Inside a smart meter, and the REAL problem with them.

A look at the insides of a modern smart meter with wireless modem. This meter was found amongst a pile of fly-tipped building materials. The company named on it was contacted but failed to respond, so that means we can take it to bits. I've covered the serial number as I usually do with shady things, to avoid the wrath of angry midgets.
While I'm inside I also investigate the conspiracy theories about:-
Government spy microphones. (Like Alexa for instance.)
Chemtrail brain control chemicals.
Spy cameras.
Brain irradiating 5G death waves.
The ability of the meter to be programmed to read apparent power and apply peak demand pricing.

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[LibertyEver]

An electrical engineer and my biggest concern with smart meters is my privacy. By monitoring power usage in very fine time detail quite a lot can be discerned about my lifestyle by analyzing the meta data. It's nobody's business when I go to sleep or cook my meals or take a shower. It's nobody's business how many house guests I have. It's nobody's business when I'm away on vacation.

[rogerborg]

Opens meter. Removes microphone and Mind Control Gas module. Reassembles and starts filming.


You're fooling no-one, Agent Clive.

[ivanmayer]

A couple of years ago, I used to put together smart meters for Honeywell's in Stafford. They shipped them everywhere, all over the world. It was a slightly different design than the one shown here, but I think their all supposed to do the same job. It was quite interesting to see the inside of them, but when I managed to do approx 100 every night shift, I was sick of the sight of them. Even though I saw it done, I didn't get to do the technical stuff. I just put all the bits and pieces together, then packed them. There was one thing I enjoyed. I had the drill just a tiny hole, approx 1mm onto part of the circuit board. I think it was to stop people changing whatever information was on there.

[EdgyShooter]

I'm waiting for an April fools episode where Clive disassembles something like this and pulls out a full sized microphone, oversized bottle labeled "nerve gas" etc 😂

[HazyJ]

Using a smart-meter as a bug? What a dumb conspiracy theory.

Thats what your smart phone is for 🙃

[bami]

My "smart" meter tried to bill me for using around 8GWh in the span of 3 hours.

Appeareantly, it lost signal and the energy company "extrapolated" the results, then trying to bill me over a million euros.
Nevermind the fact that I have a 25A/230V main fuse and my electricity bill never exceeded 60€/month in the 7 years prior.

I told them to go pound sand and actually use the readings instead of just making shit up as they go, after a couple of months I got a letter that they made "an error" and I should disregard the previous bill.

[bigern]

Unfortunately, I work in this field. The bit on the top that you took off and set aside is the bit that talks to the outside world. The big / main PCB is just a current monitor that passes readings to the modem part (that you took off). I think this is a SMETS1 meter and the main (meter) PCB may have been electrically connected to the communications hub (that you removed from the top). SMETS2 (as pushed by all energy suppliers now) are similar, but the interface betwixt meter and comms hub is actually Zigbee (sorry wireless interface), even though it is a matter of centimeters between the 2 PCBs.

Regardless, it is Zigbee that is used between meter / CH and IHD or gas meter

[thumbwarriordx]

Honestly the problem for me when my old meter got smashed out by ice from the roof and replaced with a smart meter... there's no longer a worker from the power company who would take cash on the spot instead of cutting the power.
Which was an opportunity I have availed myself of more times than I'm proud of.

[pyotrleflegin]

My smart meter has started calling me Dave and saying it can't do things ...

[hene]

Just wait until they start to sell the usage data to advertisers.

[davearthur]

That's a Pay As You Go meter, and the keypad is there so if you loose your payment card you can enter the code you get from the shop therefore getting your electric.

[garydavid]

Be wary of anything with 'smart' in its name!

[skumhesten]

Ok, story time: Just recently (about a month ago actually) I had one of the modern smart meters fail on me in a somewhat unusual way. The bill I got in late september for the months of april-june was higher that usual - like a lot. The good thing about these meters is that I can log in to a website and see the usage on a day to day and hour to hour basis.

Normal it's usually no more than around 200 kwh and most months it's less than that. But the usage for june: 2050 KWh...and for july and august (these two will be on the next bill): 3588KWh and 5214KWh...as in more than 5 MWh for a single month.

Yeah....

5214KWh means that I used in excess of 7000W around the clock for an entire month....only for stuff like light and cooking (heating is with natural gas). Since a quick glance revealed that no part of my house had recently been on fire and since my Flir cam did not find any hidden hotspots I quickly came to the conclusion that the smart meter had to be faulty. However I must be mistaken, because the power co first suggested that I get wall adapter meter and checked the various power supplys and such - because they can use a lot of power when plugged in all the time. In all fairness I am not an electrician - I don't even have a kitchen fitter certificate, but I should think that 7000 watts in waste heat would be a challenge to hide in a few power supplies, but that's just me.

