These may be naive questions but I can't find answers anywhere. The context is our energy supplier may well ask us to install a smart meter soon so I'd like to understand how they work in practice.

I assume that they need some device both to replace or somehow connect to both the existing gas and electricity meters (as well as another remote unit to show the consumption). But where do these devices get their power from? For the electricity meter that's no big problem: I assume the device, whatever it is, will only use a watt or to to communicate to the home monitor and to the power company, so that a simple tap of the mains will suffice, after all that's how the existing meter works. But does the power that they use come out of what the consumer pays for?

But what about the smart gas meter? The existing one works on gas pressure, I assume. There's no electrical supply anywhere near our current gas meter - which may well be a common situation. Are these smart devices also gas-powered in some way or simply battery-powered? If so who is responsible for noticing when the battery runs down, and then buying a replacement and fitting it? I hope it's the power company, but if they have to make an urgent visit every year or so to change a battery that is hardly going to save them much compared to reading the existing meter at predictable intervals. If it's the consumer's responsibility and you somehow don't replace the battery does anyone notice or care? And does one's gas consumption get lost during the period of battery outage? Suppose you go away on holiday and the battery runs down just after you left, whose fault is that?

These are all simple obvious questions, but I don't seem to have been able to find answers. But I assume someone here already has a smart meter so will know the answers to at least some of them.

--
Clive Page

Somebody will be along in a minute who knows, but I assume there's a
battery in the smart meter, and it gets changed by the gas company. I
assume it reports the level of charge to the gas company, so they know
when to change it.

They could build a generator in, powered by the gas flow, I suppose?

Free gas if the battery runs out or the meter stops working? Nah,
they'll estimate.

Clive Page wrote:

does the power that they use come out of what the consumer pays for?

no, it comes from the unmetered side.

But what about the smart gas meter?

They have a 10 year D-Cell to talk to the smart electricity meter, they
only send readings every 30 minutes.

On 08/11/2019 15:23, Andy Burns wrote:
Clive Page wrote:

does the power that they use come out of what the consumer pays for?

no, it comes from the unmetered side.

But what about the smart gas meter?

They have a 10 year D-Cell to talk to the smart electricity meter, they
only send readings every 30 minutes.

They come with a charger which plugs into a mains socket. The will work
for a while until the battery discharges. Very similar in that way to a
mobile phone. To my mind their big weakness is that they have a p*ss
poor range, so as my electric meter is at the far end of the house it
will not work properly in my lounge. A frustrating waste of space.

Broadback wrote:

They come with a charger which plugs into a mains socket. The will work
for a while until the battery discharges. Very similar in that way to a
mobile phone. To my mind their big weakness is that they have a p*ss
poorÂ* range, so as my electric meter is at the far end of the house it
will not work properly in my lounge. A frustrating waste of space.

You seem to be talking about the in-house display (mine has no battery)
not the meters themselves, that is of course powered by customer paid
electricity, but there is no compulsion for you to leave it plugged in
(though if you do unplug it, bear in mind it can take several minutes to
send updated meter readings to the IHD).

On Friday, 8 November 2019 16:48:39 UTC, Andy Burns wrote:
Broadback wrote:

They come with a charger which plugs into a mains socket. The will work
for a while until the battery discharges. Very similar in that way to a
mobile phone. To my mind their big weakness is that they have a p*ss
poorÂ* range, so as my electric meter is at the far end of the house it
will not work properly in my lounge. A frustrating waste of space.

You seem to be talking about the in-house display (mine has no battery)
not the meters themselves, that is of course powered by customer paid
electricity, but there is no compulsion for you to leave it plugged in
(though if you do unplug it, bear in mind it can take several minutes to
send updated meter readings to the IHD).

I think most people misunderstand the way they work - including the supply
companies!

As I understand it, it is battery powered half hourly readings from the gas
meter to the smart-enabled electricity meter, and then that handles the
communication of both readings to the supply company fundamentally via a
sim card arrangement. It also locally broadcasts the live electricity
usage data securely which can be read by an in house display paired with the
meter by the engineer when they visit.

I'd recently been having issues with the gas readings showing up on my
suppliers online account, but the electricity not reading at all, despite
the fact that I could see it on the IHD.

The customer service operator advised me to power off the router for my
home broadband, and switch off the IHD. For some reason believing a) that
wifi was involved and b) that the IHD was somehow responsible for sending
the data to the supplier. Unless I've missed something about data channel
pollution etc, that sounded like ******** to me.

larkim wrote:

The customer service operator advised me to power off the router for my
home broadband, and switch off the IHD. For some reason believing a) that
wifi was involved and b) that the IHD was somehow responsible for sending
the data to the supplier. Unless I've missed something about data channel
pollution etc, that sounded like ******** to me.

