Inside a smart meter.

Most electricity meters I've seen in relatively modern houses (ones with digital, but not "smart", meters) are in an externally-accessible cupboard somewhere around the outside of the house. My current one is in the back garden, although where I lived previously the electricity meter was in the garage, which meant that someone had to be home for the utility company to read the meter :/ When I lived in an older house - old enough to have an old-style spinning disc meter with separate dials for each digit, where each digit's dial turns in the opposite direction to the previous one - the meter was in a cupboard inside the house just by the front door.

Andrew

Noooo Ignore him Clive. DO NOT TAKE THE CAN OFF ! Sarin nerve gas plays hell with your sinus's !

Ahh Clive... why didn't you remove that big chunky shield? I need to know what is under there!! Maybe it's where they hide the microphone haha

I think the insert in the busbar is purely to get a more accurate current reading. The Manx Telecom SIMs also allow use on any network. They have a huge global partnership with other comms companies.

Big Clive

They won't last as long as the old meters. The utility company owns the meter and is responsible for replacing it.

Big Clive

Another really interesting teardown Clive, thank you. They look very well made and will hopefully give years and years of trouble free service...... or will they and who will pay if they do play up?

Richard Boyce

Thanks for the video Clive. I like it when you take something to bits for us.

Nuts 'n' Proud

Hey Clive. Hope your well :) ...... A few questions / thoughts. Just above the MOV there is a strange overlay on the copper conductor, I am wondering if that is some form of bi-metallic or an alloy with a low melting point that would break the circuit. Is there any indication of a thermal fuse in the package ? am wondering if the absence of a class x or y capacitor is to allow powerline communication between other meters on the same phase. Is there any evidence of this ? I believe the communication module in the modem is for local wifi to give a real time display to the customer of usage and costs ect. I am surprised the power isolator is not a geared DC motor like other meters I have seen. You also commented about the SIM card. I am surprised they are not using the Dualcom sim cards as they can connect to any available cellular network and are used heavily in alarm systems. The top terminals are usually for connection to an LED that pulses faster as energy use increases. I would put money on the other terminals being RS485 for local monitoring. I like others worry that they will start to meter in KVA instead of watts. With the poor power factor of most household apliences it could become an expensive bit change! I wonder if we will start to see companies knocking out correction units to bring the supply back to unity. Considering that one of the main goals of the "smart grid" is to allow better performance of the grid and decrease loss over cables and transformers I wonder if all this data can be collated in time to keep the frequency spot on and allow pro-active changes, switching around of lines ect. I cannot disclose the location but I have been in the national grid control centre and they seem to have a hard enough time keeping stations hot ready for switching at the moment. Regardless of any of the above I will eat my hat (will have to buy one first) if end users see any decrease in energy costs if and when the grid can achieve greater efficiency. Great video as always. Put your tools down for five minutes and have a wee dram :D Stuart.

Most seem to be indoors here. Usually close to the front door.

Big Clive

Where are meters usually installed in the UK these days? Looking on online it still seems pretty flexible. ESB Networks in Ireland will only put a meter into an external meter box accessible from the driveway. So any renovations involving moving the meter have to put it outside too. On the positive side it makes the hidden mics and mind control chemical emitters in the smart meters redundant!

Denis Looby

Clearly all the microphones, remote toxic chemical sprays and a tiny tape recorder are hidden inside the little metal can ;-)

Gordo

It's the usual non-technical people jumping on the bandwagon. The same ones that back the flat earth theory, chemtrails and every food scare because it gets them the attention they crave. If they're good then they can even make a business out of it on YouTube. I'd be more worried about the mass of dodgy electronic devices people are using to make their house Internet connected. You can fit a lot of code into a little electrically non-compliant dongle that people willingly hook into their mains and wifi and tuck away behind combustible materials.

Big Clive

I wonder where the person in the video got the idea that hacked smart meters can infect home electronics, PCs, etc with viruses. I just cannot think of a way how a virus could jump from an infected smart meter to something within the house. Smart meters don't even connect to Wi-Fi and even if they could, it would depend on a Wi-Fi vulnerability, in which case any hacker in the area could try breaking in to the Wi-Fi network. As for checking if a home owner is present, theives have much more effective tactics such as putting a flyer in the letter box and seeing if's still there the following day. The health warnings remind me of the nonsense from the 1990s about mobile phones, e.g. will cause an epidemic of brain tumers, people going sterile if kept in the trousers pocket, etc. My main concern would be the power factor issue, not just charging for poor factor, but also where poor factor appliances such as LED bulbs and dimmers cause meters to falsely measure much higher than actual use. Example: <a href="https://www.utwente.nl/en/news/!/2017/3/313543/electronic-energy-meters-false-readings-almost-six-times-higher-than-actual-energy-consumption" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.utwente.nl/en/news/!/2017/3/313543/electronic-energy-meters-false-readings-almost-six-times-higher-than-actual-energy-consumption</a>

