Smart meters and the north-south divide

NY · 2024-11-11T12:12:18+00:00

describes a north-south dividing line which runs roughly from Liverpool to Hull. Above this line, smart meters use "radio waves" and below it they use mobile-phone technology to send their daily readings back to the "Mother Ship". Yes I know mobile phones use radio as well! But you can't expect journalists to understand simple technology...I presume northern meters use a lower frequency that the 500 MHz to several GHz frequencies of mobile phones. I would have thought that lower frequencies / longer wavelengths would tend to bend round contours better (ie they are less line-of-sight) and give better reception in marginal hilly areas, but maybe that's not the problem. It does seem odd that there is a hard demarcation and that electricity providers are not allowed/supposed to use whichever technology gives better reception for a particular property. Kudos to Octopus for ignoring this and using whichever is better for a given house. Let's hope it gradually leads to a de-facto relaxation of the rules and hence to better meter-to-Mother-Ship comms.What are the actual technical facts: what frequencies are used typically for the two technologies?What are the problems with the "radio wave" technology? Is it an all-or-nothing thing, or does that fact that a property gets good "radio wave" comms *at all* mean that the data is being sent as fast as the mobile-phone comms in the south, so there is no advantage for those customers?I ask because we (on Octopus) are finding that it is taking a *long* time for a day's results to appear on the Octopus app - often well into the afternoon of one day before we can see the results - especially for the gas meter - from the previous day. This isn't a problem in the summer when we are on BST, but for some reason the "geo Home" app that talks directly with our Trio meter (bypassing the need to wait for the Octopus app results) always reports gas readings for the day before (reminiscent of the Two Ronnies "Answering the Question before"...

Nov 11, 2024 Last reply: 1 year ago 22 Replies

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Davey 1 year ago

"We received no complaints, so obviously we are doing things correctly".

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tony sayer 1 year ago

Yes they did, we took over a former Dolphin site a while ago it was on for about a fortnight before being switched off! A poorly conceived system if ever there was one:(..

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Tim+ 1 year ago

An interesting aside. Apparently the zigbee comms protocol includes “meshing” and the Octopus mini (which also uses zigbee) can be used to help “relay” an iffy signal from a gas meter to the main comms unit on the smart meter.

I’ve tried this myself and it seems to work.

Tim

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