I don't think you really want me to use this forum to describe how to cause havoc in the UK by an attack on our energy supply system! 😲 
When I spot a weakness, I report it to the relevant parties.

The present Smart Meter network (SMWAN) is very secure.
Even a smart meter engineer can't change anything by presenting it with a USB stick...
... although I believe that there are photos of Smart Meters in compromising positions!

Our current Smart Meters are very interactive.
It's the Energy Suppliers who haven't pursued their use for features that would benefit consumers.

Us citizens can change that by bring pressure to bear on DESNZ and Ofgem, - demanding that the SM functions which would help us combat Climate Change are brought into action.
But instead our most vocal proponents tend to prefer blocking traffic and throwing paint at government offices.

I hadn't intended any aggressive wording, Ian.
My apologies if it has come across that way.

Utilita and others are able to retrieve data by using a particular type of IHD; a CAD.
But they are not permitted to send commands to a Smart Meter across an internet link.
That's a quite different issue.

The devices I'd first like to see being 'controlled' using the ALCS feature on Smart Meters is an EV Charger.
Yes, the Energy Suppliers wish to have per-minute monitoring, which the SMWAN can't provide.
But they really shouldn't be sending commands to chargers across the internet.
The secure way to achieve that is via the Smart Meter.

Rather than speaking to an EV charger I would be more impressed if they could actually be bothered to provide any form of signal to us rural dwellers who are being denied any opportunity to participate in their "smart" revolution.  Whether it is 4g or 5g (not that we ever received 2g and 3g which is about to be turned off) or the Arqiva signal, for profit companies do not give a toss.  

Posted by: @transparent

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Even a smart meter engineer can't change anything by presenting it with a USB stick

I was more referring to someone at Smart DCC HQ presenting a USB stick to one of the many computers on their internal network. I would definitely hope the Smart Meter does not have something of that form factor, or accessible JTAG or the like.

Posted by: @transparent

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The secure way to achieve that is via the Smart Meter.

A previous employer of mine found, after foreign interference, that the presence of a computer on a particular network was no guarantee of identity. A tough lesson to learn, but we got ubikey for 3FA instead.

Posted by: @transparent

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they are not permitted to send commands to a Smart Meter across an internet link.

Would this mean that country-folk end up at the lowest common denominator, the time-of-day tariff, and probably with no clock-time offset?

Posted by: @iancalderbank

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huge numbers of mission critical enterprises carrying extremely confidential

There's a lot more to consider than the data being confidential on the National Smart Meter Network.

Let's think for a moment about the effect on a household with a pre-payment meter.
Suppose it runs out of credit and the relay opens the contacts...
The householder could arrange a 'top up' using their Smartphone,
and then the internet link goes down, meaning that the Supplier can't send the command to re-energise it.

Posted by: @chickenbig

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Posted by: @chickenbig

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What is the fall-back for Smart Meters when (not if) the network is unavailable?

Posted by: @iancalderbank

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yes that interests me too. do they just fail safe - keep on providing customer with electricity - if they lose the data link?

The 'rules' for such loss of communication are complex and carefully considered by the SEC.

For those with pay-monthly accounts there's never going to be a situation when the electricity meter relay or the gas meter valve would ever shut off the supply.

Recovering the situation is more difficult for pre-payment meters and those of us who use ToU tariffs.
Octopus are running far ahead of the field in grappling with these issues.
I assume, but haven't verified, that their Kraken (billing) system can retrospectively apply the correct charge bands for consumption whilst a Smart Meter was unable to be contacted by DCC.

Posted by: @chickenbig

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Would this mean that country-folk end up at the lowest common denominator, the time-of-day tariff, and probably with no clock-time offset?

Can you please expand on that comment @chickenbig ?

I'm struggling to piece together three different elements you're referring to

• country-folk (with intermittent internet)?
• time-of-day tariff? A ToU tariff held by the Smart Meter which fails to be updated?
• no clock-time offset? Not actually possible. No Smart Meter can change to the next tariff-slot coincident with UTC.