Seán Byrne

I think that the aim of fines is to ensure the network is designed and maintained so it does not fail and when it does, the minimum number customers are off supply. Your concern about having to pay for reactive power is understood, but a very imminent worry is the impact of electric vehicles being charged. I don't think that the LV networks are up to it. Who is going to pay? Also, the impact of all the switching devices introducing harmonics is another problem. You referred to your co-beardy as a Lineman. It that the Manx term (and North American)? We have Linesmen in Scotland (and they are heroes!)

There's no GPS in smart meters at the moment in the UK.

Mark Wayt

The points he makes are backed up by linked articles underneath the video. He talks about costs/increase in bills, but not specifically reactive power charging.

Gadgetman

It's mostly accurate, but has some traditional sensationalism in it. Like the bit about TVs drawing as much power when on as when off, and tracking people's viewing habits. It was quite a long video, so I didn't watch the whole thing to see if there was talk about the reactive power charging.

Big Clive

What do you think to this then? "The Great Smart Meter Swindle" <a href="https://youtu.be/gYPwrbpAHbk" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://youtu.be/gYPwrbpAHbk</a>

Gadgetman

They're programmable. They can be set to measure your power use in a different way that is more profitable to the supplier and also apply peak demand pricing at certain times of the day.

Big Clive

What is the one thing that makes them less desirable than an old whirly-disk meter?

Gadgetman

I wonder if that is a prepay meter. Here in Ireland, if the customer chooses a prepay electric provider, ESB Networks (grid provider) will replace the meter with a similar smart meter with a keypad. The customer can key in their top-up voucher code directly on the meter or top-up by phone, app, etc. which remotely sends the top-up to the meter, presumably by a mobile data connection. For regular bill pay connections, the smart meter roll out will begin next year.

Seán Byrne

Nice to see how a smart meter looks like inside. Here in Denmark They are Rolling out smart meters and exchanging the old spinning ones. The ones that they install here are made by Kamstrup, and come in 4 different versions. The cool thing about those is that are ready for a HAN module (that the homeowner has to buy himself) to get access to the data, and see how much power is being consumed, and at what time. Because the electrical companies here in Denmark will raise the price for electricity between 5pm and 8pm (yeah suppertime) by 100% and lower them all other times in the day to 60% of the normal price.

Because Why-Nerd

I doubt there's GPS. That little lithium cell would be much lower if the unit was trying to log in. I disapprove of the fines when power is off because it results in a lot of pressure on the maintenance workers to cut corners to restore power faster. That also makes the system even less reliable.

Big Clive

Sorry, far too many comments. I hope that the battery is dead... If you peel off the label on the Sierra modem, and look up the model number you will almost certainly find that it has GPS built. It could be waking up every week or so and complaining that it has lost power (and is also lost...) It would have the ability to also say where it physically is. Some DNOs have other systems that definitely do that. DNOs love to know exactly what is off supply without someone phoning it in as they get fined (Clive smiles) for ever minute that every customer is off supply. A very strong incentive to keep the lights on.

You can find out what network the SIM belongs to, by looking up the ICCID (number engraved on SIM card) at <a href="https://www.imei.info/iccid." rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.imei.info/iccid.</a> The SIM will probably have the IMSI (a unique number inside the SIM card) tied to the IMEI or IMEI type (an identifier for the modem in the meter) in the network operator's HLR, so it would not work with a phone. It probably does not have a number either as it is only data. I don't know how the Manx system would be set up. The amount of TLA's etc. in the mobile phone system is staggering and it is a miracle that anyone understands how it works.

I guess it was inevitable that the rollout would uncover things that hadn't been thought about before. It's good they are standardising. I wonder how secure the system is.

Big Clive

Ah, I didn't realise it was a latching relay. That makes sense. I noticed that some American meters actually use a motorised transfer switch with extremely beefy contacts. I definitely didn't notice that those were super-caps. I just presumed they were standard caps for good decoupling from the meter supply.

Big Clive

The conspiracy theorists will just think that you've been sent that "special" meter to throw people of the scent. The "real" meters will obviously still contain all the bad stuff. There's no arguing with stupid.

