Hi, I am not these days in regular contact with metering smart or otherwise, of the handful I have experienced one in particular seemed to give off a discernible frequency,like an old school dial up internet sound but higher pitched

I've almost silenced the annoying discernible noise the meter gives off, in a somewhat curious manner. (See my post 18 days ago: RE: Severe Tinnitus Following the Installation of New Electricity Meters ) Is the noise you experienced anything like the recording I put in my opening post?

I visited two houses yesterday, both with smart meters. I felt bad in one and the other felt peaceful. When I checked with the sound spectrum analyser on my phone I found in the one making me feel bad there was low level noise showing in the 18kHz to 21kHz range, just like at home. The other, apart from an odd small spike now and again, showed basically nothing in that range. Other houses where I have not felt the effect also show virtually no noise in the 18kHz to 21kHx range. I think I can state that it does appear to be a trait if not necessarily the cause of the ghastly 14kHz tone ringing in my ears.

It may be important that the objective 21mHz ambient noise is a fifth above your tinnitus frequency of 14mHz. I hold it quite likely that anything generating a specific tone is likely to generate such an undertone. The church bells across the road from me generate a variety of undertones and overtones of course; I think when the large one is ringing down and the others have stopped there is a dominant below its tonic. I'll check next time I get a chance.

Maybe important also is that the octave overtone of the 21mHz is the second-octave fifth of your 14mHz tinnitus frequency. 

Have you tried using noise-cancelling headphones attuned to cancel the ambient frequencies, to see if that reduces your tinnitus? You could maybe find an electronics acoustician who might help you experiment. 

Hi Peter, thanks for your reply. Unfortunately I don't possess a pair of noise cancelling headphones. I've been looking at some information and specifications for them and I'm not sure that they are going to handle noise much above 8kHz, at least not actively. I think the money would probably be best spent on getting this meter properly investigated as you suggest, but also need the radio emissions checking also. The Ombudsman is not going to send someone to measure the meter's emissions. I hope to be speaking with their appointed investigator after the Easter weekend to find out what I need to do beyond what I've already told and shown them to convince them that the meter is causing harm and needs to be replaced asap. It's replacement doesn't end the story of course, I still really want to know what the meter has done to upset my health so much for what should be the trivial task on monitoring electricity usage.

I've had the decision of the Ombudsman. They are unable to ask Octopus Energy to refit an analogue meter as Octopus Energy have a policy of not refitting them, which Ombudsman Services Energy does not have any jurisdiction over. So my health, which is getting worse, is less important than the company policy of my energy company. They did agree there were customer service failings, but this amounts to a letter of apology and a financial gesture of goodwill that doesn't come near the costs I have so far incurred let alone the cost that will be incurred switching company and most likely having to pay for the electricity meter to be swapped.

I can appeal the Ombudsman decision, which I'm considering, but I need my life back to normal asap. I've being asking various other energy companies about switching and having an analogue meter refitted. Octopus did tell me there were two companies that would refit analogue meters but have not responded to my questions about who are those two companies. All the companies I've tried so far, and I've just about exhausted the list, either say they won't take new customers on, they can't reinstall analogue meters or they have analogue meters but can't install them for new customers with smart meters.

Yesterday I found this document on research into "Dirty Power" from smart meters and health problems even when the meters are set to work in "dumb mode", produced this month for a pending appeal at a court in Norway being brought by 10 people:

 PDF

The research appears to back up the thoughts that my health issues are being caused by an ineffectively filtered switched-mode power supply.

Hi Andrew

Apologies for my delayed response. I have been doing some research. In answer to your question, my electricity provider is rolling out smart meters to all properties. So other houses in my neighbourhood had them connected, before mine.

I have been in contact with a company that sells a product that is described a suppression unit. I will share some of the information I have received by email, in the last week. 

”Tinnitus is one of the most common symptoms of the DE from the Smart Meter's, and it is made up of higher kHz frequency transients  that the switch mode power supplies of the Smart Meter's produce. The safe limits of this harmful energy is below .5 of a volt peak to peak when measured with a battery powered oscilloscope or a frequency analyzer.  These are the only two ways of accurately testing for this harmful energy that effects us all worldwide…In order to clean up power, all the different modes of the power must be monitored as well as cleaned, the line voltage wires, the neutral wire, as well as the ground wire.  Line to Line, Line to Neutral, Line to Ground, and Neutral to Ground.”

I’m happy to share the name of the product / company I’ve been in contact with if you are interested (don’t want to seem like I’m promoting in this forum). 

