Smart Meter Communication Antennae

[Old Tip]

Just wondering if anyone had one of these installed on their land, been approached to host one.
On reading the agreement there is an annual payment plus reimbursement of electricity use but only for three years. Can’t see any info on what happens after the initial three years.

 

[Lazy Sod]

Best get yourself an agent.

 

[farmerste]

get an agent and make them put in their own electricity supply and meter,repaying you for their electricity use sounds like a recipie for not getting payed in the future.

 

[Katarina]

Have you checked if there are any health inspections for yourselves ?
Something to think about for sure.

 

[Old Tip]

Have you checked if there are any health inspections for yourselves ?
Something to think about for sure.

Health Inspections ?

 

[Exfarmer]

Just wondering if anyone had one of these installed on their land, been approached to host one.
On reading the agreement there is an annual payment plus reimbursement of electricity use but only for three years. Can’t see any info on what happens after the initial three years.

After 3 years you snip the cable and waitfor another check
i assume this is for a an area water meter, the power usage will be completely negligable. Imafine a mobile phone making one call a day and the meter itself will probably use the equivalent of a hearing aid battery once a year.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

I have remote read gas meters, they send a tiny GPRS data packet back to the cloud once a day. The data use is so negligible that the SIM balance has dropped by 10p in 2 years.

The LPG bulk tank is also fitted with a similar device to measure the liquid level in the tank. It’s a two stage affair with a small low power transceiver directly fitted to the gauge/level sender on the tank and a larger sender mounted at roof level to sniff the GSM/mobile signal. It communicates by sending one silent SMS/text message back to the cloud each day.

Water, electricity and mains/town gas meters are similar and to my knowledge also generally just leverage the mobile phone networks for their comms. They are often fitted with “roaming” SIMs that are used for so called M2M (machine to machine) communications. These just lock onto the strongest available mobile signal.

There are some alternative ultra low power wireless technologies that use LoRa WAN or xBee for comms. There are some new companies pushing Ag weather, crop and beast sensors that are moving along with this tech.

 

[Old Tip]

After 3 years you snip the cable and waitfor another check
i assume this is for a an area water meter, the power usage will be completely negligable. Imafine a mobile phone making one call a day and the meter itself will probably use the equivalent of a hearing aid battery once a year.

Seemingly it will pick up info from all the smart meters fitted in folks homes and send it on to somewhere so they can better understand the power needs and usage

 

[Katarina]

Health Inspections ?

Sorry . Health implications I ment.

 

[Exfarmer]

Seemingly it will pick up info from all the smart meters fitted in folks homes and send it on to somewhere so they can better understand the power needs and usage

must confess have not heard of these

 

[TripleSix]

must confess have not heard of these

Electricity smart meters communicate via RF, so they need a receiver within a few miles, which then sends the data onwards via GSM I believe.

 

[Highland Mule]

Just wondering if anyone had one of these installed on their land, been approached to host one.
On reading the agreement there is an annual payment plus reimbursement of electricity use but only for three years. Can’t see any info on what happens after the initial three years.

I was, but declined. Not enough money and they wanted it close to the house.

 

[Exfarmer]

Electricity smart meters communicate via RF, so they need a receiver within a few miles, which then sends the data onwards via GSM I believe.

Interesting

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Just had a look at the SMETS2 smart meter standard and yes mains supply gas and electric meters will use the Zigbee protocol at 2.4 GHz

My stuff is all off grid, so uses GSM network directly at the meter. One chirp a day as said.

 

[sjt01]

Just had a look at the SMETS2 smart meter standard and yes mains supply gas and electric meters will use the Zigbee protocol at 2.4 GHz

My stuff is all off grid, so uses GSM network directly at the meter. One chirp a day as said.

Zigbee range is quite limited, I was looking at it for grain store temperature monitoring and would need repeaters to get it out of the building. Perhaps there is a higher power variant licensed now.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Zigbee range is quite limited, I was looking at it for grain store temperature monitoring and would need repeaters to get it out of the building. Perhaps there is a higher power variant licensed now.

LoRa at 868 MHz would have offered a far superior wireless solution, but was probably in its infancy when the DECC looked at the standard back in 2013/14.

LoRA has come along a lot in the last 2 years.

That’s definitely what I’d be looking at for a farm sensor or IoT solution.

 

[Steevo]

Surprised they don't just ask Vodafone or such if they can tack a dish onto one of their masts.

 

[TheTallGuy]

Zigbee communication is used for connection between the meter & remote display, the back-office connection is via the DCC network.

 

[Pheasant Surprise]

Zigbee communication is used for connection between the meter & remote display, the back-office connection is via the DCC network.

What tech does DCC use though, as that's just the national (Capita operated) operating company for networking the SMETS2 smart meters? Looks like the old SMETS1 meters were mostly GSM/GPRS type.

Its not totally clear what radio protocol/technology they are using on on the wide area network (WAN) side. Perhaps a range of radio technologies/protocols are used depending on whether its a rural or urban/city meter deployment?

See quote from:

Technical information on UK SMETS 2 Smart Meters

How do SMETS 2 Smart Meters communicate and which models are SMETS 2? What do the comms hubs and aerials look like? What do the LEDs on the hubs mean?

www.smartme.co.uk

Wide Area Network
The Wide Area Network or WAN is the name given to the communications network between the meters and the company responsible for collecting the data and passing it on to other businesses such as suppliers. This company will usually be the DCC (Data Communications Company) which the government has set up especially for this role supporting the final SMETS2 meters. Depending on the Communications Service Provider, which varies by areas of the UK, the technology can change depending on what works best in a local area. Sometimes your meter will communicate directly with DCC and sometimes it will talk through the meters around you to reach a particular meter which has direct communications with DCC. This form of communications looks like a mesh when you draw out the possible links between meters and is therefore known as a Mesh network.

Home Area Network
The Home Area network or HAN is a bit like your home broadband wireless network and will be used to communicate between the meters, the In Home Display (previously known as Smart Meter Display or Home Energy Monitor) and other items as and when they become available. However where the meter is a long way from the location of the In Home Display, or thick walls are in the way, the current technology (Zigbee at 2.4GHz) won't work. This could be the case for up to 30% of properties.

A different communications method (Zigbee 868MHz) will improve this for about 3.5% of properties but that still leave a large number for whom Smart Meters won't work. Zigbee 868MHz should be available some time in 2018.

 

[TheTallGuy]

As far as I am aware the DCC network is primarily based on GSM technology with some alterations to provide better security and extra features.