Viewing 11 posts - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
  • Smart meter is stupid – connection woes advice appreciated
  • devbrix
    Free Member

    Smart electric meter installed to take advantage of ‘cheaper’ (LOL) electricity rates overnight but it’s refused to connect after 2 months. Engineer came out today and still no joy. He said it’s the signal. In my old house in the middle of nowhere through a 3’ thick walls no problems whatsoever, however this is South West London with every other building sporting antennae. Anyone solved this problem or know if there any way to improve the reception of the meter?

    Cougar
    Full Member

    SEP, kick it back to the supplier.

    devbrix
    Free Member

    Used to get great service from Octopus but I’ve found their customer service has deteriorated massively and it took a lot of calls and nagging to get them to send an engineer out which they said they needed to do. I’d like to offer a solution to them if possible. I’ve got used to running most higher power appliances at night and have an EV so keen to get this fixed.

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    airvent
    Free Member

    Ours only picks up the signal when it’s less then 3 metres from the actual meter.

    B.A.Nana
    Free Member

    South of roughly Sheffield use the mobile network (2g I think, Telefonica?), North of Sheffield are on some sort of radio signal network (arqiva?).

    From what I understand, you darn south can have some sort of Arial fitted to boost the 2g reception. Also as others around you have smart meters fitted it creates some sort of mesh which might boost your chances of your smart meter working at some point in the future.

    longwayup
    Free Member

    Try using the Loop Energy app to see if that can connect to your smart meter. Least you’ll know if it’s a connection issue or just the supplier that is rubbish(like mine)

    stumpyjon
    Full Member

    Octopus have now annoyed me as well. Got transferred from AVRO when they went bust. Had smart gas and electric meters fitted whilst with AVRO only to find out AVRO weren’t set up to read them remotely. Took 7 appointments to get both meters changed on what should have been a simple swap. Octopus is now telling they can connect to the electricity meter but not the gas and I’ll have to have it replaced, it’s less than a year old. No wonder our fuel bills are so high if we’re paying for the muppetry of companies like Lowri Beck who do the meter swaps.

    oikeith
    Full Member

    Just to check, what is it refusing to connect too? The supplier or the display you were left?

    I would have thought even if the meter wont connect to either of those it could be programmed to record elec at diff rates and times instead of being a single rate meter

    devbrix
    Free Member

    Thanks for the advice. The engineer yesterday was muttering the HAN didn’t work and must be the signal to the house. Having done some reading the HAN is the connectivity between the electric, gas and the little display in my house, not the signal to the house. The WAN and Mesh lights on the meter are actually green which are the connectivity to my house. This makes me think he didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, he even got me to stand outside my house with an auxiliary antennae! I suspect my meter is actually connected it’s just the gas and the purgatory display aren’t which I don’t care about really. I checked my Octopus dashboard online and bizarrely I had a whole day of half-hourly electric readings the day before. Now the engineer has changed the communication hub I suspect I might have to wait another couple of weeks to see whether it all shows up on my dashboard again.
    All feels like the internet supplier chaos and confusion from 10 years ago which fortunately for everyone’s sanity has largely been sorted but if they all want us to be using Smart meters to balance the electricity supply and go a bit greener as we move to predominantly electric they need to get their act together quickly. Will def try Loop

    oikeith
    Full Member

    You are correct there WAN is what connected to the DCC then onto the suppliers, HAN is the communication between the communications hub,Elec & Gas Meters and display.

    If he changed the comms hub it’ll take a few days for this info to update in the systems required but then you should be able to view the stuff online again.

    devbrix
    Free Member

    Thanks oikeith, that’s helpful to have confirmed. Fingers crossed.

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