Hi All,
This is going to be a somewhat long and technical post, so buckle in or perhaps skip over if long posts are not for you...
I'm currently with Bulb (yes, that Bulb, that's in the news... ) and have been musing getting a smart meter install for about 6 months and possibly switching to Octopus, but I never got around to it as taking a day off work to get a meter installed is a waste of precious annual leave IMO.
In the last few months Bulb have been nagging me by email and text to get a smart meter installed literally 3 times a week so when a day came up yesterday where my work is closed on an otherwise normal business day giving me a free day off I thought fine, lets do this, as SMETS2 meters are portable and can be switched to another provider if (likely when) I switch in the next few months. Bulb has been nagging me for so long to get one so why not take advantage of it even if I have plans to leave them ?
I was broadly aware of how Smart meters communicate before booking the install - here in Scotland the electricity meter (or more precisely the "hub" that sits on top of it) doesn't use 2G/3G, it uses a long distance RF network run by Arqiva (the "WAN" or wide area network) then between the hub and the IHD (in home device) and the gas meter the Zigbee protocol is used. (the "HAN" or home area network)
One complication of my installation is that our electricity meter cupboard is just inside the front door, with the meter only about a foot off the floor, while the gas meter is in the boiler cupboard at the back of the house which is a bricked in cupboard in the back porch which backs off the kitchen. Total distance between them on a diagnoal through the house is about 8 metres (so less than the "10 metres" that Bulb asks you about) however there are two solid walls for the signal to go through, both brick and plaster, so I knew the signal between the electricity meter's hub and the gas meter could be marginal depending on the method of comms used.
On the other hand I have an Evohome system which has two wireless relays and a cylinder temperature sensor installed in the boiler cupboard near the gas meter, these communicate back to the main controller in the same hallway the electricity meter is in, maybe 1.5 metres nearer, but passing through the same walls, and that has no problems at all with signal strength, operating on the unlicensed 868Mhz spectrum.
Additionally, I used to have a Loop energy monitor with both gas and electricity sensors (sadly the legacy system with gas sensor was shut down a year ago) and the gas sensor used to sit on top of the analogue gas meter and transmit back to the receiver in the living room - whilst in a slightly differnet location to the electricity meter its a similar distance and is still going through the same two solid walls. It also used 868Mhz and received a reasonable "3 bars out of 5" signal.
So this was my first mistake - without looking into it more deeply I naively assumed that the link between the hub on the electricity meter and the gas meter would be using 868Mhz, because nobody would be be stupid enough to design it to work at higher frequencies like 2.4Ghz right ? Wrong!
Install day came yesterday and as soon as he saw the distance he said it was unlikely to work. "What they don't tell you is you have to subtract 1.5 metres for every wall, which would make it 7 metres", when the actual distance is 8 metres. To be fair the guy did give it a try - he installed the electricity meter first and then attempted to pair the gas meter while it was sitting in the boiler cupboard - no go at all, presumably the signal was just too weak. (But see later...*)
I was pretty disapointed to be honest - I used to get hourly/daily/weekly/monthly gas usage data from loop up until the legacy loop product was discontinued, but for the last year I've had nothing but a bill at the end of each month for gas and no granular way to track our usage to help optimise gas use.
I then did some research that I probably should have done before booking and found out that Prior to mid 2020 all Smart meters being installed including SMETS2 meters used only 2.4Ghz Zigbee not 868Mhz Zigbee. Anyone who knows a bit about radio transmissions and propogation can tell you that 2.4Ghz will struggle to get through walls that 868Mhz will easily pass. All the downstairs walls in this house are solid plaster on brick and WiFi coverage for the house has always been an issue - despite being a 2 bedroom fully detached bungalow with loft conversion I need 3 wireless base stations to adequately cover the house especially on 5Ghz, but even on 2.4Ghz.
In short, the 2.4Ghz Zigbee used by most Smart meters to connect from the hub on the electricity meter to the gas meter is, in my opinion, not fit for purpose for any installation where the meters are not very close to each other, within say 2 or 3 metres of each other and definitely not if there is more than one solid wall in the way. The "up to 10 metres" claim made when you book a smart meter installation could be considered akin to the NEDC range claims for EV's... hopelessly optimistic.
Our house is not large by any means - someone who genuinely does have a larger house where there is a significant separation between meters through one or more walls is simply not going to get it to work, so whoever originally speced out use of 2.4Ghz all those years ago needs a bit of a kicking to be honest. Devices have been making use of the unlicensed 868Mhz spectrum for these type of low bandwidth data logging uses for more than a decade - hell even my outdoor weather station uses 868Mhz and has a strong signal from outdoors on the garage roof through multiple walls into the living room.
