Strange how my smart meters no longer talks to my energy supplier and they have to send me estimated bills. They say they will fix it remotely, considering they can't communicate with my meters that's going to be a miracle.
"remotely" probably means the issue is with the equipment discussed in the video, and your neighbors are also probably affected. They just mean they don't need to come onto your property to make any repairs.
@medivalone No, neighbour dose not have a problem. However, a work colleague 2 towns away has the same problem and has been going around in circles with the same supplier.
Yep, that's the "ignore it" type of excuse where they are just trying to brush you off. Keep complaining otherwise they will enjoy the extra income from their estimates. Make sure you supply regular meter readings to cut off their estimates, then they will know they cant swindle you. You probably need a meter replacement. They fail frequently.
@@iangrice329 I refused to have a smart meter installed... gives 'em way too much control over your power usage, they can even just pull the plug on you remotely... also, we don't know for sure exactly what personal data they are extracting from these meters... 😒
I have a similar problem with my gas meter: I can see that my data gets to the DCC as it's visible on the Bright app on my phone, but my energy supplier seems to have trouble their end!
I wouldn't say that they pose no health risk to the public. If you are distracted and accidentally walk into one it hurts just as much as any other metal mast.
It is ironic that 5G is supposed to be the network that connects EVERYTHING, but yet the one set of companies out to screw consumers over (power / gas / water utilities) doesn't trust the other company out to screw you over (the 5G carriers) to use their network, and instead build their own infrastructure from scratch. Let's be honest, none of this is there to charge the customer less - all of this infrastructure and network build out is there to make money by charging customers far more than it costs to implement this network. If it didn't have a payback that was many times the cost to implement it, it wouldn't be getting implemented.
4G was the "network to connect everything" too. As was 3G before that. Turned out that 2G became the network that connected everything, but they are switching it off. Lots of 2G only infrastructure devices going to landfill with nothing to replace them. Oh and loads of 2G and 3G cars suddenly disappearing. I wonder what happens when they cant phone home.
@@zepar221 Analog meters do a very good job of recording and billing you for "short pulses" of usage, like when motors start. That's not the issue at all. The issue is more that smart meters allows time of use variable rate "demand" billing. An old meter just tracks power, but can't adjust the rate on the fly, or determine how much power you used during "peak" periods. The smart meter can basically log how much power was used, and at what time periods, allowing for outrageous "demand" pricing. And it's not just time of day usage, but also demand can be high for inclement weather, and now they can just charge everyone more because the demand was higher. Maybe what you're thinking of is "imaginary power" or "reactive power" - analog meters can't track reactive power, digital meters can. That said, I'm not aware of any utility anywhere that bills residential customers for reactive power - that's only a commercial / industrial thing (at least for now).
re: "that 5G is supposed to be the network that connects EVERYTHING" Anachronistic fallacy; 5G didn't exist 10 yrs ago when many of these smart meter systems were rolled out, also, 5G doesn't necessarily exist EVERYWHERE, and the 6GHz and higher frequencies won't always reach where an electric POWER METER is located, hence, the use of UHF band and higher power levels.
@@uploadJ You seem to have missed my point - 5G is "marketed" as "the only network you need for everything everywhere" when it clearly isn't. And secondly when it comes to extracting the maximum amount of money out of customers, how an industry will choose to build their own infrastructure, rather than sharing even a tiny sliver of that revenue with another company. It's very telling, from both sides!
@@gorak9000 a) I think you want to overly complicate things, and b) don't know what you're talking about on these matters. About "5G" - the 'consumer' (probably includes you) has not a clue why it "is" and why it has come about. Former cellular planning and RF engineer here BTW, starting back in the mid/early 90's. Last project was at Cisco with a MiMAX project, before the 'tech' in the phones caught up to where it is possible to put +6 GHz (C band and up) hardware into a smartphone like an iPhone.
Here in sweden, or atleast in my city the power company still drive around in a car to read each meter individually/read groups of meters in apartment buildings.
Out here in the rural parts of western Washington (the Evergreen State, not the Dark Carnival), the local utility still does the drive-around thing too because most of the houses out here have wiring too old to retrofit a smart meter onto (wiring too old for Powerline Networking or installation of an EV charger)... I think smart meters are only put in on brand new construction in urban areas, here.
Here in the UK that method is used to read water meters, which are usually in a pit outside the property boundary along with the stopcock (shut-off valve).
I'm studying for my Amateur Extra class HAM license. The only type of radiation that can penetrate a tin or aluminum foil hat is education. Great vid, dude.
Smart meters are usually meant to make it easier to charge extra should the utilities decide to do that. They generally decide to do that. They’re called smart meters because, for a customer, it really smarts when there’s an extra charge.
You don't need a smart meter to raise prices. They are useful to give the customer a choice of a "time of use" plan that discounts energy during off-peak times and costs more during on-peak times, incentivizing the customer to use less energy during on-peak periods and thus reduce the size of the peak, which benefits all customers as the utility doesn't need expensive extra generation capacity to meet a steep peak period.
@@medivalone So people are too thick to turn things off? Remeber all that crap about how great HIVe was and how in control you would be blah blah blah and now its being closed down whether you like it or not so that means a change too how you control your system. I will keep my dumb meters because unlike a lot of dumb people I can work out my energy consuumption quite easily with a bit of simple maths.
@@medivalone The problem is the 'on peak' times are decided by each individual smart meter and are learned based on the consumers usage. My supplier keeps harassing me to get one fitted but I refused after reading through their smart meter terms and conditions. I can't believe anyone who has agreed to have a smart meter fitted has read the terms and conditions, no sane person would agree to that. It took me over 2 hours of reading, and referencing different documents to get all the information, my supplier had deliberately made the information difficult to find and follow.
In my town (in the UK) we now have remotely read water meters courtesy of Severn Trent Water. They somehow manage to communicate with a data collection centre from a hole in the ground capped by a cast iron cover. I asked the installers what comms system they used and the answer was "Its magic mate".
Most Smart Water meters sit "idle" they only only send data when they receive an "Interrogation" request, usually every 3 or 6 months. That is done from a Vehicle or Handheld Terminal. Here, near Wigan the guy walks down the streets/roads.
If they're the ITRON metres then I think they use a wireless protocol called LoRaWAN. It's quite common, and was developed for monitoring sensors over very long ranges, like pipelines.
And if they are using LoRaWAN then the "magic" is a technique _Chirp Spread Spectrum._ Whereby instead of AM or FM radio, the signal is a series of frequency-sweeping "chirps". Imagine the electromagnetic equivalent of an ambulance siren. It's such a distinctive pattern, that it can be detected and decoded from miles away, even when it's almost drowned out by background interference.
I was told that a number of Severn Trent vans are fitted with the interrogation kit and they collect info as they drive around looking for leaks. There must be some truth in this as they knocked on my door the other day saying the water would be off for a couple of hours while they fixed the leak at the street stop tap - a leak I had no knowledge of.
In my country they are mostly using power-line communication (PLC) or WMesh network to gather the individual meters' information to an area router which then sends that combined data over standard mobile network. In very rural areas with sparse population the meters use mobile networks directly skipping the routers. Naturally the information is encrypted. This is also because there's a requirement in the law that electric network operators must be able to remotely do grid load balancing per commands sent to an individual or group of meters.
Don't so much like smart meters myself. There are people who plan (for the future) to have smart meters eventually able to speak to our devices, switching them off to load balance the grid. Not a fan of central control over my devices, so I'm avoiding smart stuff for now.
Just curious, but would you be against a DIY solution where you run it through a home server with something like Home Assistant where you have complete control? Assuming that the hardware lets you control it independently.
@@alext3811 I'd love a DIY version to be able to monitor usage. I was looking into a Raspberry Pi thing someone had designed (can't remember what it was called off-hand) for next year.
@@greenpedal370 But not at the consumer level, only at the network and industrial level. I wouldn't want my PC to be switched off while I'm in the middle of a project, or have to put it on hold for a few hours. Although, with a Net Zero grid (wind/solar), I guess it'll have to be that way due to intermittent supply and lack of decent baseload capacity.
In OZ, we have the Distributed Antenna System (DAS), which caters to Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) like LoRa and Sigfox. One of the things it handles is smart metres using frequencies in the 868 MHz and 915 MHz range. These frequencies provide longer battery life and far-reaching communication for smart sensors and equipment.
Used to be the case that this was the case in the southern 2/3 of the uk mainland with cellular used but arqiva had the licence for the northern part with the more challenging Scottish terrain.
While I am not a huge fan of smart meters - they are often connected to the web and therefore susceptible to attacks - having a separate infrastructure is actually not such a dumb idea from a security perspective. What gives me headaches though is the term „proprietary“. This often means security is not at the forefront of things. And as soon as someone goes a-poking, finds something and kicks up a stink about it, you might be up a creek as a security researcher. This has happened in Germany a number of times, although not specifically with electrical grid stuff. Researchers have been threatened with legal consequences for speaking up and even for responsibly disclosing security flaws. That said, so much hinges on the usual Public mobile networks already. If that goes down for extended periods of time (on the order of days or weeks) we are already screwed in a variety of different ways. No internet connection, no fire and emergency services, no phone communication, no nothing. It’s not like the public network wasn’t capable of handling the additional traffic. But electricity being part of critical and essential services and utilities, should be handled and monitored separately and not on a public network. Again, this is purely from a security standpoint. I have deliberately not even touched things like privacy, auditability, resilience etc. That is a whole nother can of worms.
