Smart Meter installation warning!

[YoungBlood]

Does anyone else have these installed?

I got them put in a few weeks ago after an invitation to be upgraded to smart payg.
I actually really wanted them as it's suppost to make home top up a lot easier, and it all sounds great on paper, no keys needed and balance is shown on the IHD so no need to visit the meter.

In reality however it just never works!
The in home display can only get a signal next to the wall where the electricity meter is installed. I certainly can't have it in any room as advertised.

Apprently is uses wifi to connect and you have no control over the channel, it's locked with an installer PIN.

The gas meter connects and displays balance and useage maybe once every 3 days /useless, certainly not a constant live reading as it should be.

Now the display won't connect to the electricity meter at all, happily displaying a connecting to smart meter...constantly.

Advice from British Gas, turn it off and on again makes no difference.

It took a few phone calls to get my old balace transfered over, it was supposed to be automatic within 24hrs.

Top ups online don't reach the meter automaticaly as advertised, you have to input a 20! digit number onto the meter. (I miss you keys, all is forgiven)

So not a great start to smart meters.

This is the setup I have, apart from British Gas new version of the IHD
http://openenergymonitor.org/emon/node/2820

A rare glimpse of perfection.

This is it's life now.

Anyone having better luck?

 

[YoungBlood]

First of all no it doesn't use WiFi it uses GPRS. Also if the IHD is connecting to the meters then in the first I stance yiu should turn IHD off for 24 hours and then turn it back on and it should connect within the following 24 hours. If not call BG again and they should then replace the IHD for you.

The reason why the gas doesn't update as regularly as the electric is because the gas meter runs off of a battery so to save power it only sends an update to the IHD every half hour. However if you haven't used much gas in that period it may not show.

The hub uses GPRS to send data to British Gas, but a form of wifi to talk to the IHD no? Well Zigbee radio, on a very similar frequency to most home wifi networks, whatever it is, it's not very strong.

I understand about the gas meter being battery powered, but there is no reason why it can't send an update to the IHD at least once every 24hrs to refresh the balance or even when a top up is applied. You are simply running blind for way too long a window, understand the point of these things is to display the credit balance at a glance.
Even if you could just request the balance by pressing a button to poll the meter would be great, but as it stands it's pretty rubbish, and certainly not how they market it.

I will keep it unplugged for a day, to see if it pairs to the meter again, but I'm sure there is a fault with the Comm hub. The HAN light is not lighting up at all, and usualy flashes red when it is not paired with the IHD, and green when it is happy.
British Gas can't help today, and yesterday I gave up after being on hold for 40mins, so happy for any other tips to make them whole again SilverTongue.

 

[YoungBlood]

Just an update, The problem was caused by a faulty communications hub.

For info if anyone else has this fault, WAN light green = all is good.
WAN light red = hub is looking for a signal, normal at times, if one gprs drops out it will seek another.
WAN light off = hub not commissioned or faulty. If you're on payg, no over the air top ups will reach the meter.

It took longer than it should to resolve, and no amount of switching it off and on again was ever going to fix it, but as soon as I got through to someone that could see that too, it was fixed within the hour! With updated firmware (I think) that now displays the gas balance 24/7, sync'd with the meter every 4 hours, perfect.

Smart meters are smart again

 

[YoungBlood]

They did the basic trouble shooting over the phone, but it was never going to be resolved without a site visit.
With the WAN light off, they can't do anything remotely,(at least for me) other then talk you off the phone with promises it will magicaly start working again.

I knew this, and eventerly talked to someone who agreed, who had the PAYG smart meter training and understood the hub was essential to PAYG smart meters.

They can fix some faults over the phone, they have the ability to reboot it remotely, boost the signal they use to transmit the OTA topups (I was told)

It's no big deal if it goes down on credit meters, it just won't send a reading to the supplier.

I was super lucky there was a technician working in the area (earliest date otherwise was January) installing PAYG smart meters and had a spare hub on the van, after CS called him he popped round and swapped it out.

This entails wiping the gas/electricty meters and de-registering them from the broken hub, removing all credit and leaving emergency credit on the meters, then linking them up to the new hub. (the same as what happens at original install) your old credit gets sent over the air a few hours later.