I am now looking for someone to test power quality. 

Hope this info is useful. 

Interesting document, thanks for sharing. I feel that this information would support a decision to appeal the decision. The Ombudsman should have the means to commission independent tests and obtain information from the electricity provider (assuming the UK Ombudsman, has similar powers to Aus).

I am of the view that utilities have a duty of care, so if smart meters must be rolled out, then the cost of filters to clean the power (including from the grid), should be covered, for consumers.

Hi Dan,

I've just forwarded the research document to the UK's Office for Product Safety and Standards (OPSS) whom I contacted a couple of days ago with the details of the problems I am experiencing. Our Energy Ombudsman has no means to investigate the meter, they can only adjudicate on how an energy company deals with its customers. It is my hope that the OPSS will carry out an actual investigation.

It sadly seems that energy company policy can come before duty of care towards their customers. My energy company has shown no interest in investigating how their meter is behaving and are simply dismissive of my claims it is affecting my health. They stated in their response to my complaint with the Ombudsman that the meter is safe as it is no longer smart. Reverse that statement if you wish - but we aren't dealing with WAN, HAN or any mobile signals with regard to my problems here. The meter manufacturer has not responded to the email I sent them several weeks ago.

I've so far shied away from Mike's/mapj1's suggestion of adding filters to the circuits in the house for several reasons including that the meter hurt me on initially being powered up with the distribution board off. Filtering may help lessen the effects but the meter has to go in my view to have any chance of successfully restoring my health fully. I was rather hoping that would be possible given the Ombudsman result either way but the energy company whom I had as back up from a previous conversation with them have today let me down. It does look therefore that I need to reconsider adding filters given the fact every energy company I've contacted today refused to reinstall an analogue meter including one that actually has them (they will replace a faulty analogue meter with one but not a smart meter). None could assure me that their smart meters would include adequate filtering. All but one company refused to tell me the brand and model of smart meter they would install, I would be given whatever the fitters had in their van at the time. "SMET2" was the common answer to my question which is understandable I guess. Only one company gave me a brand and model and even that came with the caveat "most likely". I can't tell from the manufacturer's website whether that model includes a decent filter on its power supply or not. I may email them if I don't get anywhere with any other means of getting a new meter installed, but the company is based in the USA which makes things that bit more difficult.

Out of interest, have you tried using an AM radio to test tuning into the noise of the SMPS in the LW and MW bands as per my post 14 days ago? (RE: Severe Tinnitus Following the Installation of New Electricity Meters ) If your meter is fully smart you will may also pick up noise when it transmits data which may be more frequent than you expect, be wary of confusing that with the noise of the SMPS.

Andrew

Some more thoughts. First, this is worth a technical paper.

The story. You have what you claim is a physiological reaction to suspected emissions from electrical/electronic devices, namely certain smart meters, which you do not have to analogue meters. You have classified the reaction (tinnitus at ~14mHz). You have performed some frequency/amplitude measurements on the suspect device(s) (not just yours, but others in places in which you have had a similar reaction). There appears to be a connection between certain emissions bands and your physiological reaction, and there are most certainly numerical correlations between expected over/undertones and your 14mHz reaction, as I pointed out.  

The issue. Do these new devices cause such reactions in some people? You are a qualified electrical/electronic professional and you have the wherewithal to undertake some investigation, and you have. None of the business-side stakeholders appear to be that interested. This is not unknown. If you read Nancy Leveson's account of the Therac-25 debacle, in which many patients were over-irradiated by a radiation therapy machine, you'll see that one characteristic is that there was no purposeful supplier-side gathering and collation of incident data. Hospitals with incidents didn't know of each other, for example. Had there been, the dots would have been joined a lot earlier and the later injuries and deaths would not have happened. If you write this up, then other people will read it and you might well find you are not the only person with such reaction. 

Indeed, it might be that the companies already know there is a problem, and are attempting to mitigate it through the kind of resistance you are experiencing. 

What to do? You are not getting much joy from the supply-side organisations. The catch here is that, even though it's your house, they own the kit and neither you nor anyone else is to touch it unless they say so. I suggest you write up the situation briefly and send it to Anna Tims at The Guardian. She is The Guardian's consumer advocate and writes regular columns on company brush-offs and their resolution after The Guardian gets in touch. Usually the issues get resolved. And if you are not the only person with this issue, everyone else will say "me too" and the companies involved will have to resolve it permanently.

And if you are the only one, cheapest fix is for them to find an old analogue meter from somewhere and put it in your house. 