It seems I'm not alone in thinking this use of 2.4Ghz is wholely inadequate:
www.smartdcc.co.uk
www.smartme.co.uk
Here is the hub and meter they installed:
![Image]()
And here is the installation manual for the hub which I found online:
This is a model released in 2019 (so prior to the introduction of Dual band HAN) and the manufacturing date on this specific meter is October 2020 so the meter is about a year old as well. So needless to say it is definitely 2.4Ghz Zigbee only, and apparently Bulb are installing year old stock of smart meters of a design that is a couple of years old now.
To add some confusion to the mix, the IHD which uses the same 2.4Ghz Zigbee signal that the gas meter would does get a usable signal in the boiler cupboard next to the old meter:
![Image]()
It shows 2 bars out of 4 and seems to give updates without an issue. The signal is probably marginal though and maybe the gas meter isn't as sensitive so I can see why the installer would be reluctant even if the gas meter had paired correctly as they won't want to install something that may be marginal resulting in callbacks.
I think it's fair to say though that if the IHD can get a weak but usable signal on 2.4Ghz in the boiler cupboard, a smart meter operating on 868Mhz should have no trouble.
So what are my options ? While I now have what I need for dual rate tariffs for EV charging I still really want proper gas monitoring as gas is a huge percentage of our energy bill in winter and needs to be closely monitored.
Has anyone else had problems getting a connection between distantly located electricity and gas meters ? Has anyone been offered a "Dual band" (DBCH) hub for their smart meter to get around this issue, if so which provider are you with ?
I haven't contacted either Bulb or Octopus yet but does anyone know whether Bulb can offer a Dual Band hub if requested (I'm guessing no, from what I've read online) or whether Octopus can do so ?
Hypothetically speaking, if another provider such as Octopus can supply smart meters with a longer range Dual Band Hub, if I moved to them, would they be willing to swap out the existing smart meter to allow installation of the gas meter or are they likely to say no because I already have a smart meter ? I quite like the IHD Bulb has supplied, partly because it has built in CAD functionality to allow integration with services like Samsung Smartthings and I understand some IHD's don't have this, so if they did swap my meter I could end up with an inferior IHD.
Do I just have to put up with manual readings for gas for another year or so until Dual band Hubs become more common and then pester whoever my supplier is by then to get them to swap it so I can finally get an adequate signal to get a smart gas meter ?
This is going to be a somewhat long and technical post, so buckle in or perhaps skip over if long posts are not for you...
I'm currently with Bulb (yes, that Bulb, that's in the news...
) and have been musing getting a smart meter install for about 6 months and possibly switching to Octopus, but I never got around to it as taking a day off work to get a meter installed is a waste of precious annual leave IMO.In the last few months Bulb have been nagging me by email and text to get a smart meter installed literally 3 times a week so when a day came up yesterday where my work is closed on an otherwise normal business day giving me a free day off I thought fine, lets do this, as SMETS2 meters are portable and can be switched to another provider if (likely when) I switch in the next few months. Bulb has been nagging me for so long to get one so why not take advantage of it even if I have plans to leave them ?
I was broadly aware of how Smart meters communicate before booking the install - here in Scotland the electricity meter (or more precisely the "hub" that sits on top of it) doesn't use 2G/3G, it uses a long distance RF network run by Arqiva (the "WAN" or wide area network) then between the hub and the IHD (in home device) and the gas meter the Zigbee protocol is used. (the "HAN" or home area network)
One complication of my installation is that our electricity meter cupboard is just inside the front door, with the meter only about a foot off the floor, while the gas meter is in the boiler cupboard at the back of the house which is a bricked in cupboard in the back porch which backs off the kitchen. Total distance between them on a diagnoal through the house is about 8 metres (so less than the "10 metres" that Bulb asks you about) however there are two solid walls for the signal to go through, both brick and plaster, so I knew the signal between the electricity meter's hub and the gas meter could be marginal depending on the method of comms used.
On the other hand I have an Evohome system which has two wireless relays and a cylinder temperature sensor installed in the boiler cupboard near the gas meter, these communicate back to the main controller in the same hallway the electricity meter is in, maybe 1.5 metres nearer, but passing through the same walls, and that has no problems at all with signal strength, operating on the unlicensed 868Mhz spectrum.
Additionally, I used to have a Loop energy monitor with both gas and electricity sensors (sadly the legacy system with gas sensor was shut down a year ago) and the gas sensor used to sit on top of the analogue gas meter and transmit back to the receiver in the living room - whilst in a slightly differnet location to the electricity meter its a similar distance and is still going through the same two solid walls. It also used 868Mhz and received a reasonable "3 bars out of 5" signal.
So this was my first mistake - without looking into it more deeply I naively assumed that the link between the hub on the electricity meter and the gas meter would be using 868Mhz, because nobody would be be stupid enough to design it to work at higher frequencies like 2.4Ghz right ? Wrong!