@@tomsixsixYou are correct - in the end it does not make a huge difference though. Once you own the control backend, the means of connection of a unit to the interwebs are secondary. There are also local differences. The UK is probably handling things differently than the US or other countries.
These aren't "smart" as in connects to your Google home. These are "smart" as in they can communicate much more effectively to reduce the collection cost. Everything you've just said is irrelevant.
It won't be long before these engineer geniuses have EVERYTHING connected to a massive worldwide "on-line bus" system. Like the CAN bus system in automobiles. Then, an attack on the smallest thing will result in a "domino effect" that will gradually shut down all devices on the system. When your stove or TV can't connect to the bus, it will trigger error messages that will result in other devices (like military installations) shutting off. This type of control system is coming, trust me, because it's CHEAP. And the government loves the idea, because they will finally gain total control of your cars, your bank account, and every appliance in your house. Don't believe me? Just ask the guy who had his F-150 totally bricked because of corrosion in a taillight bulb. Soon you won't just be paying a monthly fee for satellite radio, you'll also have to pay for your power windows, locks and A/C to work. All just to fire your local friendly meter reader. Get ALL your shit off of the internet. You only need it to surf the web.
That's very interesting. I had a British Gas guy round here yesterday who re-fitted a new gas smart meter as he couldn't get the original to connect to the network after a three hour visit. His previous visit a month ago was to fit the first gas meter, and the electricity smart meter. At the time, he couldn't get either to connect. Imagine my disappointment of having to endure free gas and electricity for a whole month. Yesterday, he left with the electricity meter on network, but was still unable to connect the gas meter. He handed me a monitor which he said worked over the mobile phone network and had a SIMM card in it. The implication here is that the monitor called geo takes its data from the network rather than the meters directly. Latency is very good, it reflects changes in load in just a few seconds. I'm in Brighton, so maybe things are different around here. Photos as required via PM Lewis. I'll be looking out for those masts.
They put you through all that? Glad I'm keeping my trusty dumb meter. Yep I pay more but I hardly use anything. Don't need a IHD taking up space in the kitchen drawer, that's where they end up in the end. I have switches which do the same task as an IHD. You push the switch, device goes off, electric usage goes down. When you go to bed, everything apart from the router, phone, alarm clock and recorder are all totally off.
I was told by the British Gas smart meter installation engineer who was supposed to be coming to fit one for me, that they can't fit them where I live as we're too close to the radar station at Fylingdales(it's about 40miles away, as the crow flies) and there's too much interference. I'm actually much closer to the one at RAF Staxton Wold.
This was the case some years ago, but now the versions of comms hub support our ofcom licences in the Fylingdales region. You should have no issues now
Smart meters probably won’t save you much money. I used to note down the exact mileage my car was getting to the gallon. I noted down the milage and litres used every time I filled up. It never stopped me from driving anywhere so it was useless information. Knowing how much your toaster costs to run won’t stop you from putting bread in your toaster at breakfast.
This should send alarm bells. They "sold" to a private corporation, spectrum that was Amateur radio, that private corporation now charges everyone for the right to use spectrum when data networks existing could and should do the same. Anyone with a smart meter could and should simply provide internet access to the meter, or, have a cellular data connection. The other band that is used is in 900 mhz in north america. Selling spectrum is basically a way for corrupt governments to enrich their friends and or themselves for the benefit of politicians who want to grab every short term solution without concern for the future cost to society.
_"Anyone with a smart meter could and should simply provide internet access to the meter"_ I disagree 100%. These meters are being forced onto people, there is no way they should be compelled to provide internet access at their own cost.
@@ferrumignis yeah, I don't have 24/7 Internet access at my home... I use a hotspot when I am home. I would not want to be forced to provide my own service for a metering device. If it's forced on me, it needs to not require me to provide it anything.
(1) some people don't have 24/7 internet access and how would this work with prepayment meters, the meter couldn't communicate if power was off. (2) in the South of England they do use cellular. This was not seen as sufficient for the north, as there are many more rural communities. IMO a big mistake on the part of the smart meter commission was to consider all of the 'north' inaccessible to cellular. Big towns are of course fine and many rural areas are too. And there are areas in the south that don't have good cellular. So it should have been an installer decision to put in 420MHz vs cellular.
Judging from what I can see this would be a 4-stack colinear antenna, offering a quite narrow vertical aperture. Just what the doctor ordered for this type of application.
I like the contrast in messaging between the postbox and the antennae. About 170 years ago people were asking what are these red cylinders with a slot in appearing on my street for? Although the first postboxes were painted green. They changed the colour to red because too many people were bumping into them. And congratulations on a well deserved 100k subscribers.
An interesting contrast is that they made postboxes a beautiful and iconic design. They didn't just slap a hunk of galvanized metal in the street. And they didn't try to crudely disguise it as a fake plant.
FYI: in the UK you can refuse to have a smart meter. I'm not saying you should, I'm not saying you shouldn't, there are pros and cons and the infrastructure will go in regardless. But you can.
I still are flatly refusing. I have a degree in Computer Science and work in IT and was appalled at the schoolboy design of SMETS2, that had as much security as a cardboard padlock till MI5 were FORCED to intervene for national security concerns. I don't like load shedding, I don't like IHD's (wasteful devices, usually end up in a drawer and totally replaced by a SWITCH) and I'm still untrusting of the suppliers ability to think "security". So no. Keep them. Talk to me again when you figure out what a computer is, what an attacker is, what cyberattacks are, and when you design SMETS3. Then I might be interested.
Here in France we have only one type of smart meter for domestic use - Linky. It’s made by several manufacturers to the same spec, even the same colour and identical user interface etc. They communicate via power line carrier in all but a very few case where 4G can be used. No drama, no special backhaul network, no meters incompatible with suppliers…
Exactement! I don't understand how UK 'smart' meters can't communicate to the central hubs via signalling through existing powerline. The infrastructure exists. All each meter would need to do is send a message " down the line". I'm guessing the problem here is that there are a lot of cables and it's near impossible to ensure a message from a meter reaches a messaging hub. That said, I think it should be possible... even with crude FM modulation.
@@UndergroundHouseAndTechno Each substation / transformer site contains a communications node that talks to all the meters connected via the electricity network to that location. It aggregates the data and sends it via xDSL, fibre or whatever is available back to the central servers.
@@UndergroundHouseAndTechnopower line comms should never be used. Too leaky, creates too much RFI. Plus it won't work over the pylons etc, there it's all filterd out, thankfully. Powerline is something I hope the year 2000 asks to be returned.
@@dlarge6502 The modulation scheme and power levels here create no significant noise (I’m a radio amateur so this is important to me). It’s only used in the distribution network, not over transmission links (pylons), although it does operate on overhead lines as well as underground (I’m in a semi rural area so overhead for me). Incidentally power line carrier systems have been used since the 1950s on transmission lines in the UK to carry protection signaling information at up to 64kbit/s at LF and MF. The frequency selection has to be coordinated with aeronautical authorities to avoid clashes with NDBs.
I had yet another reminder this week to get a smart meter from Scottish Power. I do not get estimated bills as I read my gas and electricity meters and work out how much it will cost me and my consumption then send the meter readings at the end of the month. No problem and I'm normally spot on. Do they think we will not put the heating on because we have read the meter? Save money in summer ready for winter.
In most places I've seen, they put up a few nodes attached to streetlights - they already have a pole that people are used to looking at and accept as being part of the landscape, and there's already power there. Seems rather redundant to install dedicated poles at separate sites when there's a plethora of poles already installed everywhere.
I dont know if this is still an issue, but some researchers found security flaws in smart meters a while back that allow unsigned firmware updates to propagate across a mesh network of smart meters and brick them.
The SMETS 2 meters, the new ones being installed, they were what you heard about. They were designed with NO security AT all. USB ports on the box, no encryption and where passwords were used the password was the same for all meters and hard coded in plain text in the firmware. You couldn't make it up. MI5 stepped in and forced the redesign of them in interest of national security. Having a degree in computer science and working in IT I was appalled that this was even happening. I wouldn't let the people who designed these things design a padlock, they would probably use the same key for every lock and make it out of plastic too. Thus no SMART meter for me thanks. Not till smets3 perhaps.
@@dlarge6502 re: "Having a degree in computer science and working in IT" It doesn't necessarily take that kind of 'credentialing' to recognize a problem exists. And the solution would call for a background in mathematics applied towards codes and ciphers.
Not seen one of these yet, but guessed smart meters. What you show is basically what I have via Eon. If they caused brain damage we wouldn't notice with the ones that think like that.
Very interesting. I remember a few years ago when my smart meter was being installed quizzing the installation guy on the subject. One issue he encountered was the initial inability for the hub to connect to the local mesh and may have resulted in mine having to have a SIM installed (implying this would become some soft of "master" on the mesh. All said we do have a mast fitting that description somewhat close by so thank to you video I'll give this a closer look.