Thanks Peter for your reply and I entirely agree that this needs looking into seriously. I never in my wildest imagination would have believed that I could be affected anything like I have been by such a device. My medical problems are now beyond tinnitus, insomnia and headaches. I will be seeking another GP appointment tomorrow, but the GPs I have already spoken to are rather flummoxed by my situation. Whatever is written up about this episode needs to be shared with the medical profession also.

Getting the meter replaced with an analogue meter cannot be the end of the saga. I will continue with my endeavour to find out why this has happened to me. I hope that there's someone in the IET and/or OPSS who can help me prove the meter I have in my house either fails to meet the applicable standards or results in the improvement of those standards to stop anyone else suffering similarly in the future. It is quite possible that some people may not even realise the cause of their symptoms, which may or may not include tinnitus, is possibly due to their digital electricity meter. The fact I got tinnitus and pressure on my eardrums so soon after the smart meters were installed and I could detect variations in strength of both symptoms by leaving and returning to the house was lucky, as strange as that may seem. Some people may take much longer to suffer symptoms and therefore not be able to relate it to their meter installation.

It seems I have a duty of care about this situation greater than that of the energy company who can leave me suffering simply by telling the Ombudsman it's against their policy to refit an analogue meter. I spoke with the investigator from the Ombudsman on Friday and asked him why he had marked my complaint "upheld" when he had agreed with Octopus that they didn't have to refit an analogue meter. He said he had upheld the complaint because he actually agreed from the evidence I submitted that the meter is causing harm, it's just he doesn't have the power to make energy companies take action that goes against their own company policies. So I won the case but lost the battle. My MP is aware of what is happening and I will pressing for several changes.

I've continued to pursue getting an analogue meter refitted by switching energy company and I now have an offer albeit it remains subject to written confirmation that the replacement meter will be analogue and not another digital meter with the smart functionality turned off. This offer will incur a net loss of approximately £2000 due to the extra expense of the new 12 month fixed rate tariff plus the meter fitting fee. The gesture of goodwill awarded by the Ombudsman is £120. I've already spent nearly close to £1000 on alternative accommodation and I will have 7 to 8 weeks to wait for the alternative company to switch me and fit the new meter once the details are confirmed. So I will need several more breaks for respite before I am freed from this nightmare. Trying to save a little money has cost me dearly and not just financially. Due to the increasing health issues, it is quite feasible the GP I speak with next will order me to leave home until the new meter is fitted. I might just have to make that decision myself the way things are going. It will be very difficult, very inconvenient as well as very costly plus there's a far from negligible affect on my wife's health to also consider.

To answer the suggestion about replacing the meter with a recovered recertified meter: The fitters who replaced the first meter and then removed the communications hub both said that this could be done. Octopus have chosen not to directly answer that question whenever I put it too them. They just repeat the statement that they don't stock analogue meters and therefore cannot re-install one.

Returning to my own investigations: Yesterday I went back to visit a friend whose house has a twin gas and electric smart meter installation that doesn't appear to induce any effects on me. Acoustically it is virtually silent and my smart phone sound app does not show the characteristic trace of ultrasound I've talked about previously. I took my old AM radio with me, held it close to the meter and tried tuning it in throughout the LW and MW bands. At no point did anything unusual occur like shown in the videos I included in my post on 7 April. (RE: Severe Tinnitus Following the Installation of New Electricity Meters ). All it detected was some fairly weak white noise that faded away about half a metre away from the meter. This only reinforces my suspicions that the meter installed at my house is behaving errantly and that I am not sensitive to all digital meters. It depends on the quality of the electronics inside, the switched-mode power supply and its filtering in particular. Just unfortunate for me that I am sensitive to both models of meters currently used my current supplier and potentially a third type installed at the mother-in-law's, but maybe the effects are best discovered now rather than later.

As I said in my opening post on this discussion, I am happy to volunteer to participate in research by any scientific organisation investigating such electro-sensitivity issues. As for writing a paper myself, I need to feel a lot better than I do at present and I do need measurements of the various types of output from the meter using properly calibrated equipment before it is removed. Any advice, recommendations or help appreciated.

Obtaining the services of an investigative journalist could prove worthwhile particularly in getting things moving to end my nightmare. It is not an easy choice though for people like my wife and I who much prefer a quiet life. However, following the Ombudsman's decision, the lack of interest from the industry to engage, the severity of the health effects and last but not least, that duty of care, we decided that the situation now merits such attention and I have already started pursuing options. Thank you Peter for your suggestion, that might well be the next option taken.