Vodafone tower coverage causing power meter readings to not connect with monitoring company

Forums › One NZ (including Farmside) › Vodafone tower coverage causing power meter readings to not connect with monitoring company

clive100

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#269801 8-Apr-2020 16:33

I hope the title says it all. Also is there a more appropriate forum to raise this inquiry ?

Apparently in my location in Papamoa Beach the comms signal from our smart meter is now so erratic & unreliable that our smart meter has been deemed non commutative.

This has been fine for 8 years until January this year when problems with our signal started.

For this reason I am forced to change power suppliers as 30 min meter readings are no longer available to the retailer Electric Kiwi.

Electric Kiwi have been very good & supportive but I am are no longer able to meet the criteria to remain a customer.

The monitoring company claimed to have done all they can by fitting an Aerial & replacing modem but there is still not enough signal strength to maintain stable communication.

The reason given is that the Vodafone network signal in our area has recently dropped to unusable levels for reliable communication with these smart meters.

I would have thought that Vodafone would be called upon & contractually required to maintain this network & restore any areas that loose signal back to the normal working specifications.

Has anyone else found themselves in a similar situation ? and if so was the situation solved in with a positive outcome ?

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#2457624 8-Apr-2020 17:34

At a guess maybe they have refarmed the spectrum in your area to be used for something else (4G?) and this has caused the, presumably, 2G meter to lose connectivity reliably. Are you able to try and see if you have 2G connectivity on your Vodafone phone (if you have one available) next to the meter to try out this theory?

Ultimately if they've added an antenna and replaced the modem there is not much else that can be done unfortunately by the nature of how Electric Kiwi works. It's similar with Flick as well. I had a colleague who went through a very similar experience, even involving a senior Vodafone staff member and ultimately there was no resolution for them. The colleague in question was even living in an urban area (town of 10,000~) and had the antenna installed to no avail.

I would've thought it would be in the Metering Equipment Provider (MEP) interest to have you connected so that they keep getting the revenue from it but maybe they still do not have any 3G or 4G hardware available.

clive100

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#2457630 8-Apr-2020 17:43

I would have thought that a service provider, in this case Vodafone, would be legally required to maintain the existing service when the tower is still currently in commercial use.

michaelmurfy

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#2457642 8-Apr-2020 18:14

In many urban areas - smart meters operate on a low power mesh network. Rural areas it is 2G / 3G or (in the case of my parents) a manual reading is still required.

Mobile networks, with the exception of 111 calls are still only best effort. There may be a chance in the future your smart meter may be upgraded to use Cat-M1 or another IoT type network or even connecting via your home broadband but until then it is really back to basics for you and saying that, even Cat-M1 is still only best effort.

Looks like no more free Electric Kiwi credit for you...

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clive100

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#2457662 8-Apr-2020 19:02

Well i'm not sure if it's relevant but there is no problem with mobile signal here. How does the low power mesh network system work ?

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#2457663 8-Apr-2020 19:02

VodafoneNZ has started reframing the 900Mhz 2G/3G to LTE900 don't know the finer details of how it is getting split up but this could be impacting it

kotuku4

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#2457684 8-Apr-2020 19:09

Power company was manually reading mine. When I quired why, they said meter was not working properly. Eventually logged a fault, the meter seemed fine to me. The meter guy called said it would be Vodafone fault not meter, and so it turned out to be. Power company paid the service fee, as they said the meter was faulty.

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clive100

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#2457687 8-Apr-2020 19:15

Yes it's Vodafone at the root of this issue & I'm sure there will be many meters already affected & many more to come which makes a mockery of the smart meter roll out if they can't be read remotely.

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#2457700 8-Apr-2020 19:41

clive100:

Yes it's Vodafone at the root of this issue & I'm sure there will be many meters already affected & many more to come which makes a mockery of the smart meter roll out if they can't be read remotely.

@clive100 not really maybe the power companies should of installed modems that supported 3G/4G I suspect most only support 2G 900Mhz

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#2457704 8-Apr-2020 19:46

Maybe hook up a decent high gain Yagi antenna!

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#2457746 8-Apr-2020 19:52

Seems inexcusable that they are still reliant on a 20 year old technology and dont have a current LTE based solution to swap over when needed, particually when the LTE M1 modules are so cheap now.

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clive100

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#2457791 8-Apr-2020 21:01

So who then takes on the cost to update smart meters to newer frequency band modems ?

It would appear that this may be the early stages of a much larger problem if the cell towers are being shut down on the 2G band & reframed??? .

My smart meter was fitted new in 2011 by Genesis energy & I would assume all smart meters fitted up to that time & many installed some years after that time are using same technology.

That would be a major NZ Wide retrofit that no one wishes to address at this time.

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#2457805 8-Apr-2020 21:19

clive100:

So who then takes on the cost to update smart meters to newer frequency band modems ?

The power companies!

michaelmurfy

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#2457812 8-Apr-2020 21:42

clive100:

So who then takes on the cost to update smart meters to newer frequency band modems ?

That would be a major NZ Wide retrofit that no one wishes to address at this time.

Just to be clear here - your power meter is still working, it just doesn't report enough which means providers like EK, Flick and Powershop can't charge you properly. There are plenty other power companies that can still bill you fine. Your power meter is still "working".

The problem is you're quite literally an edge case. It takes time to build up the required infrastructure, test, deploy for new technologies but the existing technology is still actually working totally fine. 2G is still around and is going to be around for quite some time because of things like smart meters. It really isn't the end of the world that your meter can't communicate reliably as you can still get electricity fine regardless.

bagheera

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#2457834 8-Apr-2020 21:56

clive100:

So who then takes on the cost to update smart meters to newer frequency band modems ?

at 40 - 60k for a meter reader the power company have motive to get the meter upgraded so they do not have to pay someone, more meter that stops talking on the network mean greater the motive as they will need more meter readers, they still need some to check thing are working, but they do not want extra people.

clive100

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#2457900 9-Apr-2020 08:42

michaelmurfy:

clive100:

So who then takes on the cost to update smart meters to newer frequency band modems ?

That would be a major NZ Wide retrofit that no one wishes to address at this time.

Just to be clear here - your power meter is still working, it just doesn't report enough which means providers like EK, Flick and Powershop can't charge you properly. There are plenty other power companies that can still bill you fine. Your power meter is still "working".

The problem is you're quite literally an edge case. It takes time to build up the required infrastructure, test, deploy for new technologies but the existing technology is still actually working totally fine. 2G is still around and is going to be around for quite some time because of things like smart meters. It really isn't the end of the world that your meter can't communicate reliably as you can still get electricity fine regardless.

Yes my power meter is working but no longer as a smart meter. As communication has been turned off I am basically back in the era of little round dials.

I would ask for clarification of "edge problem" ? I am far from a fringe area but in the middle of a highly populated area of suburbia.

The existing 2G technology here is obviously not totally working fine since Vodafone made changes in January this year.

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