[adm1]

Anyone else had this from eon?

I've had smart meters for many years now, my gas one needed a new battery so eon sent an engineer to replace it. He only had an old one in the van so put in an old 'dumb' meter so our gas supply didn't stop.
2nd appointment, an engineer came and swapped the meter for a SMETS2 smart meter but after 2 hours could not get it to work and left me having to give meter readings manually.
3rd appointment, an engineer came and swapped out both gas & elec meters for shiny new SMETS2 smart meters. Again, an hour spent configuring and I'm told it's impossible for the gas meter to send readings because its too far away from the elec meter?

Why does the gas meter even need to connect to the elec meter? What if I get my gas and elec from diff suppliers in future?

So now, I've went from nearly 10 years of perfectly fine smart meters working well to now having to give monthly meter readings like I'm back in the stone age.

Not such a massive task but my whole house is full of smart gadgets, all controlled by routines and triggered by events. My gas smart meter used to send live usage via 3rd party software to trigger certain routines based on usage. This link is now broken with this dumb meter. I complained to Eon who simply say I have to wait for a booster device which is still in development??

I thought these new smart meters were supposed to be better, not inferior. :(

[meldrewreborn]

@adm1

communication hubs are attached to electricity meters. They receive data from any gas meter, which for safety reasons are powered by battery. Communication is via a radio signal. If the gas and electric meters are not colocated then your situation can arise.
Others can advise on possible improvements to facilitate proper communication to be established.

[adm1]

@meldrewreborn What confuses me is that I had smart meters for nearly 10years working fine without issue. My house is approx 120years old and the meters are located at opposites sides of the house. Are the new SMETS2 meters just cheap/poor quality nowadays in comparison, or is it just an Eon thing?

[geoffers]

Originally Posted by adm1

@meldrewreborn My house is approx 120years old and the meters are located at opposites sides of the house. Are the new SMETS2 meters just cheap/poor quality nowadays in comparison, or is it just an Eon thing?

@adm1 the smart meter Comms use a WiFi protocol called Zigbee (similar in a way to Bluetooth) and one of the many factors which can cause poor connection quality is distance, so I suspect this along with other potential interference factors is causing your connection problems.

The fact that your previous meters communicated ok could be they produced a stronger signal; had better antenna; used a different channel less susceptible to WiFi interference etc etc etc

This article gives a detailed explanation of factors causing ZigBee connection issues

https://reolink.com/blog/zigbee-range/#:~:text=Zigbee's%20Frequency-,What%20is%20the%20Range%20of%20Zigbee%3F,reach%20 to%20about%20300%20meters.

[adm1]

@geoffers thanks that makes sense, I've already dabbled with zigbee in my house and it cannot penetrate my walls so I stick to wifi connected devices. I guess I'm gonna have to live in the stoneage until they release a repeater or bridge device.