Any of those concepts deserves to be discussed here...
... but possibly not in the same paragraph?!

Posted by: @transparent

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here's never going to be a situation when the electricity meter relay or the gas meter valve would ever shut off the supply

Good to hear!

Posted by: @transparent

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Any of those concepts deserves to be discussed here...
... but possibly not in the same paragraph?!

I interpreted "commands" as more dynamic signals coming from the electricity supplier to allow short-notice demand-side response. In this case a consumer in an area of poor signal, using the internet instead, would have to revert to something like "Economy 7" (although it is still unclear to me quite when the economy bit of the tariff will be active),.

In terms of smart meters I have a lack of knowledge (the state of the art as well as how things could be used), so sorry for the imprecision!

Ah... I should've made that clearer, @chickenbig.

When I used the word Commands I'm referring to those which get sent to a Smart Meter Communications Hub, usually by your Energy Supplier, via DCC.

These include

• Update Import Tariff
• Retrieve Import Daily Read Log
• Retrieve Import Daily Read Log

  Read more at: https://www.smartme.co.uk/messages.html © SmartMe.co.uk

• Retrieve Import Daily Read Log

  Read more at: https://www.smartme.co.uk/messages.html © SmartMe.co.uk

• Synchronise clock

and there's a fairly comprehensive list here on the Smart Me website.

In the absence of connection to the SMWAN, the existing Tariff couldn't be changed, which affects those on ToU tariffs.

But that might not be totally true of course.
Once the WAN connection is re-established, it's possible that your Energy Supplier's billing system retrospectively applies the price-per-kWh which would've been applied to each half-hour period whilst they were unable to obtain your consumption data.

But is that valid?
Possibly not. You might've been using electricity to the tariff which was displayed on your IHD, not knowing that it was a few days out of date.

And you then begin to understand how complex it becomes if there's an alternative route to send Commands and retrieve data from your Smart Meter.

Posted by: @chickenbig

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In terms of smart meters I have a lack of knowledge...

Yes indeed!
99.9% of the UK population is in that position. ☹️ 

It's not just Smart Meters which we know too little about, but the entire subject of Energy Supply, Billing and consumption.
Should we just continue to trust the commercial energy sector to get this right and correctly bill us?

This is currently the subject of a Public Consultation announced on 23rd November by Ofgem into the future of Energy Governance.

The regulations are changing in 2024.
National Grid ESO (Electricity Systems Operator) will no longer have a licence to run the grid.
Instead, that remit will be given to the new Independent Systems Operator and Planner (ISOP), who will manage and plan the infrastructure for:

• the electricity grid
• the gas network
• other renewable energy sectors, such as hydrogen
• transport (yes, really!)

And to provide the democratic oversight to ISOP we are to form Regional Energy Strategy and Planning bodies (RESPs).

How can ISOP be held accountable when such a tiny proportion of the population has adequate knowledge of how the energy system works?

If you were able to communicate directly to DESNZ, Ofgem and ISOP, what would you tell them?
Because, now is the time to do so.

You may think that your opinion will have little weight.
But you'd be wrong.
The preceding consultation in March '23 received just 83 responses across England & Wales.

Suppose all the active members on just this forum topic filed a submission to Ofgem.

Is it more knowledge/information which we require?
Then let's tell them.

How "independent" is the Independent Systems Operator and Planner and independent of whom?  They are appointed and regulated by OFGEM who at the end of the day are a government department run by an ex spad of Tony Blair who jumped in and out of the Civil Service on the way up. It doesn't get much more establishment than that. Please forgive my cynicism but the layers of Westminster opaqueness around their arms length operations are rarely for the benefit of the public.

Posted by: @abernyte

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How "independent" is the Independent Systems Operator and Planner and independent of whom?

I'm not disagreeing with you.
Now is the moment to question who is accountable to who.

1: What we probably need is for the ISOP to make strategic decisions on the UK energy supply which are independent of the companies who wish to have their technology prioritised.

GB's peak electricity requirement is just shy of 50GW.

According to NGET's forecasts, if all ICE cars were changed to EVs, that would rise by 10%.