All smart meters have a SIM in the comms hub. What you likely had was an additional MESH aerial to piggy back on other MESH aerials in poor signal areas.
Yes, that's Smart meters. I'd have dig out my notes, but it's a set of something like 12 or 16 12.5khz channels in thtee groups. Note the GPS antenna, timing is quite precise. Tune into a channel, tap out the fast rhythm you hear, that's the frame timing.
Interesting. I work for a smart meter company and my job is radio planning; I use software to model RF conditions on a GIS application and find the best locations to place data concentrators, which can look like these masts, but mostly we place the antennas on water towers. The concentrators use ~451MHz for reading the meters in the pits, then sends the telemetry through a back-haul, either LTE or ethernet. Narrow band IoT is used in some cases for meter reads. Where pits flood or are under cast-iron lids, we employ little disc antennas on top of the pit lid. Drive-by wireless reads can be used as a backup in case the concentrators fail.
Very odd as I noticed exactly the same thing attached to a streetlight in the middle of Staplehurst in Kent last weekend as I drove through that village. I'm always looking out for odd antennae and stuff.....also there's an Arqiva site a few miles away near Cranbrook.
Leeds City Council has finally connected all their traffic lights together via a mesh wireless network using directional antennas mounted on top of the traffic light poles pointing towards the next set of lights. If the distance between sets of traffic lights is too far or there's an object in the way blocking the signal they've installed an extra repeater antenna halfway up a street lamp inbetween. That system might be some of what you're seeing.
The Chanel called RECESIM has several deep dive reverse engineering videos on a couple different types of smart meters and master hubs. He breaks down the proprietary protocol and all the other neat things.
My smart meter transmits its readings by asking me to read them then type them into an app and submit the online using my internet. Should I bill the company for this service? I'll bill as 1 days effort each month + expenses. So about £900 I reckon. It used to read itself but went nuts on June 13th.
Who's paying for it? And what's really wrong with some bloke reading your meter every 6 months or so. Is all this extra stuff and technology needed? They want us to be green, but these things just use even more power.
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I‘d really like seeing the signal on an SDR because this could also be LTE B87/88 which officially is intended for PMR. Would line up with the specs (1.4 MHz bandwidth and 10 MHz duplex spacing). Edit: B87 already is used/tested in Bahrain for IoT energy stuff so it would only make sense to also use it in the UK. I don‘t think they‘d use a sat dish in the final design, they would probably rather set up a microwave link to an existing cellular tower as that often makes more sense.
It facilitates surveillance of behavioural habits, complimenting other information collected by various other companies and agencies with power usage habits. It's part of the surveillance state.
I thought these rod-type antennas are for digital administration radio with police and fire rescue included. 🤷♂️ At least that's how it's in Germany. 😎
My smart meter uses a pencil, paper and pair of electrochemical optical sensors connected to electrochemical processor stuck on top of a 201 cm mobile mast. (I read the meter myself and send the numbers to my energy provider. It'll stay that way until the meter is replaced when it comes to the end of its life. 😉)
Before the advent of smart meters, there was another communications system connecting gas meters to a central location. These meters were usually located in the premises of large users, such as factories, colleges and hospitals. The meters were connected to the central office by dedicated phone lines. The actual comms unit counted the mechanical pulses generated by the meter and phoned in these pulse numbers once a day. Once a year a technician had to visit each installation check the dial reading, and confirm with the central office that their dial reading was the same. If not, things were put back into synch. The whole installation was powered by a few dry batteries which were renewed on the same visit. As you see, smart meters are a great improvement and more accurate.
this is just me in the US but smart meters are not only really really really dangerous but are just blatantly illegal the main issue with all of them is as far as I know none of them have any sort of surge protection or similar countermeasures so I've seen more than one video of these things literally fucking grenading themselves because of a power surge
Only if you opt in to one of those tariffs. Octopus Energy have several different tariffs available for their smart meter customers that follow the wholesale price of electricity at 30 minute intervals. Whilst it's true that during peak times the price gets more expensive, it also allows them to pass on cheaper off-peak pricing to their customers - ultimately incentivising people to switch off unnecessary loads during peak periods benefits everyone by allowing the dirtier inefficient power plants to be switched off. Having a smart meter tariff that follows the live wholesale energy price, or being on a smart meter tariff that gives you a few hours of cheap electricity overnight allows you to use services like IFTTT or Home Assistant so when the price of electricity is cheap it will turn your heating/air conditioning on, and automatically turn it off again when the price gets too high.
That's how it starts, and then it become standard. That's how it works everywhere it gets rolled out. An it ALWAYS ends up costing more. See: every other country that has it. @@dank9561
Secret Pole Antenna installer #1] Hey, lets put a pole up in RWM's hood and see if he talks about us. Secret Pole Antenna installer #2] he he, i'll get a work order going.
@mikesmith-po8nd Yes. AMR2MQTT will send meter data over MQTT. I have Home Assistant recording my meter readings. The meters in the neighborhood have random serial numbers, so I looked at the label on mine to filter out the others.
@adam850, interesting. I didn't think that they would be encrypted, but I figured that they might use some proprietary data format. I also have a couple SDRs, and I've been very impressed with the "bang for the buck. "
We had one installed near my parents. It was a small box and huge antenna attached to a street lamp. I assume this would be a repeater due to the lack of base box
Do they also transmit handshakes to the meters or is it passive data collection ? This might explain the tiny burst transmissions I see in the 430MHz band. Could you show us a spectrum waterfall ?
You are most likely correct but that doesn't mean that they can't be used for other purposes. For example, I first started seeing these appearing in around 2014, (That I had noticed anyway) but at regular intervals on the expressway, not on a street. Why would they be on road with 75 mph speed limits that are average of 20 miles away from any town/city or even a house? Don't forget - the best way to hide something is in plain sight.
Possibility those masts are communicating wirelessly with other nearby highway infrastructure such as the electronic dot matrix message signs, sensors for monitoring how busy the road is, roadside weather stations, traffic lights, traffic cameras and even street lights. In the UK you'll occasionally see the overhead dot matrix signs switched on telling you how far away you are from major junctions/places of interest based on current traffic conditions.
I saw the word ZigBee on one of them. My guess is that may be how it speaks to devices inside the home. Not sure the range of ZigBee is enough for much else accept people coming by with hand meters. I believe the specific transceiver that collects my smart meter data is mounted on a power pole but I haven't been able to confirm that. I should send you some good pictures. Perhaps you could identify them or might just want to use them in a video sometime.
@@alext3811 All ZigBee implementations I know of are low power and I believe it's in the standard. I can't swear there aren't higher power implementations in some countries though. Even with a very well located ZigBee coordinator I still had to install a repeater to cover my home sufficiently.
@@spr00sem00se I have an SDR and a Tablet running the software but hunting it is a bit more complicated. According to Hash(smart meter hacker AKA RECESSIM) our meters use spread spectrum frequency hopping. It would take a lot of work for me to simply know what signals to hunt or to Identify them.
So, why such a difficult solution when they are already connected through wire? Why dont they use the energycables to send the data? It sounds a bit weird if you ask me.
The data signal cannot get back past the transformer that's stepping the high voltage supply down to 110/240v for your house. Similar reason why if you buy powerline network adapters for your computer the instructions tell you if you connect them to sockets running off separate breakers in your fuseboard they either won't work at all or the speed will be rubbish.
We use straight Ziggy here - we set up the same transmission towers on pole around the place - then we pull data in from these. The meters mesh together to get a path back to the root hub, so access requires less infrastructure. We have an area of 23,000 houses covered by one tower. The furthest meter is technically OTH to the hub node. This proprietary system is probably doing the same.
Told the smart meter regulations allow suppliers to change price of energy depending on demand, high demand means high price whilst low demand means lower prices. 🤔
Octopus Energy for example have several different tariffs available for their smart meter customers. If you're consistently able to avoid using electricity during the highest part of the evening peak when everyone is cooking dinner (for example if you're normally out at work at that time) then having a smart tariff that follows the live wholesale price of electricity can actually work in your favour by allowing you to get the off-peak electricity cheaper than a standard variable rate tariff would cost.
Micro Cell sites Low Band and Shortwave utility company antennas. Our meters in AMERICA use a Low Band or Shortwave frequency to send the meter's readings over the electric lines. I don't know why the UK is not using this frequency and equipment in the meters. The meters repeat the signal for non electric lines So the water meters hop from one to the next
Interesting, our digital meters go via Wi-Fi, last time they sent me a message there was an unusual use of water, somewhere in our building. After investigation, it was a shop that resides on our building on the first floor, one of the people left their water on and forgot about it. So these things do a great job.
It probably uses WiFi as a secondary connection. (i.e. providing near-realtime to a mobile phone app, where as actual billing is done by the much more reliable mesh net)
I'm surprised that the base stations are connected by ADSL - I would imagine they would use VDSL (FTTC) or full fibre so as not to be an obstacle to BT Openreach's telephone exchange decommissioning as they look to start that project in the next few years?
You expect joined up thinking? in the UK? Assuming data volumes are low I would expect the company to go with whatever was cheapest and/or most widely available at the time they designed the system. And I suspect that would have been ADSL.