Should have asked for it in writing and forwarded the ******** to ofgem

On 08/11/2019 16:59, larkim wrote:

I'd recently been having issues with the gas readings showing up on my
suppliers online account, but the electricity not reading at all, despite
the fact that I could see it on the IHD.

The customer service operator advised me to power off the router for my
home broadband, and switch off the IHD. For some reason believing a) that
wifi was involved and b) that the IHD was somehow responsible for sending
the data to the supplier. Unless I've missed something about data channel
pollution etc, that sounded like ******** to me.

There's no way anyone in their right mind would allow the energy company
access to their Wi-Fi code. They could look at your holiday snaps if
they weren't specifically secured. (You can usually share drives between
computers on the same Wi-Fi network and it would be hard to know you
hadn't by mistake.)

--
Max Demian

After serious thinking larkim wrote :
As I understand it, it is battery powered half hourly readings from the gas
meter to the smart-enabled electricity meter, and then that handles the
communication of both readings to the supply company fundamentally via a
sim card arrangement.

Correct, except the gas meter updates the electric meter more
frequently than that. Judging by the indoor displays gas consumption
updates, its maybe every couple of minutes.

On Friday, November 8, 2019 at 4:48:39 PM UTC, Andy Burns wrote:
Broadback wrote:

They come with a charger which plugs into a mains socket. The will work
for a while until the battery discharges. Very similar in that way to a
mobile phone. To my mind their big weakness is that they have a p*ss
poorÂ* range, so as my electric meter is at the far end of the house it
will not work properly in my lounge. A frustrating waste of space.

You seem to be talking about the in-house display (mine has no battery)
not the meters themselves, that is of course powered by customer paid
electricity, but there is no compulsion for you to leave it plugged in
(though if you do unplug it, bear in mind it can take several minutes to
send updated meter readings to the IHD).

My kitchen display runs off the mains via a transformer PSU.

Simon Mason pretended :
My kitchen display runs off the mains via a transformer PSU.

As I presume will all of them. Here we are discussing how frequent the
updates are from the gas smart meter, which operates from an internal
battery.

What are you referring to the gas meter or the remote unit. I'd imagine the
remote unit will be pretty low power as when everyone gets them some band is
going to be rather busy!

Brian

--
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The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

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Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Broadback" wrote in message
...
On 08/11/2019 15:23, Andy Burns wrote:
Clive Page wrote:

does the power that they use come out of what the consumer pays for?

no, it comes from the unmetered side.

But what about the smart gas meter?

They have a 10 year D-Cell to talk to the smart electricity meter, they
only send readings every 30 minutes.

They come with a charger which plugs into a mains socket. The will work
for a while until the battery discharges. Very similar in that way to a
mobile phone. To my mind their big weakness is that they have a p*ss poor
range, so as my electric meter is at the far end of the house it will not
work properly in my lounge. A frustrating waste of space.

Brian Gaff (Sofa) wrote:

I'd imagine the remote unit will be pretty low power as when everyone
gets them some band is going to be rather busy!

Mine is on the 868MHz ISM band

Oh, I see, I have at long last found somebody in EDF Energy who knows about
the speech enabled remote unit. I have not asked the question about power,
but presumably its either a thing like a charging cradle for a phone or just
dry cells and only communicates when you are pressing buttons.
Brian

--
----- --
This newsgroup posting comes to you directly from...
The Sofa of Brian Gaff...

Blind user, so no pictures please
Note this Signature is meaningless.!
"Andy Burns" wrote in message
...
Clive Page wrote:

does the power that they use come out of what the consumer pays for?

no, it comes from the unmetered side.

But what about the smart gas meter?

They have a 10 year D-Cell to talk to the smart electricity meter, they
only send readings every 30 minutes.

Brian Gaff wrote:

I have at long last found somebody in EDF Energy who knows about
the speech enabled remote unit. I have not asked the question about power,
but presumably its either a thing like a charging cradle for a phone or just
dry cells and only communicates when you are pressing buttons.

I was talking about the actual meters, not the inhouse display (or
speech) unit, that would be powered on your shilling.

Clive Page presented the following explanation :
These may be naive questions but I can't find answers anywhere. The context
is our energy supplier may well ask us to install a smart meter soon so I'd
like to understand how they work in practice.

I assume that they need some device both to replace or somehow connect to
both the existing gas and electricity meters (as well as another remote unit
to show the consumption). But where do these devices get their power from?
For the electricity meter that's no big problem: I assume the device,
whatever it is, will only use a watt or to to communicate to the home monitor
and to the power company, so that a simple tap of the mains will suffice,
after all that's how the existing meter works. But does the power that they
use come out of what the consumer pays for?

