EKM Metering

Good to know, please leave it like that and see if it will stay "stuck" in Tariff 2. Of course this is not good, but I want to see if the meter will snap out of it. Somehow I want to figure out if the meter is "stuck" as in frozen, or if it thinks it is the weekend.

Thanks again for your help.

Hi JayDee

To reiterate,

1 - I have set shedule 1 t1 and t2 to the time inyterval required for week day tariffs.
2 - I have set schedule 2 t1 to tariff needed for weekend tariffs.
3 - I have set meter indicating which weekend schedule to use.

Is there anything more than this to set?

What I discovered is that you need to set at least 1 Season (say January 1) for the Weekend & Holiday Schedules to be applied, my problem now is that whilst the weekend "start" is being applied correctly at the correct day and time the TOU registers are not reverting back to the weekday Schedules I have set in Schedule 1, so it looks like the meter doesn't know there are only 2 days (or 48hrs) in a weekend if that makes sense.

Jameson wrote:I am trying to determine if the meter is interpreting it's settings correctly. We are still trying to suss out if the issue is with how the Dash software sets the Tariffs or if it is how the meter interprets the settings.

Using the hex inspector in DASH, the values being sent to the meter appears to be correct, this is confirmed with Wireshark, my guess is that the meter has an issue, but that is just my guess.

Thanks for getting back so quick.

Cheers Jay.

OK I have conducted some further testing and here are outcomes:

1.) So on Tuesday afternoon the TOU is still "stuck" allocating kWh to the incorrect TOU T2 register when it should be allocating to TOU T1 register !

2.) Shutting Down and Restarting DASH has NO Effect on kick starting the TOU to the correct register! When DASH restarts the meter continues to allocate kWh to the incorrect TOU T2 register when it should be allocating to TOU T1 Register!

Now here are a couple of tested scenarios that will re-activate the correct TOU register for the period!

3.) With the meter allocating kWh to the incorrect TOU T2 register during the expected TOU T1 period, if you turn OFF (disconnect) the meter from the 240Vac mains, and then turn it back ON (reapply 240Vac) the meter instantly starts allocating kWh to the correct TOU T1 register for the period.

4.) With the meter allocating kWh to the incorrect TOU T2 register during the expected TOU T1 period, if you reapply Schedule 1 without changing any rates or times just a simple SET of the existing times and rates it kicks it into the correct TOU period of T1 and allocates kWh to the correct register when you restart DASH.

Simulated Weekend Schedule Setup

5.) I have set up a V3 & V4 meter to poll at 5 second intervals with simulated corrected dates and times (Meter & PC) and started them on Friday 8th August at 10pm - a TOU T1 period which is an hour prior to the Friday TOU T2 start time, I will let these run for the full 2.5 days till Monday 11th to simulate a weekend and Monday morning TOU change at 7.00am. I will then send the data files to you for you to experience first hand what I am experiencing.

BlueHornet wrote:What I discovered is that you need to set at least 1 Season (say January 1) for the Weekend & Holiday Schedules to be applied

Yeah, had already done that

Cheers.

Hi BH,

BlueHornet wrote:3.) With the meter allocating kWh to the incorrect TOU T2 register during the expected TOU T1 period, if you turn OFF (disconnect) the meter from the 240Vac mains, and then turn it back ON (reapply 240Vac) the meter instantly starts allocating kWh to the correct TOU T1 register for the period.

4.) With the meter allocating kWh to the incorrect TOU T2 register during the expected TOU T1 period, if you reapply Schedule 1 without changing any rates or times just a simple SET of the existing times and rates it kicks it into the correct TOU period of T1 and allocates kWh to the correct register when you restart DASH.

Have not tried that, this behaviour indicates that the issue is in the meter itself, looks like shutting the meter down then restarting reboots the meter and sets it's parameters to the proper working state. Re setting of the TOU rates appears to do the same without a restart of the meter.

In either case, these actions are not the ideal solution to the problem, there needs to be a fix in the firmware I think.

Appart from this issue, the V4 seems to be doing a good job.

Cheers

Hi Karl,

Just wondering where you are at with your TOU problem?

Karl, BH, and JayDee,

Thank you very much for all of your help and independent testing. We have re-produced the weekend to weekday issue on a v4 meter here! Which is good, so now we can tinker with it. We have the same hunch that there is a meter firmware issue that dosn't tell the meter that the weekend is over (much like my brain not telling my body about this on a Monday).

So we are tackling this issue now and are looking at options of how we can fix the issue.

Again, thanks for all of your help!

Progress is being made of the Weekend/Holiday issue.

We have now isolated the issue to both the Weekends Setting and the Holiday Settings. If you use either of these, the meter will enter the Weekend or Holiday Tariff, but it will not exit the Weekend or Holiday Tariff. This is a firmware issue that we will need to work to fix.

There are a couple of ways around this:

1. Don't use Weekends or Holiday settings in the "Rates" tab until this is fixed in your firmware (not a great option)
2. Set your meter time to computer time, once a day at Midnight. This jostles the meter out of the "stuck" state and it will work fine.
3. Power cycle the meter once per day at midnight (also not ideal obviously)

Thanks again for pointing out the issue and for working with us to get it resolved.

Thanks for the Update Jameson,

None are really ideal work arounds!

Without the time of use allocating to the correct registers, I might as well use the existing "Distributor Supplied Dumb Meter"

I for one don't fancy waking at Midnight to reset the meter or re-apply the meter time via DASH