But GB has already got 280GW of generation not yet connected, but holding onto a formal "Offer to Connect".
So there's plenty of scope for ISOP to make strategic decisions in the best interests of the consumer.

2: ISOP is meant to acquire its authority because it is held to account by the RESPs.
Somehow a RESP has to provide democratic oversight on behalf of the electorate.

That's what this consultation is about.

Suppose you were asked to be a technical advisor to your regional RESP.
Who else would you like to have seated around the table when you share your observations and experience?

• Councillors from the Local Planning Authority? (After all, they are democratically elected)
• What about a couple of retired engineers who you've got to know on this RHH Forum?
• How about an Area Technical Manager from your DNO?

That's what this consultation is about.
We are being asked to suggest an organisational structure which can direct the future energy planning for the country.

Posted by: @transparent

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Posted by: @abernyte

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How "independent" is the Independent Systems Operator and Planner and independent of whom?

I'm not disagreeing with you.
Now is the moment to question who is accountable to who.

1: What we probably need is for the ISOP to make strategic decisions on the UK energy supply which are independent of the companies who wish to have their technology prioritised.

GB's peak electricity requirement is just shy of 50GW.

According to NGET's forecasts, if all ICE cars were changed to EVs, that would rise by 10%.

But GB has already got 280GW of generation not yet connected, but holding onto a formal "Offer to Connect".
So there's plenty of scope for ISOP to make strategic decisions in the best interests of the consumer.

 

2: ISOP is meant to acquire its authority because it is held to account by the RESPs.
Somehow a RESP has to provide democratic oversight on behalf of the electorate.

That's what this consultation is about.

Suppose you were asked to be a technical advisor to your regional RESP.
Who else would you like to have seated around the table when you share your observations and experience?

• Councillors from the Local Planning Authority? (After all, they are democratically elected)
• What about a couple of retired engineers who you've got to know on this RHH Forum?
• How about an Area Technical Manager from your DNO?

 

That's what this consultation is about.
We are being asked to suggest an organisational structure which can direct the future energy planning for the country.

I fully agree with your sentiments on this subject.

I for one would be prepared to be more involved in guiding the decision makers for the benefit of the consumers and not just the multi-national companies in the energy supply business.

I would welcome your advice on how I can get more involved.

Posted by: @transparent

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But is that valid?
Possibly not. You might've been using electricity to the tariff which was displayed on your IHD, not knowing that it was a few days out of date.

When dealing with distributed systems thinking about ground truth is a good guide. In this case the IHD is the problem; it tries to merge together local truth (power usage in the past and now) with non-local truth (now local time relates to grid time, the tariff that has and will apply). I think this applies regardless of how messages are transported to/from the smart meter.

In a way, this tells us why Octopus are trying to work around the smart meter with Kraken and internet based signals; the smart meter is used to record actual usage (presumably based on polling the meter at transitions in the tariffs) and the internet is used to command EV chargers and GivEnergy inverters to turn on/off.

Posted by: @transparent

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there's a fairly comprehensive list here on the Smart Me website.

140+ messages, no doubt evolving over time. I've worked on projects with that wide an interface, plus problems of interpretation at each end due to differing vendors, software versions, nationality ... progress was slow, to say the least.

Posted by: @transparent

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Yes indeed!
99.9% of the UK population is in that position.

For me the best smart meter is the one I can understand, which is simple. Call this Stockholm syndrome from half a life being a coder.

Well I'm pleased to see @derek-m pop up here.
You were one of those on my mind when I wrote What about a couple of retired engineers who you've got to know on this RHH Forum? 🙂 

The first thing is to read the background detail in Ofgem's document Future of Local Energy Institutions and Governance.

Then, I'd suggest we use this Forum as a whiteboard on which to pool ideas.

Although there's no time-frame stated in the Call for Submissions, we're up against a moving target.
Ofgem will be moving forward, and may be minded to proceed with submissions which others are already sending in.
I would suggest that anyone reading this here should expect to have emailed their comments/opinions to Ofgem by Mon 15th January.