That one almost did appear on my street! I recognise the location and live just a few hundred metres away. It is probably the one which reads my gas and electricity meters every half hour. I always wondered how it was done.
To my experience the smartmeters in The Netherlands use the old 2G cellular network that has been released for this purpose. The meters mostly installed were made by Landis & Gyr but these weren’t the only brand installed. In total 5 brands were installed in the area where I used to work. Coverage was sometimes problematic in high buildings or remote areas. Even mirrors installed on the doors of cupboards could disturb the connection.
They use several Mesh & Wi-FI Mesh Radio And LoRA WAN Not much Security It Kinda Funny Due they Share the Same Radio Frequencies as Packet Radio / LoRA / WiFI & Bluetooth Even have a P2P PtMP Mesh network Between Meters 2 Meters just in Case A Sim card dies on the 4G & LTE meters
We have similar private systems in use by our local council too monitor district heating systems its done to prevent abuse of heating... eg dear old lady goes of to visit her sister for the weekend but wants to dry her washing while away...so decides to leave her heating full to dry just a few clothing items... shes paying the same fixed fee as her neighbour whos sensible with her heating so thus a system of monitoring combined with heat meters and data usage sent back to the council and billed as "pay as you go" and not the old fixed fee ....stops the abuse ...especially they see the bill😮 it garners sensible use etc Saying that the bills are still very competitive as we buy our gas in bulk discounts and this is passed on to the tenants Well done again on the 100k+ subs lewis keep up good work mate
last Saturday driving along the M3 south of Fleet services 30 miles sw of London I manually re tuned car radio which stopped at 96.6 for crystal clear reception of BBC Radio Cymru which oddly disappeared once we reached the top of the north Hampshire Downs at the A303 turn off (although it was all in Welsh so not very engaging) . However we then found 2 French stations to not understand all the way down to Southampton & beyond. Thanks for your Education re these mysterious masts 👍
Our city in southern Germany installed LoRa-based water meters several years ago, with the goal of never having to send meter readers around anymore, and just read them by driving along the roads with their reader car.. but for some reason they don't seem to be able to actually get it working, since I still receive the "please send in your water readings" postcard twice a year. The newly installed "smart" meter I got when I put up my solar panels last year also has no communications facility, so I'll be reading that one manually for quite some time as well. Not quite what I expected...
Our local REMC put in smart meters and works on 900 MGHZ here . Big Clive says they are bad about billing you not for actual usage but apparent usage kinda sucks .plus a few have caught fire ruining the meter base .
@@RingwayManchester it was in the original specification, it was one of the strengths in their original bid the for northern region (pretty much Leeds and above. There were lots of problems in this region so maybe things changed since.
I have taken monthly readings for 15 years. I can tell you pretty accurately exactly how much gas and electric I will be using at any given time. I don't need (or want) a smart reader, yet another device monitoring what I do and using more radio waves/emfs etc to do so. Like most things it is 'sold' as being for customer convenience but when one looks at the way China is now with sesame credit et al and services being withheld for any arbitrary reason it is not difficult to see where 'convenience' can end up taking you.
The first meter box you showed said "Cellular". I understand that the North uses cellular and the south use this system you described. I do stand to be corrected, and I don't know where this demarcation line between Norf and Sarff is. Personally coming from the southcoast Watford is too North for me :)
We still have to pay estimated bills, even with smart meters. We need smart companies. They haven't realised you can't predict future use based on previous use, so can never buy power to resell to us efficiently. The problem is the contract the supplier has with reseller. It screws them for money. That's why you pay in advance and leftover is sold cheap or given away on a Sunday morning. Smart meters should allow us to submit a reading and pay for what we have used by a direct debit, but not at inflated cost.
I hate this duplication of ugly street furniture. It baffles me the greatest minds can't work out how to have smart meters use the same infrastructure that has already been installed for mobile phones. I'm guessing it's to do with using a more penetrating frequency for coverage and reliability, but then why can't these antenna at least be installed on a shared mast with mobile phones? These guys are going to put up this ugly mast, then at some point in the future a mobile phone company is going to roll up and put up their own ugly 5G mast not too far away. Urgh. I had a dream of a future where technology allowed us to have a sleek good looking urban environment, but we seem to be going the other way. The UK already has the issue that many urban places just look ugly and scruffy and stuff like this isn't helping.
Why bother with yet more 'street furniture ' when the same could be achieved with GSM. Seems like a money making excersise. Guess who's paying for it. All of us!
Perhaps these things work perfectly, but that isn't the issue (especially for PAYG customers). The problems arise when the energy provider tries to interpret the information and gets it massively wrong. Just go to the Scottish Power feedback forum to find it awash with negative/desperate comments about hugely inflated bills, or mistaken refunds which then have to be re-paid. Young families, single mums, pensioners etc., are panic-stricken, debt-ridden and often suicidal because of this. Technology be damned - bring back the plastic (pre-pay) keys so we know where we stand.
It's not isolated to your neck of the woods, When a local power utility did this the complaints started piling up too, same deal when the local water utility did the same. The ISP I use had faulty modems that were reporting crazy data usage, one person post a picture that it was reporting over 60TB of usage and the ISP refused to alter the bill. Same issue with the water utility, they said you owed that amounts but they would issue you a credit in following months, but one person owed a bill that was $6000 USD because of a faulty meter. The company would not own the mistake and adjust the bill.
man, another piece of infrastructure. couldn't they install something like a mind control device or death ray instead? we're kinda short on radio conspiracy theories at the moment and it's getting boring...
Seems pretty advanced. Here the electricity meters communicate via 4G. The water meters get read by an antenna on the garbage truck passing every 14 days. Gas isn't used so no meters for thats.
Ive had my smart meter for around 5 years now, I've not had one accurate bill and not one of the companies can connect to it. There's not anything smart about them.
Isnt it a little counter-intuitive, trying to save electricity use on a whole, globally across the country, then installing one of these and plugging it in on every street corner? 🤔
Strange how my smart meters no longer talks to my energy supplier and they have to send me estimated bills. They say they will fix it remotely, considering they can't communicate with my meters that's going to be a miracle.
"remotely" probably means the issue is with the equipment discussed in the video, and your neighbors are also probably affected. They just mean they don't need to come onto your property to make any repairs.
@medivalone No, neighbour dose not have a problem. However, a work colleague 2 towns away has the same problem and has been going around in circles with the same supplier.
Yep, that's the "ignore it" type of excuse where they are just trying to brush you off. Keep complaining otherwise they will enjoy the extra income from their estimates.
Make sure you supply regular meter readings to cut off their estimates, then they will know they cant swindle you.
You probably need a meter replacement. They fail frequently.
@@iangrice329 I refused to have a smart meter installed... gives 'em way too much control over your power usage, they can even just pull the plug on you remotely... also, we don't know for sure exactly what personal data they are extracting from these meters... 😒
I have a similar problem with my gas meter: I can see that my data gets to the DCC as it's visible on the Bright app on my phone, but my energy supplier seems to have trouble their end!
I wouldn't say that they pose no health risk to the public. If you are distracted and accidentally walk into one it hurts just as much as any other metal mast.
It is ironic that 5G is supposed to be the network that connects EVERYTHING, but yet the one set of companies out to screw consumers over (power / gas / water utilities) doesn't trust the other company out to screw you over (the 5G carriers) to use their network, and instead build their own infrastructure from scratch. Let's be honest, none of this is there to charge the customer less - all of this infrastructure and network build out is there to make money by charging customers far more than it costs to implement this network. If it didn't have a payback that was many times the cost to implement it, it wouldn't be getting implemented.
4G was the "network to connect everything" too. As was 3G before that. Turned out that 2G became the network that connected everything, but they are switching it off.
Lots of 2G only infrastructure devices going to landfill with nothing to replace them.
Oh and loads of 2G and 3G cars suddenly disappearing. I wonder what happens when they cant phone home.
@@zepar221 Analog meters do a very good job of recording and billing you for "short pulses" of usage, like when motors start. That's not the issue at all. The issue is more that smart meters allows time of use variable rate "demand" billing. An old meter just tracks power, but can't adjust the rate on the fly, or determine how much power you used during "peak" periods. The smart meter can basically log how much power was used, and at what time periods, allowing for outrageous "demand" pricing. And it's not just time of day usage, but also demand can be high for inclement weather, and now they can just charge everyone more because the demand was higher. Maybe what you're thinking of is "imaginary power" or "reactive power" - analog meters can't track reactive power, digital meters can. That said, I'm not aware of any utility anywhere that bills residential customers for reactive power - that's only a commercial / industrial thing (at least for now).
re: "that 5G is supposed to be the network that connects EVERYTHING"
Anachronistic fallacy; 5G didn't exist 10 yrs ago when many of these smart meter systems were rolled out, also, 5G doesn't necessarily exist EVERYWHERE, and the 6GHz and higher frequencies won't always reach where an electric POWER METER is located, hence, the use of UHF band and higher power levels.
@@uploadJ You seem to have missed my point - 5G is "marketed" as "the only network you need for everything everywhere" when it clearly isn't. And secondly when it comes to extracting the maximum amount of money out of customers, how an industry will choose to build their own infrastructure, rather than sharing even a tiny sliver of that revenue with another company. It's very telling, from both sides!
