'Jam' Smartmeters with alu foil?

[Vortex2]

Apparently power cuts of 3 hours or so will be likely this winter,.

I wonder if wrapping my Smartmeter in foil will prevent the barstewards from remotely switching off my power?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/money/20025192 ... power-cut/

[adam2]

I doubt that smart meters will be used to people off for two reasons.
Firstly many smart meters do not have any cutting off facility. Some do.
Secondly it would be hugely unfair if rota power cuts applied only to those with smart meters.

I expect that rota power cuts will be applied in the established way by the central cutting off of everyone in one area at a time. According to the load group.

Cutting off via smart meters remains a future possibility but not until everyone has one. The arguments and disputes will be vast.

[kenneal - lagger]

I would have thought that they would send any such messages along the cabling not wirelessly. Foil wouldn't work then.

[BritDownUnder]

You must be thinking of ripple control. Still used in NZ to control loads such as water (immersion) heaters to great effect.

A 3000Hz "ripple" is sent along the power lines and read by some kind of filter at the meter to turn stuff on and off. If I remember correctly the Economy 7 were controlled by a radio signal sent by the transmitter that used to broadcast BBC radio 4 long wave before that got shutdown due to 'lack of spare parts'.

[anotherexlurker]

As far as I know smart meters use the mobile phone frequencies to communicate ( I think most still use 2G)

I agree with Adam that it will not be the smart meter system that is used to for the rota blackouts (if required) , much easier for someone in the control room to press the button/click the mouse to switch off a load area.

My only concern is given that the last couple of times we have had unplanned area blackouts the switching back on has not gone as smoothly as expected,
good chance we will find out this winter how well a switch back on goes after a planned switch off!!

[PS_RalphW]

According to a youtube video I watched, smart metres use 2g or 3g in the south of britain, and that both these services are being withdrawn progressively by 2033. Some 3g services will be withdrawn in 2023, and smart metres using this band will need upgrading with 4g or 5g comms boards.