:Sidenote:
As is common in the Denmark - my house gets three phase power. At the consumer unit in my house this is then made into 3 circuits that cover the house (2x10amp at 230 volt and 1x16amp at 400 volt). So there is not way I could ever draw 7000 watts on the 230 volt circuits continuously...

In trying to convince the power co that this did not make any sense what so ever I cut the power to entire house for 15-20 minutes...and the meter (with the appropriate name "Echelon") still counted 2-3 kwh in that period...Also the meter also indicated that there was a return current...implying that there was a net production of power at my location - except I don't have any solar cells or anything like that...clearly not a happy meter.

For now, the story does have a happy ending, as the meter was replaced and found to be faulty and all is well now...or so I hope. But the thing is this...when they analysed the meters internal log, they found that it had been acting odd since april. So while the huge increase in reported power usage did not begin until the middle of june, the numbers for april and may were also...suspect.

I guess my point is...keep an eye on your bill.

Almost forgot the most important bit: Thanks @bigclivedotcom for a great channel.


EDIT:
The numbers from april-mid june were a little higher that usual, but not alarmingly so. But suddenly there's a huge increase. From 9 KWh on 17. june to 155 KWh on 18. june. By august it was 170-180 KWh per day.

It has ended well enough, in that they used last years numbers to replace the entire period from april-replacement of meter, so all is well.

Because of some weird readings at first they thought that the problem was in the...ehh...not sure of the name...(terminial block?)...it's the block the cables to the house go into and to which the meter is attached. Essentially it's just a block of metal with plastic around it, so they had me replace that one at first. But since that clearly wasn't the problem, they paid for the replacement as well.

All in all they were very nice about it and I didn't really have any big problems. Except for that fact that many of those involved didn't seem to comprehend that 7000W has to turn up as heat somewhere. If you around the clock dump 7000W into a piece of metal about the size of an external harddrive ...good chance it won't be room temperature.

One problem with this perticular brand of meter and setup is that it only shows total usage. The only indication of the power draw at the moment is a lamp that blinks everytime a 1Wh has been used. So you can't really just cut out a circuit and then check the meter for how much that section uses.

[TheArmygirl]

I worked for the company this meter belongs too, if the meter moved beyond a very small parameter we were alerted, also if the cover was removed we were give a tamper warning which we would have to respond too. On the top cover it has WAN (wider area network) and HAN (home area network) the WAN was what we used to be able to connect to the meter from head office, and HAN was it used to connect to an in home real time display. I do believe the SIM cards are actually connected to Vodafone. The little keypad allowed people to type in update or top up codes. We were able to disconnect and reconnect a customer in a matter of seconds using the WAN network. We only offered three different tariffs, none of which offered a standing charge or higher peak hours charge. They were definitely no microphones in the meters! We didn’t want to hear about your problems!

[shadowreaperjb]

The counter point to the "they can choose when to charge you more" is that they already do charge you more when you're cooking, peak and off-peak. The real issue is that there needs to be more regulation about how they do their pricing, possibly a profit margin cap, so they can only make at most 20% profit. The main reason that having smart meters is a good idea and important is that it give a real time view of the power consumption across the grid, letting power generation be more reactive and less wasteful, which in theory will bring the total price of electricity down.

[onend]

Brought memories of living in the 80s council estate and seeing people bridging the two outer positive, I've also seen them put the old meters upside down alleging they slow down, best I ever saw was a gas meter bypass using a bicycle inner tube, they grow bigger than a football too.

[TarrelScot]

I’ll have one when it will automatically monitor all the electricity co’s tariffs and switch me onto the cheapest one. Now THAT would be smart!

[jackking]

They're being installed not to your benefit but for the suppliers. I'm seeing people having the smart meters fitted because they'll 'save money'. Nope - there is no actual saving - just the customer realising how much they use and trying to use less.
If my supply company paid me to have one installed I'd still say no.

[danieldodsonuk]

To add to what firefly mentioned, the module at the top is probably an 'integrated comms hub'. The module below is the meter. They talk over ZigBee to each other. The hub is responsible for routing messages from the Home Area Network to the WAN. There is usually a 'last gasp' capacitor to send a message home should the connection to the electric meter be removed (there are 2 pins on the meter side messages that are shorted).The hub periodically brings 1 pin high and checks to see that the other pins has changed state in that black connector. I've worked principally on SMETS2 for another UK manufacturer. But SMETS1 is conceptually similar (but much simpler and less convulted).

[captainretro]

“It’s this conspiracy thing that it’s gonna release chemicals into your house”
Meter: just in time, I was just warming up my neurotoxin emitters.