@@gorak9000
a) I think you want to overly complicate things, and b) don't know what you're talking about on these matters. About "5G" - the 'consumer' (probably includes you) has not a clue why it "is" and why it has come about. Former cellular planning and RF engineer here BTW, starting back in the mid/early 90's. Last project was at Cisco with a MiMAX project, before the 'tech' in the phones caught up to where it is possible to put +6 GHz (C band and up) hardware into a smartphone like an iPhone.
Here in sweden, or atleast in my city the power company still drive around in a car to read each meter individually/read groups of meters in apartment buildings.
Out here in the rural parts of western Washington (the Evergreen State, not the Dark Carnival), the local utility still does the drive-around thing too because most of the houses out here have wiring too old to retrofit a smart meter onto (wiring too old for Powerline Networking or installation of an EV charger)... I think smart meters are only put in on brand new construction in urban areas, here.
In Estonia, all power ones are remotely readable
Here in the UK that method is used to read water meters, which are usually in a pit outside the property boundary along with the stopcock (shut-off valve).
I'm studying for my Amateur Extra class HAM license. The only type of radiation that can penetrate a tin or aluminum foil hat is education. Great vid, dude.
Study hard. The Extra test was the toughest I've ever taken. I'm sure you'll do well. 73 de N7KBT
@@johnopalko5223 update: I got it! Your comment stuck in my head while I was preparing. Thanks for the motivation. --73 AI7UQ
Smart meters are usually meant to make it easier to charge extra should the utilities decide to do that. They generally decide to do that.
They’re called smart meters because, for a customer, it really smarts when there’s an extra charge.
You don't need a smart meter to raise prices. They are useful to give the customer a choice of a "time of use" plan that discounts energy during off-peak times and costs more during on-peak times, incentivizing the customer to use less energy during on-peak periods and thus reduce the size of the peak, which benefits all customers as the utility doesn't need expensive extra generation capacity to meet a steep peak period.
@@medivalone Correct
@@medivalone So people are too thick to turn things off? Remeber all that crap about how great HIVe was and how in control you would be blah blah blah and now its being closed down whether you like it or not so that means a change too how you control your system. I will keep my dumb meters because unlike a lot of dumb people I can work out my energy consuumption quite easily with a bit of simple maths.
@@medivalone The problem is the 'on peak' times are decided by each individual smart meter and are learned based on the consumers usage. My supplier keeps harassing me to get one fitted but I refused after reading through their smart meter terms and conditions. I can't believe anyone who has agreed to have a smart meter fitted has read the terms and conditions, no sane person would agree to that. It took me over 2 hours of reading, and referencing different documents to get all the information, my supplier had deliberately made the information difficult to find and follow.
In my town (in the UK) we now have remotely read water meters courtesy of Severn Trent Water. They somehow manage to communicate with a data collection centre from a hole in the ground capped by a cast iron cover. I asked the installers what comms system they used and the answer was "Its magic mate".
Most Smart Water meters sit "idle" they only only send data when they receive an "Interrogation" request, usually every 3 or 6 months.
That is done from a Vehicle or Handheld Terminal. Here, near Wigan the guy walks down the streets/roads.
If they're the ITRON metres then I think they use a wireless protocol called LoRaWAN. It's quite common, and was developed for monitoring sensors over very long ranges, like pipelines.
@@zepar221I think it's more a jokey way of saying "I haven't got a clue myself!"
And if they are using LoRaWAN then the "magic" is a technique _Chirp Spread Spectrum._ Whereby instead of AM or FM radio, the signal is a series of frequency-sweeping "chirps". Imagine the electromagnetic equivalent of an ambulance siren. It's such a distinctive pattern, that it can be detected and decoded from miles away, even when it's almost drowned out by background interference.
I was told that a number of Severn Trent vans are fitted with the interrogation kit and they collect info as they drive around looking for leaks. There must be some truth in this as they knocked on my door the other day saying the water would be off for a couple of hours while they fixed the leak at the street stop tap - a leak I had no knowledge of.
In my country they are mostly using power-line communication (PLC) or WMesh network to gather the individual meters' information to an area router which then sends that combined data over standard mobile network. In very rural areas with sparse population the meters use mobile networks directly skipping the routers. Naturally the information is encrypted. This is also because there's a requirement in the law that electric network operators must be able to remotely do grid load balancing per commands sent to an individual or group of meters.
Don't so much like smart meters myself. There are people who plan (for the future) to have smart meters eventually able to speak to our devices, switching them off to load balance the grid. Not a fan of central control over my devices, so I'm avoiding smart stuff for now.
Just curious, but would you be against a DIY solution where you run it through a home server with something like Home Assistant where you have complete control? Assuming that the hardware lets you control it independently.
Remote switching of individual loads to control the power network is nothing new and nothing to do with smart meters.
@@alext3811 I'd love a DIY version to be able to monitor usage. I was looking into a Raspberry Pi thing someone had designed (can't remember what it was called off-hand) for next year.
@@greenpedal370 But not at the consumer level, only at the network and industrial level. I wouldn't want my PC to be switched off while I'm in the middle of a project, or have to put it on hold for a few hours. Although, with a Net Zero grid (wind/solar), I guess it'll have to be that way due to intermittent supply and lack of decent baseload capacity.
@@alext3811 home server, like my brain? home assistant like my hands? i can turn off appliances without rich strangers' supervision actually
In OZ, we have the Distributed Antenna System (DAS), which caters to Low-Power Wide-Area Networks (LPWANs) like LoRa and Sigfox. One of the things it handles is smart metres using frequencies in the 868 MHz and 915 MHz range. These frequencies provide longer battery life and far-reaching communication for smart sensors and equipment.
Why are they not using cellular data? It seems ridiculous to have separate physical infrastructure for data less than 1 SMS per hour.
Probably cheaper and better coverage
Each mast likely covers hundreds, if not thousands, of meters. It all adds up.
Used to be the case that this was the case in the southern 2/3 of the uk mainland with cellular used but arqiva had the licence for the northern part with the more challenging Scottish terrain.
@@aetch77Yeah, and they don't need too much bandwidth, so cell is overkill.
@@Peter_S_ ZigBee is only for inside the house, it's very low power and short distance.
These transmitters are for low data rates but long ranges.
While I am not a huge fan of smart meters - they are often connected to the web and therefore susceptible to attacks - having a separate infrastructure is actually not such a dumb idea from a security perspective. What gives me headaches though is the term „proprietary“. This often means security is not at the forefront of things. And as soon as someone goes a-poking, finds something and kicks up a stink about it, you might be up a creek as a security researcher. This has happened in Germany a number of times, although not specifically with electrical grid stuff. Researchers have been threatened with legal consequences for speaking up and even for responsibly disclosing security flaws.
That said, so much hinges on the usual Public mobile networks already. If that goes down for extended periods of time (on the order of days or weeks) we are already screwed in a variety of different ways. No internet connection, no fire and emergency services, no phone communication, no nothing. It’s not like the public network wasn’t capable of handling the additional traffic. But electricity being part of critical and essential services and utilities, should be handled and monitored separately and not on a public network.
Again, this is purely from a security standpoint. I have deliberately not even touched things like privacy, auditability, resilience etc. That is a whole nother can of worms.
Smart meters aren't connected to the internet. You might be thinking of the IHD's which can be optionally connected to Wi-Fi.
@@tomsixsixYou are correct - in the end it does not make a huge difference though. Once you own the control backend, the means of connection of a unit to the interwebs are secondary. There are also local differences. The UK is probably handling things differently than the US or other countries.
These aren't "smart" as in connects to your Google home. These are "smart" as in they can communicate much more effectively to reduce the collection cost. Everything you've just said is irrelevant.
It won't be long before these engineer geniuses have EVERYTHING connected to a massive worldwide "on-line bus" system. Like the CAN bus system in automobiles. Then, an attack on the smallest thing will result in a "domino effect" that will gradually shut down all devices on the system. When your stove or TV can't connect to the bus, it will trigger error messages that will result in other devices (like military installations) shutting off. This type of control system is coming, trust me, because it's CHEAP. And the government loves the idea, because they will finally gain total control of your cars, your bank account, and every appliance in your house. Don't believe me? Just ask the guy who had his F-150 totally bricked because of corrosion in a taillight bulb. Soon you won't just be paying a monthly fee for satellite radio, you'll also have to pay for your power windows, locks and A/C to work.
All just to fire your local friendly meter reader.
Get ALL your shit off of the internet. You only need it to surf the web.
These meters had no security at all. None. Not till mi6 stepped in hurriedly for national security reasons.
That's very interesting. I had a British Gas guy round here yesterday who re-fitted a new gas smart meter as he couldn't get the original to connect to the network after a three hour visit.
His previous visit a month ago was to fit the first gas meter, and the electricity smart meter. At the time, he couldn't get either to connect.
Imagine my disappointment of having to endure free gas and electricity for a whole month.
Yesterday, he left with the electricity meter on network, but was still unable to connect the gas meter.