Install day came yesterday and as soon as he saw the distance he said it was unlikely to work. "What they don't tell you is you have to subtract 1.5 metres for every wall, which would make it 7 metres", when the actual distance is 8 metres. To be fair the guy did give it a try - he installed the electricity meter first and then attempted to pair the gas meter while it was sitting in the boiler cupboard - no go at all, presumably the signal was just too weak. (But see later...*)
I was pretty disapointed to be honest - I used to get hourly/daily/weekly/monthly gas usage data from loop up until the legacy loop product was discontinued, but for the last year I've had nothing but a bill at the end of each month for gas and no granular way to track our usage to help optimise gas use.
I then did some research that I probably should have done before booking and found out that Prior to mid 2020 all Smart meters being installed including SMETS2 meters used only 2.4Ghz Zigbee not 868Mhz Zigbee.
Anyone who knows a bit about radio transmissions and propogation can tell you that 2.4Ghz will struggle to get through walls that 868Mhz will easily pass. All the downstairs walls in this house are solid plaster on brick and WiFi coverage for the house has always been an issue - despite being a 2 bedroom fully detached bungalow with loft conversion I need 3 wireless base stations to adequately cover the house especially on 5Ghz, but even on 2.4Ghz.In short, the 2.4Ghz Zigbee used by most Smart meters to connect from the hub on the electricity meter to the gas meter is, in my opinion, not fit for purpose for any installation where the meters are not very close to each other, within say 2 or 3 metres of each other and definitely not if there is more than one solid wall in the way. The "up to 10 metres" claim made when you book a smart meter installation could be considered akin to the NEDC range claims for EV's... hopelessly optimistic.
Our house is not large by any means - someone who genuinely does have a larger house where there is a significant separation between meters through one or more walls is simply not going to get it to work, so whoever originally speced out use of 2.4Ghz all those years ago needs a bit of a kicking to be honest. Devices have been making use of the unlicensed 868Mhz spectrum for these type of low bandwidth data logging uses for more than a decade - hell even my outdoor weather station uses 868Mhz and has a strong signal from outdoors on the garage roof through multiple walls into the living room.
It seems I'm not alone in thinking this use of 2.4Ghz is wholely inadequate:
Dual Band Communications Hub
Enabling millions more British homes to benefit from smart metering.
www.smartdcc.co.uk
Their own statistics show that 2.4Ghz Zigbee used on a so called "Single Band Comms Hub" is only usable in 70% of premises in the UK due to inadequate range and/or building pentration ability to reach a gas meter that is significantly separated from the electricity meter where the hub is installed.
Here is another site with similar information:
UK Electricity and Gas Smart Metering
Gives details about Smart Meters being installed for electricity and gas in the UK.
www.smartme.co.uk
Great - so there are now hubs available since January 2021 that do both 2.4Ghz and 868Mhz, allowing better penetration and a successful connection between the two meters for up to 96.5% of premesis - where do I sign up ? Well, it seems I can't, at least not with Bulb...
Here is the hub and meter they installed:
And here is the installation manual for the hub which I found online:
This is a model released in 2019 (so prior to the introduction of Dual band HAN) and the manufacturing date on this specific meter is October 2020 so the meter is about a year old as well. So needless to say it is definitely 2.4Ghz Zigbee only, and apparently Bulb are installing year old stock of smart meters of a design that is a couple of years old now.
To add some confusion to the mix, the IHD which uses the same 2.4Ghz Zigbee signal that the gas meter would does get a usable signal in the boiler cupboard next to the old meter:
It shows 2 bars out of 4 and seems to give updates without an issue. The signal is probably marginal though and maybe the gas meter isn't as sensitive so I can see why the installer would be reluctant even if the gas meter had paired correctly as they won't want to install something that may be marginal resulting in callbacks.
I think it's fair to say though that if the IHD can get a weak but usable signal on 2.4Ghz in the boiler cupboard, a smart meter operating on 868Mhz should have no trouble.
So what are my options ? While I now have what I need for dual rate tariffs for EV charging I still really want proper gas monitoring as gas is a huge percentage of our energy bill in winter and needs to be closely monitored.
Has anyone else had problems getting a connection between distantly located electricity and gas meters ? Has anyone been offered a "Dual band" (DBCH) hub for their smart meter to get around this issue, if so which provider are you with ?
I haven't contacted either Bulb or Octopus yet but does anyone know whether Bulb can offer a Dual Band hub if requested (I'm guessing no, from what I've read online) or whether Octopus can do so ?
Hypothetically speaking, if another provider such as Octopus can supply smart meters with a longer range Dual Band Hub, if I moved to them, would they be willing to swap out the existing smart meter to allow installation of the gas meter or are they likely to say no because I already have a smart meter ? I quite like the IHD Bulb has supplied, partly because it has built in CAD functionality to allow integration with services like Samsung Smartthings and I understand some IHD's don't have this, so if they did swap my meter I could end up with an inferior IHD.
Do I just have to put up with manual readings for gas for another year or so until Dual band Hubs become more common and then pester whoever my supplier is by then to get them to swap it so I can finally get an adequate signal to get a smart gas meter ?
