Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms UK Climate cooling ?

I have a Y2k build house and the meters are on the side of the house at ground floor level. Both are meant to be real time reading and SMETS as I understand from the meter reader I caught by chance.

Neither of them is able to communicate back to mission control. I get asked for readings constantly which is tedious. They changed the electricity meter after I moaned but the new one was no better. They came back and fitted what I think amounts to an external antenna (longer wire hanging inside box) and no better.

The engineer made in interesting comment. Apparently pretty much all of the boxes fitted use a 3G SIM for cellular to call home. 3G is being switched off shortly. Oops.

Oh Alistair, your post made me smile re 3 G being switched off shortly. Quite interesting that your presumably externally mounted meters., cant communicate with control..

We live in a house with 4 feet thick basement walls all round and solid concrete basement floor/raft, the basement ceiling is 6'6 high. They knew how to build them back then, with a very dense Accrington red brick almost equivalent to a blue engineering brick.


Unfortunately there appears to be no easy answer the meter placement issue.

Well this is utterly shite, I'd be having a right go at your supplier and your DNO, you are paying for a service which you aren't getting. Don't get fobbed off, raise a formal complaint with your supplier, this means they have to do something about it within a certain timeframe otherwise you can get the Ombudsman involved too. Usually the suppliers like Octopus or OVO who are well into variable rate tariffs are a good deal more responsive to this kind of thing than the wanky cheap suppliers who just offer basic fixed tariffs.

The 3G thing is slightly misleading. Early (SMETS1) meters do indeed use SIMs with the mobile phone 3G network, but SMETS2 uses an encrypted private data network (SMWAN) that will be unaffected by 3G switchoff. Unless you had a very early SM installed, your meter should be firmware upgradeable remotely to SMETS2. There are around 7 million non-upgradeable SMETS1 meters out there at the moment, but they should all be switched out before 3G goes.

Your DNO is responsible for meter moves, not the supplier. It'll be chargeable but they are usually pretty helpful. Get them to upgrade you to 100A while they're at it. They like doing these as old buildings with inaccessible meters are a PITA for them. An external meter mounted close to your supply point and a new set of tails running down to your consumer unit shouldn't be that expensive - although be aware that if your existing distribution board is not up to spec it'll have to be upgraded anyway, for which you'll need an approved electrician, the DNO guys won't touch it.

In our previous house we had an old meter. An upgrade to smart was booked. Techs turned up but couldn't fit one as no mobile signal. It was a parchy area but a better signal upstairs. I asked about a signal boosting unit upstairs to boost to the meter. Techy had a blank expression. At the time EE would fit one but we weren't with EE. SWEB were our supplier.Only a business could normally have one due to radio signal regs. They fitted a newer meter instead.
At the hew house we are still on an old meter. No longer SWEB as I look at deals and swop if better. Currently ( no pun intended), we have the best tariff so no smart meter despite regular chasing by the supplier. A monthly online meter reading is easy. A smart meter doesn't give me cost saving but I keep checks on tariffs. I'll get one if it saves me money. I use common sense to decide if I use an appliance and don't need a display to tell me the result. If I spot a money saving tariff requiring a smart meter then it's time to get one.

This was one of the weaknesses with the way they rolled out smart meters, The job was given to the suppliers because it was felt they would be motivated to get it done well as it gave them the best business opportunities going forward. It made perfect sense in theory, as a successful SM rollout would enable a supplier to get a commercial advantage by being able to offer sophisticated high-value products to its customers.

What they forgot to take into account was that some (many?) suppliers had really shite product development capabilities and poor customer comms so all they wanted to do was the cheapest job they could get away with. Couple that with many (most?) customers being happy to accept shite service in exchange for cheapest possible service and we are where we are.

Utilities, along with insurance, is one of those areas where people don't tend to think about the quality of the product until they really need it when something goes wrong. I pay more to Ecotricity than I need to like I do with NFU for insurance, but the quality of service I get from both providers is well worth it in my view.

It's not always true that you get what you pay for, but it is universally true that you don't get what you don't pay for.

Having been off-grid for the last 36 years now I'm fascinated by the passions raised by electricity meters! .... it's like being an anthropologist experiencing the strange ways of some isolated tribe! ... I await the details of the ritual sacrificing of some hapless meter-reader for straying into the wrong street ... don't spare the gory details! 🙂

K

Can't you move it, mine is just plugged into a 13 amp socket.

Tim H, does my DNO have to meet a time limit on approving Export ? last year they & Octopus were useless and took almost 5 months to approve what was an existing system, already registered and FiT approved (funny how the ok finally lands in Dec after we've lost all the summer potential !)

We're going to replace faulty batteries in the current system soon and apparently I need approval again as we're fitting larger capacity as the tech has moved on in the last few years

We already have 3 phase electricity coming into the house. Normally your consumer unit has to be within 3 metres of the meter unless you have an isolation switch. Which we had fitted when the last Smart meter was fitted, as our electrician wont work on Smart meter systems without a isolator between the consumer and meter. Apparently he has experience issues with the smart meters.


It's an issue we will re looking at more closely once we get an EV.