He handed me a monitor which he said worked over the mobile phone network and had a SIMM card in it.
The implication here is that the monitor called geo takes its data from the network rather than the meters directly. Latency is very good, it reflects changes in load in just a few seconds.
I'm in Brighton, so maybe things are different around here.
Photos as required via PM Lewis.
I'll be looking out for those masts.
They put you through all that? Glad I'm keeping my trusty dumb meter.
Yep I pay more but I hardly use anything. Don't need a IHD taking up space in the kitchen drawer, that's where they end up in the end. I have switches which do the same task as an IHD. You push the switch, device goes off, electric usage goes down. When you go to bed, everything apart from the router, phone, alarm clock and recorder are all totally off.
I have not suffered the slightest inconvenience through having free electricity and gas for a month. @@dlarge6502
I was told by the British Gas smart meter installation engineer who was supposed to be coming to fit one for me, that they can't fit them where I live as we're too close to the radar station at Fylingdales(it's about 40miles away, as the crow flies) and there's too much interference. I'm actually much closer to the one at RAF Staxton Wold.
I was parked looking at Flyingdales yesterday.
I noticed that I couldn't lock or unlock my car with the keyfob when. In its vicinity!
This was the case some years ago, but now the versions of comms hub support our ofcom licences in the Fylingdales region. You should have no issues now
Lewis you have a gift of making a technical subject clear to the non technical with an engaging presentation.
They can also cut you off by remote control ! Or double your bill as you sleep ! Nice .....
Smart meters probably won’t save you much money. I used to note down the exact mileage my car was getting to the gallon. I noted down the milage and litres used every time I filled up. It never stopped me from driving anywhere so it was useless information.
Knowing how much your toaster costs to run won’t stop you from putting bread in your toaster at breakfast.
This should send alarm bells. They "sold" to a private corporation, spectrum that was Amateur radio, that private corporation now charges everyone for the right to use spectrum when data networks existing could and should do the same. Anyone with a smart meter could and should simply provide internet access to the meter, or, have a cellular data connection. The other band that is used is in 900 mhz in north america. Selling spectrum is basically a way for corrupt governments to enrich their friends and or themselves for the benefit of politicians who want to grab every short term solution without concern for the future cost to society.
_"Anyone with a smart meter could and should simply provide internet access to the meter"_
I disagree 100%. These meters are being forced onto people, there is no way they should be compelled to provide internet access at their own cost.
@@ferrumignis yeah, I don't have 24/7 Internet access at my home... I use a hotspot when I am home.
I would not want to be forced to provide my own service for a metering device. If it's forced on me, it needs to not require me to provide it anything.
(1) some people don't have 24/7 internet access and how would this work with prepayment meters, the meter couldn't communicate if power was off.
(2) in the South of England they do use cellular. This was not seen as sufficient for the north, as there are many more rural communities. IMO a big mistake on the part of the smart meter commission was to consider all of the 'north' inaccessible to cellular. Big towns are of course fine and many rural areas are too. And there are areas in the south that don't have good cellular. So it should have been an installer decision to put in 420MHz vs cellular.
Considering the fact that I saw a car driving on the left and the company name I am very sure this is the UK. UK 70 cm is different from USA.
Judging from what I can see this would be a 4-stack colinear antenna, offering a quite narrow vertical aperture. Just what the doctor ordered for this type of application.
Oh my a comment like that will get Mark Steele the 5G DEW charlatan something to crow about.
I like the contrast in messaging between the postbox and the antennae. About 170 years ago people were asking what are these red cylinders with a slot in appearing on my street for? Although the first postboxes were painted green. They changed the colour to red because too many people were bumping into them.
And congratulations on a well deserved 100k subscribers.
An interesting contrast is that they made postboxes a beautiful and iconic design. They didn't just slap a hunk of galvanized metal in the street. And they didn't try to crudely disguise it as a fake plant.
FYI: in the UK you can refuse to have a smart meter.
I'm not saying you should, I'm not saying you shouldn't, there are pros and cons and the infrastructure will go in regardless. But you can.
you can here in certain parts of the U.S. too. I live in Minnesota and I opted out of getting one.
You can replace your smart meter with a dumb meter, if you choose, for a £125 installation fee.
yep that's what I'm having done and here where I live it's only 46 dollars.@@astrecks
I still are flatly refusing.
I have a degree in Computer Science and work in IT and was appalled at the schoolboy design of SMETS2, that had as much security as a cardboard padlock till MI5 were FORCED to intervene for national security concerns.
I don't like load shedding, I don't like IHD's (wasteful devices, usually end up in a drawer and totally replaced by a SWITCH) and I'm still untrusting of the suppliers ability to think "security". So no. Keep them.
Talk to me again when you figure out what a computer is, what an attacker is, what cyberattacks are, and when you design SMETS3. Then I might be interested.
Here in France we have only one type of smart meter for domestic use - Linky. It’s made by several manufacturers to the same spec, even the same colour and identical user interface etc. They communicate via power line carrier in all but a very few case where 4G can be used. No drama, no special backhaul network, no meters incompatible with suppliers…
Exactement! I don't understand how UK 'smart' meters can't communicate to the central hubs via signalling through existing powerline. The infrastructure exists. All each meter would need to do is send a message " down the line". I'm guessing the problem here is that there are a lot of cables and it's near impossible to ensure a message from a meter reaches a messaging hub. That said, I think it should be possible... even with crude FM modulation.
@@UndergroundHouseAndTechno Each substation / transformer site contains a communications node that talks to all the meters connected via the electricity network to that location. It aggregates the data and sends it via xDSL, fibre or whatever is available back to the central servers.
@@UndergroundHouseAndTechnopower line comms should never be used. Too leaky, creates too much RFI. Plus it won't work over the pylons etc, there it's all filterd out, thankfully.
Powerline is something I hope the year 2000 asks to be returned.
@@dlarge6502 The modulation scheme and power levels here create no significant noise (I’m a radio amateur so this is important to me). It’s only used in the distribution network, not over transmission links (pylons), although it does operate on overhead lines as well as underground (I’m in a semi rural area so overhead for me). Incidentally power line carrier systems have been used since the 1950s on transmission lines in the UK to carry protection signaling information at up to 64kbit/s at LF and MF. The frequency selection has to be coordinated with aeronautical authorities to avoid clashes with NDBs.
I had yet another reminder this week to get a smart meter from Scottish Power.
I do not get estimated bills as I read my gas and electricity meters and work out how much it will cost me and my consumption then send the meter readings at the end of the month. No problem and I'm normally spot on.
Do they think we will not put the heating on because we have read the meter? Save money in summer ready for winter.
The clearest explanation I've seen on a phenomenon I've noted in my own town over the last few years. Thank you.
In most places I've seen, they put up a few nodes attached to streetlights - they already have a pole that people are used to looking at and accept as being part of the landscape, and there's already power there. Seems rather redundant to install dedicated poles at separate sites when there's a plethora of poles already installed everywhere.
@@gorak9000 Don't worry, the mobile phone company will be round next week to put up yet another separate pole for 5G as well.
@@ryanmitcham5522 Each carrier will put up a separate one, because sharing towers is inconvienient
I dont know if this is still an issue, but some researchers found security flaws in smart meters a while back that allow unsigned firmware updates to propagate across a mesh network of smart meters and brick them.
The SMETS 2 meters, the new ones being installed, they were what you heard about.
They were designed with NO security AT all. USB ports on the box, no encryption and where passwords were used the password was the same for all meters and hard coded in plain text in the firmware.
You couldn't make it up.
MI5 stepped in and forced the redesign of them in interest of national security.
Having a degree in computer science and working in IT I was appalled that this was even happening. I wouldn't let the people who designed these things design a padlock, they would probably use the same key for every lock and make it out of plastic too.
Thus no SMART meter for me thanks. Not till smets3 perhaps.
@@dlarge6502 re: "Having a degree in computer science and working in IT"
It doesn't necessarily take that kind of 'credentialing' to recognize a problem exists. And the solution would call for a background in mathematics applied towards codes and ciphers.
@@uploadJ you didn't get the point...
Not seen one of these yet, but guessed smart meters. What you show is basically what I have via Eon. If they caused brain damage we wouldn't notice with the ones that think like that.
Very interesting. I remember a few years ago when my smart meter was being installed quizzing the installation guy on the subject. One issue he encountered was the initial inability for the hub to connect to the local mesh and may have resulted in mine having to have a SIM installed (implying this would become some soft of "master" on the mesh.
All said we do have a mast fitting that description somewhat close by so thank to you video I'll give this a closer look.
All smart meters have a SIM in the comms hub. What you likely had was an additional MESH aerial to piggy back on other MESH aerials in poor signal areas.
I see wide band data at 422mhz on my SDR, I wonder if that is smart meters?
I love this sort of subject.
Yes, that's Smart meters. I'd have dig out my notes, but it's a set of something like 12 or 16 12.5khz channels in thtee groups. Note the GPS antenna, timing is quite precise. Tune into a channel, tap out the fast rhythm you hear, that's the frame timing.
