCC)/Octopus link) and so could not commission the gas meter to comms hub link, nor the IHD.
- The engineer’s view at the
time was that the root cause was a weak signal (but again, he had not instrument to measure this).
- The engineer phoned me later that day to say that the internal Octopus Engineers' messaging system chat was that DCC were having some problems on that day and he thought that another go at commissioning might be worthwhile.
- 18th July: The engineer is back again to have another go at commissioning the WAN. This did not work. He replaced the hub with a dual band hub (apparently it is the HAN/Zigbee network that is dual band/extended range, the WAN is the same as previous hubs). This gave the same fault. The engineer discussed the operation of the green flashing WAN LED:
- 1 flash every 5 secs indicates that it is working
My system did this:
- 1 flash every 5 seconds repeating for around 30secs to 1minute then
- 1 or 2 quick flashes then
- 1 flash every 5 seconds repeating for around 30secs to 1minute etc
I could not find an explanation for this WAN LED behaviour online.
- 20th Aug: I spoke with an octopus customer services representative who attempted to remotely commission the communications hub with me pressing buttons on the electricity meter:
- After I pressed a few buttons on the meter, under his guidance, we got stuck with my meter ‘searching…’ when another response was expected
- It turned out that this was his 1st ever commissioning job; however, he was in communication with a colleague to confirm that he was doing this correctly and they tried doing something on their end to get the commissioning process to work but to no avail.
- He then suggested that another engineer visit me, but could not say what this engineer would do that was different to the previous 5 visits and we also discussed the only other alternative, that I would have to return to a fixed rate...
…we left it that he was going to schedule another engineer to visit, but with no ideas on what would be different this time.
A few days later I wrote the following e-mail to Octopus…
…I will let you know the outcome in a follow up post.
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My e-mail to Octopus. I am intrigued to know if my proposed recompense for a non-working meter makes any difference to Octopus; the Ofgem website hints that they might be sympathetic to my case if I raised it with them: https://www.energyombudsman.org/case-studies/smart-meters-not-sending-readings |
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