But what about the smart gas meter? The existing one works on gas pressure,
I assume. There's no electrical supply anywhere near our current gas meter -
which may well be a common situation. Are these smart devices also
gas-powered in some way or simply battery-powered? If so who is responsible
for noticing when the battery runs down, and then buying a replacement and
fitting it? I hope it's the power company, but if they have to make an
urgent visit every year or so to change a battery that is hardly going to
save them much compared to reading the existing meter at predictable
intervals. If it's the consumer's responsibility and you somehow don't
replace the battery does anyone notice or care? And does one's gas
consumption get lost during the period of battery outage? Suppose you go
away on holiday and the battery runs down just after you left, whose fault is
that?

These are all simple obvious questions, but I don't seem to have been able to
find answers. But I assume someone here already has a smart meter so will
know the answers to at least some of them.

Gas meter runs on a ten year battery and reports to the electric meter.
Electric meter then reports to utility company, both readings.

On 08/11/2019 16:56, Harry Bloomfield wrote:


Gas meter runs on a ten year battery and reports to the electric meter.
Electric meter then reports to utility company, both readings.

Our water meter has a wireless module ("Everblu Cyble"). Their data
sheet says "battery - lithium, 15 years / 10 years in fixed network mode"


--
Reentrant

Reentrant formulated the question :
Our water meter has a wireless module ("Everblu Cyble"). Their data sheet
says "battery - lithium, 15 years / 10 years in fixed network mode"

I have no idea how my water meter works at all, but they seem to be
able to interrogate it from the road, some way from the back of the
house where the meter is. The meter is a mechanical one in what looks
like a brass body.

On 09/11/2019 09:39, Harry Bloomfield wrote:
Reentrant formulated the question :
Our water meter has a wireless module ("Everblu Cyble"). Their data
sheet says "battery - lithium, 15 years / 10 years in fixed network mode"

I have no idea how my water meter works at all, but they seem to be able
to interrogate it from the road, some way from the back of the house
where the meter is. The meter is a mechanical one in what looks like a
brass body.


Here's the brochure for the module on our meter: http://tiny.cc/9svzfz

--
Reentrant

Reentrant presented the following explanation :
Here's the brochure for the module on our meter: http://tiny.cc/9svzfz


--

It looks nothing like that - It looks just like a normal meter,
entirely brass on the outside case and rather transmitting to a base, I
understand they drive by to collect the data. I have seen several YW
vans with a very short vertical antenna on them, possibly Ghz
frequency, so I would suspect that may interrogate the meter.

On 08/11/19 14:59, Clive Page wrote:
These may be naive questions but I can't find answers anywhere. The context is our energy supplier may well ask us to install a smart meter soon so I'd like to understand how they work in practice.

I assume that they need some device both to replace or somehow connect to both the existing gas and electricity meters (as well as another remote unit to show the consumption). But where do these devices get their power from? For the electricity meter that's no big problem: I assume the device, whatever it is, will only use a watt or to to communicate to the home monitor and to the power company, so that a simple tap of the mains will suffice, after all that's how the existing meter works. But does the power that they use come out of what the consumer pays for?

But what about the smart gas meter? The existing one works on gas pressure, I assume. There's no electrical supply anywhere near our current gas meter - which may well be a common situation. Are these smart devices also gas-powered in some way or simply battery-powered? If so who is responsible for noticing when the battery runs down, and then buying a replacement and fitting it? I hope it's the power company, but if they have to make an urgent visit every year or so to change a battery that is hardly going to save them much compared to reading the existing meter at predictable intervals. If it's the consumer's responsibility and you somehow don't replace the battery does anyone notice or care? And does one's gas consumption get lost during the period of battery outage? Suppose you go away on holiday and the battery runs down just after you left, whose fault is that?

These are all simple obvious questions, but I don't seem to have been able to find answers. But I assume someone here already has a smart meter so will know the answers to at least some of them.

There's at least one other "Smart Meter" - and that's one used for the
water supply. We recently had a water main go in the road, and I was
chatting to a guy from the water company about the meters here. He said
they were read remotely during drive-by. They were powered by a small
generator which turned when the water flowed through them, as well as it
turning the figures on the dial.

What is interesting is something actually useful: "The new AMR meters
also have an inbuilt alarm system which will activate silently if water
runs continuously through the meter over a 24-hour period

This means that when we drive by to read your meter, the alarm will be
detected by us and we will investigate to see if there is a leak. This
helps us all save even more water, energy and money."

Considering that most leaks are "silent", that could be of interest -
even if it takes 6 months to actually notice when the next meter reading
is taken!

--

Jeff

Jeff Layman wrote :
This means that when we drive by to read your meter, the alarm will be
detected by us and we will investigate to see if there is a leak. This helps
us all save even more water, energy and money."

Considering that most leaks are "silent", that could be of interest - even if
it takes 6 months to actually notice when the next meter reading is taken!


We quite often see YW vans, but I have never spotted what might be a YW
meter reading van. I suppose there would be nothing to prevent them
equipping a numerous of their vans with the receivers, to pick up the
alarms and report them.