Interesting. I work for a smart meter company and my job is radio planning; I use software to model RF conditions on a GIS application and find the best locations to place data concentrators, which can look like these masts, but mostly we place the antennas on water towers. The concentrators use ~451MHz for reading the meters in the pits, then sends the telemetry through a back-haul, either LTE or ethernet. Narrow band IoT is used in some cases for meter reads. Where pits flood or are under cast-iron lids, we employ little disc antennas on top of the pit lid. Drive-by wireless reads can be used as a backup in case the concentrators fail.
bloody hate smart meters.
Why?
Very odd as I noticed exactly the same thing attached to a streetlight in the middle of Staplehurst in Kent last weekend as I drove through that village. I'm always looking out for odd antennae and stuff.....also there's an Arqiva site a few miles away near Cranbrook.
Maybe o2 are using streetlights, but there are tons of radio using that option. Rf trials of tech and 5G small cells as examples
Theres loads of random stuff strapped to the top of poles in Northampton, should send you some pics some time for you to go over as I am stumped ah
Cameras with flat antennae?
@@chrisreed5463those square antenna? We have those in some parts of Los Angeles
Leeds City Council has finally connected all their traffic lights together via a mesh wireless network using directional antennas mounted on top of the traffic light poles pointing towards the next set of lights. If the distance between sets of traffic lights is too far or there's an object in the way blocking the signal they've installed an extra repeater antenna halfway up a street lamp inbetween. That system might be some of what you're seeing.
The Chanel called RECESIM has several deep dive reverse engineering videos on a couple different types of smart meters and master hubs. He breaks down the proprietary protocol and all the other neat things.
My smart meter transmits its readings by asking me to read them then type them into an app and submit the online using my internet. Should I bill the company for this service? I'll bill as 1 days effort each month + expenses. So about £900 I reckon. It used to read itself but went nuts on June 13th.
Who's paying for it? And what's really wrong with some bloke reading your meter every 6 months or so. Is all this extra stuff and technology needed? They want us to be green, but these things just use even more power.
I‘d really like seeing the signal on an SDR because this could also be LTE B87/88 which officially is intended for PMR. Would line up with the specs (1.4 MHz bandwidth and 10 MHz duplex spacing).
Edit: B87 already is used/tested in Bahrain for IoT energy stuff so it would only make sense to also use it in the UK.
I don‘t think they‘d use a sat dish in the final design, they would probably rather set up a microwave link to an existing cellular tower as that often makes more sense.
It facilitates surveillance of behavioural habits, complimenting other information collected by various other companies and agencies with power usage habits. It's part of the surveillance state.
I thought these rod-type antennas are for digital administration radio with police and fire rescue included. 🤷♂️ At least that's how it's in Germany. 😎
My smart meter uses a pencil, paper and pair of electrochemical optical sensors connected to electrochemical processor stuck on top of a 201 cm mobile mast.
(I read the meter myself and send the numbers to my energy provider. It'll stay that way until the meter is replaced when it comes to the end of its life. 😉)
Before the advent of smart meters, there was another communications system connecting gas meters to a central location. These meters were usually located in the premises of large users, such as factories, colleges and hospitals. The meters were connected to the central office by dedicated phone lines. The actual comms unit counted the mechanical pulses generated by the meter and phoned in these pulse numbers once a day. Once a year a technician had to visit each installation check the dial reading, and confirm with the central office that their dial reading was the same. If not, things were put back into synch. The whole installation was powered by a few dry batteries which were renewed on the same visit.
As you see, smart meters are a great improvement and more accurate.
Mine is using GSM so this must be regional ?
this is just me in the US but smart meters are not only really really really dangerous but are just blatantly illegal the main issue with all of them is as far as I know none of them have any sort of surge protection or similar countermeasures so I've seen more than one video of these things literally fucking grenading themselves because of a power surge
And your bills will go UP! As soon as smart meters go in, you will get billed by usage times, peak times etc. It's another way for them to make money.
Only if you opt in to one of those tariffs. Octopus Energy have several different tariffs available for their smart meter customers that follow the wholesale price of electricity at 30 minute intervals. Whilst it's true that during peak times the price gets more expensive, it also allows them to pass on cheaper off-peak pricing to their customers - ultimately incentivising people to switch off unnecessary loads during peak periods benefits everyone by allowing the dirtier inefficient power plants to be switched off.
Having a smart meter tariff that follows the live wholesale energy price, or being on a smart meter tariff that gives you a few hours of cheap electricity overnight allows you to use services like IFTTT or Home Assistant so when the price of electricity is cheap it will turn your heating/air conditioning on, and automatically turn it off again when the price gets too high.
That's how it starts, and then it become standard. That's how it works everywhere it gets rolled out. An it ALWAYS ends up costing more. See: every other country that has it. @@dank9561
I'd never have a smart meter. Sending my readings manually is good enough and I'm always in credit
That tubular mast would be great for a VHF/UHF/satellite array.
Secret Pole Antenna installer #1] Hey, lets put a pole up in RWM's hood and see if he talks about us. Secret Pole Antenna installer #2] he he, i'll get a work order going.
Getting people ready for Social credit systems and digital currency, do the wrong thing and you will be penalised.
I thought it's a black tinted out van. I was worried for a sec 😂
I use an SDR connected to a computer to listen to the AMR signal from my electric meter. You can listen to the whole neighborhood if you wanted to.
Are you able to decode any of it?
@mikesmith-po8nd Yes. AMR2MQTT will send meter data over MQTT. I have Home Assistant recording my meter readings. The meters in the neighborhood have random serial numbers, so I looked at the label on mine to filter out the others.
@adam850, interesting. I didn't think that they would be encrypted, but I figured that they might use some proprietary data format.
I also have a couple SDRs, and I've been very impressed with the "bang for the buck. "
We had one installed near my parents. It was a small box and huge antenna attached to a street lamp. I assume this would be a repeater due to the lack of base box
Do they also transmit handshakes to the meters or is it passive data collection ? This might explain the tiny burst transmissions I see in the 430MHz band. Could you show us a spectrum waterfall ?
Those data bursts you’re seeing in 430 will be car key fobs and other 433mhz fobs and telemetry for things
all cellular based technologies have a Handshake or broadcast channel. Usually its IoT that dont
You are most likely correct but that doesn't mean that they can't be used for other purposes. For example, I first started seeing these appearing in around 2014, (That I had noticed anyway) but at regular intervals on the expressway, not on a street. Why would they be on road with 75 mph speed limits that are average of 20 miles away from any town/city or even a house? Don't forget - the best way to hide something is in plain sight.
Possibility those masts are communicating wirelessly with other nearby highway infrastructure such as the electronic dot matrix message signs, sensors for monitoring how busy the road is, roadside weather stations, traffic lights, traffic cameras and even street lights. In the UK you'll occasionally see the overhead dot matrix signs switched on telling you how far away you are from major junctions/places of interest based on current traffic conditions.
I saw the word ZigBee on one of them. My guess is that may be how it speaks to devices inside the home. Not sure the range of ZigBee is enough for much else accept people coming by with hand meters.
I believe the specific transceiver that collects my smart meter data is mounted on a power pole but I haven't been able to confirm that. I should send you some good pictures. Perhaps you could identify them or might just want to use them in a video sometime.
ZigBee is IoT, and meant to be low power IIRC.
Buy an rtl sdr and go and hunt it.
@@alext3811 All ZigBee implementations I know of are low power and I believe it's in the standard. I can't swear there aren't higher power implementations in some countries though. Even with a very well located ZigBee coordinator I still had to install a repeater to cover my home sufficiently.
@@spr00sem00se I have an SDR and a Tablet running the software but hunting it is a bit more complicated. According to Hash(smart meter hacker AKA RECESSIM) our meters use spread spectrum frequency hopping. It would take a lot of work for me to simply know what signals to hunt or to Identify them.
ZigBee is for the "Home Area Network" which is primarily for comms to the remote power display panel, if you have one that actually works...
Can't say I've ever seen any of these. Maybe need to look harder!
Of course they're safe, what the fuck they think they're gonna do?
So, why such a difficult solution when they are already connected through wire?
Why dont they use the energycables to send the data?
It sounds a bit weird if you ask me.
The data signal cannot get back past the transformer that's stepping the high voltage supply down to 110/240v for your house. Similar reason why if you buy powerline network adapters for your computer the instructions tell you if you connect them to sockets running off separate breakers in your fuseboard they either won't work at all or the speed will be rubbish.
All about control say no to smart meters and smart anything.
Wow I wondered what there were thanks for letting me know. Seen 3 of them pop up on are estate. Thanks again love your show Alan from LUTON 💯🇬🇧👍👍👍
Spot on! Maybe an installment on LoRa would be interesting 🙂
Just more tech,to do someone out of an honest days pay
It looks like my tri band vhf uhf Ed Fong amateur radio antenna on a pvc mast at my home. 73 de W2CH 😂
We use straight Ziggy here - we set up the same transmission towers on pole around the place - then we pull data in from these. The meters mesh together to get a path back to the root hub, so access requires less infrastructure. We have an area of 23,000 houses covered by one tower. The furthest meter is technically OTH to the hub node. This proprietary system is probably doing the same.