The local HAN for a smart meter is Zigbee. Your little in-home display uses Zigbee too. And smart gas meters don't have a cellular radio module, just a fairly chunky battery, and they piggyback onto your electric meter (they're paired). They can also mesh to neighbouring meters at other properties nearby, so that if you lose cellular coverage from your electric meter (the WAN element), they can aggregate together and communicate with the nearest hub that does have coverage and feed to the central platform through that. (Seach for SMIP - lots of information about the standards - it's not secret per-se). The UK is split into two zones, and two major UK cellular networks provide the backhaul for the smart meters. (Split between the two aggregated networks - remember O2 and Voda, for example, share a single cellular network (cornerstone)). Interestingly it's the first large scale commercial implementation of IPv6 too. Also note that only recently have they implemented a non-retailer specific central database (i.e. your meter data gets fed to a central database which then feeds onto your current energy retailer) which is why you've not been able to keep smart feeds when moving between retailers - should be live now which should mean you can (dependent on which meter you have). And yes, it's been a bit of a badly designed rollout.

Mark Wayt

That wouldn't isolate the MOV, though. It's just a calibrated shunt.

Andy Brown

Thanks, Clive. The relay block has 2 coils and will latch in either position. If anyone's interested, the two little unused terminal points on the modem module line up with a position for a battery, and those 2 big capacitors are 2.7v 50F supercaps!

Andy Brown

Cool. Thanks for showing the bits. The "modem" part of that is probably separate because they have several options. It could be something short range like ZigBee (someone else mentioned that), BLE, cellular data, satellite data. Change the module depending on the customer location and add a fee to the bill to match :(.

Nani Isobel

Bulb Energy are already trialling time-of-day based billing: <a href="https://help.bulb.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/360017795731-What-is-the-smart-tariff-" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://help.bulb.co.uk/hc/en-us/articles/360017795731-What-is-the-smart-tariff-</a>

That narrower bit in the input bus bar, which looks like it might be made of a diffferent metal - it sits right above the MOV you worried could get hot. Maybe it's a fusible link? If it overheats due to the MOV failing, or due to overcurrent, it melts out and cuts the meter off from its input...?

Charles

And at least in the case of Internet connected stuff, if the power went off, they had to stay up long enough to send a "power lost" message. Of course, the destination of that message screamed after a local power outage. Consider, tens of thousands of these things coming back online when power was restored. I swamped the monitoring server. Then we'd get complaints about the monitoring server being swamped, so we had to add a config option to turn off that last gasp message and the I'm Back message. They want to monitor everything, but don't come close to being able to deal with the traffic load that results from a wide area power outage.

Yep, and the company I worked for had the same tripwire on the Internet Access box they'd install. You opened the cover, it ratted you out to the ISP for opening the box.

I had my smart meter fitted 18 months ago. The 'electrical engineer' managed to trip the house out. She then blamed the fuse box that we had installed 11 years previously and had given us no problems at all. She claimed that there were loose connections and she was going to serve us an unsafe installation notice ( or something like that) which effectively made our house insurance void. I asked if she the 'electrical engineer' could perhaps just check the connections. She said she wasn't allowed to and left. £850 later we had another fitted. Apparently metal casing is the way to go. Non of this plastic rubbish.

Neil Tonks

In the U.S., a lot of our smart meters of various utilities (water, gas, electricity), use 900MHz mesh networks for semi-live monitoring (some customers can actually log into the company website and see near-real-time values), and interactive "pinging" for quick, "drive-by" spot checks and official, "in person" metering

Dustin

In Reply To Your Post About Fran. Been Watching And Subscribe And Patroned About Two Years And Enjoy Her Channel. I Will Also Check Out Her Gofundme Page.

Ontario Canada has Time of Use pricing. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they were measuring apparent power too. <a href="https://www.oeb.ca/rates-and-your-bill/electricity-rates" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.oeb.ca/rates-and-your-bill/electricity-rates</a>

Ah, that makes sense. I did wonder what the little RF module was for. I guessed it might have been for setting the meter up too, but that could introduce a security issue. Apart from the cover removal and presumably magnetic field detection I was almost disappointed that the unit didn't have other visible detection. I guess the processor has a watchdog and the facility to know it's rebooted to detect RF jamming.

Big Clive

i think dumb meters are safer

God 420

The little wireless module is ZigBee to connect to an In-home Display unit that shows how much power you're using etc... The big caps are to deal with the high current demand spikes from the GSM module.

Trevor