It's been a while since we got 8.02kWh of electric for £1.26. (The smart Meter screen)
Told the smart meter regulations allow suppliers to change price of energy depending on demand, high demand means high price whilst low demand means lower prices. 🤔
Price surging. Ever used an Uber?
If so don't. I never do
Octopus Energy for example have several different tariffs available for their smart meter customers. If you're consistently able to avoid using electricity during the highest part of the evening peak when everyone is cooking dinner (for example if you're normally out at work at that time) then having a smart tariff that follows the live wholesale price of electricity can actually work in your favour by allowing you to get the off-peak electricity cheaper than a standard variable rate tariff would cost.
Micro Cell sites
Low Band and Shortwave utility company antennas.
Our meters in AMERICA use a Low Band or Shortwave frequency to send the meter's readings over the electric lines.
I don't know why the UK is not using this frequency and equipment in the meters.
The meters repeat the signal for non electric lines
So the water meters hop from one to the next
Interesting, our digital meters go via Wi-Fi, last time they sent me a message there was an unusual use of water, somewhere in our building. After investigation, it was a shop that resides on our building on the first floor, one of the people left their water on and forgot about it. So these things do a great job.
It probably uses WiFi as a secondary connection. (i.e. providing near-realtime to a mobile phone app, where as actual billing is done by the much more reliable mesh net)
I'm surprised that the base stations are connected by ADSL - I would imagine they would use VDSL (FTTC) or full fibre so as not to be an obstacle to BT Openreach's telephone exchange decommissioning as they look to start that project in the next few years?
Everything is FTTC and most of the network is full fibre. The last leg may be copper with some kind of adsl bridge in the cabinet.
You expect joined up thinking? in the UK?
Assuming data volumes are low I would expect the company to go with whatever was cheapest and/or most widely available at the time they designed the system. And I suspect that would have been ADSL.
That one almost did appear on my street! I recognise the location and live just a few hundred metres away. It is probably the one which reads my gas and electricity meters every half hour. I always wondered how it was done.
In the next video a Faraday cage.
To my experience the smartmeters in The Netherlands use the old 2G cellular network that has been released for this purpose. The meters mostly installed were made by Landis & Gyr but these weren’t the only brand installed. In total 5 brands were installed in the area where I used to work. Coverage was sometimes problematic in high buildings or remote areas. Even mirrors installed on the doors of cupboards could disturb the connection.
They use several Mesh & Wi-FI Mesh Radio And LoRA WAN Not much Security
It Kinda Funny Due they Share the Same Radio Frequencies as Packet Radio / LoRA / WiFI & Bluetooth Even have a P2P PtMP Mesh network Between Meters 2 Meters just in Case A Sim card dies on the 4G & LTE meters
We have similar private systems in use by our local council too monitor district heating systems its done to prevent abuse of heating...
eg dear old lady goes of to visit her sister for the weekend but wants to dry her washing while away...so decides to leave her heating full to dry just a few clothing items... shes paying the same fixed fee as her neighbour whos sensible with her heating so thus a system of monitoring combined with heat meters and data usage sent back to the council and billed as "pay as you go" and not the old fixed fee ....stops the abuse ...especially they see the bill😮 it garners sensible use etc
Saying that the bills are still very competitive as we buy our gas in bulk discounts and this is passed on to the tenants
Well done again on the 100k+ subs lewis keep up good work mate
last Saturday driving along the M3 south of Fleet services 30 miles sw of London I manually re tuned car radio which stopped at 96.6 for crystal clear reception of BBC Radio Cymru which oddly disappeared once we reached the top of the north Hampshire Downs at the A303 turn off (although it was all in Welsh so not very engaging) . However we then found 2 French stations to not understand all the way down to Southampton & beyond. Thanks for your Education re these mysterious masts 👍
It's only dangerous if you let it make you think it's dangerous
Exactly
How about NO ... They can do a lot more than read your meter ... They can also cut or limit your supply.
Yes, just like China 🇨🇳
Our city in southern Germany installed LoRa-based water meters several years ago, with the goal of never having to send meter readers around anymore, and just read them by driving along the roads with their reader car.. but for some reason they don't seem to be able to actually get it working, since I still receive the "please send in your water readings" postcard twice a year.
The newly installed "smart" meter I got when I put up my solar panels last year also has no communications facility, so I'll be reading that one manually for quite some time as well. Not quite what I expected...
Our local REMC put in smart meters and works on 900 MGHZ here . Big Clive says they are bad about billing you not for actual usage but apparent usage kinda sucks .plus a few have caught fire ruining the meter base .
What you did miss was the fact that the comms hubs mesh , and pass on signals to one another to increase the range.
Not the ones specific to this system. So I didn’t miss anything
@@RingwayManchester it was in the original specification, it was one of the strengths in their original bid the for northern region (pretty much Leeds and above. There were lots of problems in this region so maybe things changed since.
Not quite a mesh system, but i can understand why people think that
Amphenol has an office nearby in Gateway Office Park near me hear in Nashua, NH 😮
I have taken monthly readings for 15 years. I can tell you pretty accurately exactly how much gas and electric I will be using at any given time. I don't need (or want) a smart reader, yet another device monitoring what I do and using more radio waves/emfs etc to do so. Like most things it is 'sold' as being for customer convenience but when one looks at the way China is now with sesame credit et al and services being withheld for any arbitrary reason it is not difficult to see where 'convenience' can end up taking you.
The first meter box you showed said "Cellular". I understand that the North uses cellular and the south use this system you described. I do stand to be corrected, and I don't know where this demarcation line between Norf and Sarff is. Personally coming from the southcoast Watford is too North for me :)
We still have to pay estimated bills, even with smart meters. We need smart companies.
They haven't realised you can't predict future use based on previous use, so can never buy power to resell to us efficiently.
The problem is the contract the supplier has with reseller. It screws them for money. That's why you pay in advance and leftover is sold cheap or given away on a Sunday morning.
Smart meters should allow us to submit a reading and pay for what we have used by a direct debit, but not at inflated cost.
I hate this duplication of ugly street furniture. It baffles me the greatest minds can't work out how to have smart meters use the same infrastructure that has already been installed for mobile phones. I'm guessing it's to do with using a more penetrating frequency for coverage and reliability, but then why can't these antenna at least be installed on a shared mast with mobile phones? These guys are going to put up this ugly mast, then at some point in the future a mobile phone company is going to roll up and put up their own ugly 5G mast not too far away. Urgh.
I had a dream of a future where technology allowed us to have a sleek good looking urban environment, but we seem to be going the other way. The UK already has the issue that many urban places just look ugly and scruffy and stuff like this isn't helping.
Why bother with yet more 'street furniture ' when the same could be achieved with GSM. Seems like a money making excersise. Guess who's paying for it. All of us!
This is true for Landis and Gyr smart meters, EDMI meters though have built-in modems and SIMs and communicate directly with a GSM network
In Ireland we use the standard 2G network for smart metering. I think it's the 3 2G network (formerly O2).
I've seen things like this before in the US, they're used for distributing the Community Wi-Fi, but might have secondary uses like this.
In NZ, our smart meters use existing 4G/5G network -- they simply have a modem with a standard data SIM inserted.
Yep a streetworks at 400mhz, with omni and gps antenna. I'm the principal radio engineer and team lead for ops
Perhaps these things work perfectly, but that isn't the issue (especially for PAYG customers). The problems arise when the energy provider tries to interpret the information and gets it massively wrong. Just go to the Scottish Power feedback forum to find it awash with negative/desperate comments about hugely inflated bills, or mistaken refunds which then have to be re-paid. Young families, single mums, pensioners etc., are panic-stricken, debt-ridden and often suicidal because of this. Technology be damned - bring back the plastic (pre-pay) keys so we know where we stand.
It's not isolated to your neck of the woods, When a local power utility did this the complaints started piling up too, same deal when the local water utility did the same. The ISP I use had faulty modems that were reporting crazy data usage, one person post a picture that it was reporting over 60TB of usage and the ISP refused to alter the bill. Same issue with the water utility, they said you owed that amounts but they would issue you a credit in following months, but one person owed a bill that was $6000 USD because of a faulty meter. The company would not own the mistake and adjust the bill.
man, another piece of infrastructure. couldn't they install something like a mind control device or death ray instead? we're kinda short on radio conspiracy theories at the moment and it's getting boring...
Seems pretty advanced. Here the electricity meters communicate via 4G. The water meters get read by an antenna on the garbage truck passing every 14 days.
Gas isn't used so no meters for thats.
It looks like the little blue vans of the BBC have finally circled in on you!!!! No more of your radio shenanigans!!!! 🤣🤣🤣
You've clearly annoyed someone at MI5. They are taking a closer interest in you, to make sure you don't spill all their secrets...😉
We live in a RF soup so many transmissions wifi, cell towers Britain's Got Talent etc no wonder the population is crazy lol
They want to monitor you!🤣🤣
Fascinating and entertaining as always!
Ive had my smart meter for around 5 years now, I've not had one accurate bill and not one of the companies can connect to it. There's not anything smart about them.
Isnt it a little counter-intuitive, trying to save electricity use on a whole, globally across the country, then installing one of these and plugging it in on every street corner? 🤔
And they don't save you any money, but they tell you they do, all electrical equipment have an energy saving switch,