Talk to me about... smart meters.

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
Anyone got one, in particular a SMETS2? If so, how much data can you see? I don't care about real time, I'm interested in accessing my usage for a whole week hour by hour. I need an idea of peak usage and a baseline to plan my battery storage system.
 

YorkshirePud

Well-Known Forumite
I think the problem is "What will your supplier let you see?" Your SMETS2 meters just connect to the DCC metering network - you can't get the readings directly yourself, as far as I am aware.
Octopus have published an API to access their data, and some people have provided tools to download it as a CSV file, and then into Excel.
Here are a couple of examples - by day during the month and by time. I moved onto their Go tariff on Sep14th, hence all the early morning usage which is in blue on the first graph; orange is the rest of the day.
Sample daily consumption.jpg

Sample hourly consumption.jpg
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
I think the problem is "What will your supplier let you see?" Your SMETS2 meters just connect to the DCC metering network - you can't get the readings directly yourself, as far as I am aware.
Octopus have published an API to access their data, and some people have provided tools to download it as a CSV file, and then into Excel.
Here are a couple of examples - by day during the month and by time. I moved onto their Go tariff on Sep14th, hence all the early morning usage which is in blue on the first graph; orange is the rest of the day.
View attachment 11486
View attachment 11487
This is exactly what I'm hoping to see, if my supplier can't provide it I'll switch once I have the meter! It's Octopus I plan on going to after I get the batteries anyway, as I want the cheap nighttime electricity to charge the batteries in winter. Just wanted an idea of how much battery i really need to get the most from the solar as the SEG is rubbish, so you're pretty much wasting anything you don't use.
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
It doesn’t actually matter who you’re with these days, as long as you have a DCC connected meter, you can authorised third parties to access your data for you.

One such party is GlowMarkt, who have a free app called Bright that allows you to access half hourly data. You can get live data too if you buy their IHD, which they can pair to your meters Zigbee network and it’ll pipe that up to Bright too. I believe that also works with Octopus Agile to show when your next price drop is (not that Agile is a great option right now). Bonus points for having an MQTT feed you can subscribe to if you really want to do fun things with your live data
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
It doesn’t actually matter who you’re with these days, as long as you have a DCC connected meter, you can authorised third parties to access your data for you.

One such party is GlowMarkt, who have a free app called Bright that allows you to access half hourly data. You can get live data too if you buy their IHD, which they can pair to your meters Zigbee network and it’ll pipe that up to Bright too. I believe that also works with Octopus Agile to show when your next price drop is (not that Agile is a great option right now). Bonus points for having an MQTT feed you can subscribe to if you really want to do fun things with your live data
Is the half hourly data you used x in the last half hour, or is it every half hour you are using x right now? I would only need live for testing singular device usage, so can use the IHD for that I guess. Really glad to see these things opening up though, next port of call is to see how much data I can get from the solar. I'd love an API for that to let me monitor weather and balance overnight charging with expected need.
 

Cue

Well-Known Forumite
Is the half hourly data you used x in the last half hour, or is it every half hour you are using x right now? I would only need live for testing singular device usage, so can use the IHD for that I guess. Really glad to see these things opening up though, next port of call is to see how much data I can get from the solar. I'd love an API for that to let me monitor weather and balance overnight charging with expected need.
Home Assistant is what you want for automating things, but it’s not for the faint of heart

It’s historical half-hourly usage though
 

Jonah

Spouting nonsense since the day I learned to talk
I keep getting a message from Eon saying they are ready to fit my smart meter. Never going to happen.
 

The Hawk

Well-Known Forumite
I've had a SMETS2 meter installed almost 3 years ago (upgrading from a SMETS1 meter). In total I've had a smart meter for around 10 years. The flexibility they provide is huge and, of course, some of the most advantageous tariffs have only been available to those with smart meters. Once the market settles down again, hopefully next year, then a SMETS2 smart meter is almost going to be essential to take advantage of the cheap off peak tariffs which, combined with home battery storage, will offer rates so cheap that even heating my house by electricity will become viable.

My SMETS2 meter tells me my usage for the day, the week, the month and the year. It gives me a total usage by both kWh and cost and, as well as a combined total, it will also give me separate electricity and gas totals.

As stated above, it depends on your energy provider as to how much extra information you can access.

I'm also looking at battery storage and I've also been looking at the Octopus Go or Octopus Go Faster tariffs as the most likely ones to move to (however, in the current climate, my current fixed rate is too good to give up until it runs out next year or my supplier goes bust).

I will be using this winter to gather some useful information on my current energy costs and also the cost of some potential changes I could make. For example, I have two air source cooling and heating units which, currently I only normally use for cooling in the summer (and very occasional use for warming in the winter). I will be trialling using these for whole day heating in the winter, to get an idea of the price point at which they will become cheaper than my gas central heating system. This will inform my final decision on whether or not to invest in storage batteries (or at what price point to do so), as well as when it may be viable to move away from gas central heating completely.
 

c0tt0nt0p

Well-Known Forumite
We've had a smart meters for around 3 years. Never had any data from it, in fact we've never had actual reads on the bills (I've had to provide CORs).

We're with Eon next now and they are in the process of getting the DCC to connect to the meter.

When they installed the smets2 meter on the power they couldn't fit a gas smart meter due to earthing on the gas pipe. They are waiting for the industry to amend their processes so that a gas smart meter can be synced to the power meter after the usual sync period.
 
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Mudgie

Well-Known Forumite
I told both gas and electricity suppliers that I won't have so called 'Smart Meters' and they accepted that.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
EDF put one in my place a few years ago. I don't really bother with it much, but find it handy to see when the solar panels are pushing it into a negative reading. (Quite a bit this summer.) When the EDF chaps fitted it, they put it in the kitchen at first, but could not get it to connect to the box (my input box is at the front of the bungalow in an outside box.) I told them to move it into the bedroom and place it as near as possible to the back of the input box site. It then burst into life.
The reason being I think is that all my walls have a base layer of bacofoil, then polystyrene then the wall paper. After all that I pine panelled all the outer walls and put foil backed insulating into the batten spaces, so while not exactly a Faraday cage, it is all fairly well screened. It's very apparent when you look at the phone signal when you enter. It also helps prevent RF interference from the transmitting aerials out back.
It means I have to use two access points for the Wifi ... and power up two more if I have visitors to cover the blank spots.
The meter stores all kinds of info from weekly, monthly to yearly consumption and costing if you input the unit price, but the fact is I always have it on 'current usage' and that's about it.
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
EDF put one in my place a few years ago. I don't really bother with it much, but find it handy to see when the solar panels are pushing it into a negative reading. (Quite a bit this summer.) When the EDF chaps fitted it, they put it in the kitchen at first, but could not get it to connect to the box (my input box is at the front of the bungalow in an outside box.) I told them to move it into the bedroom and place it as near as possible to the back of the input box site. It then burst into life.
The reason being I think is that all my walls have a base layer of bacofoil, then polystyrene then the wall paper. After all that I pine panelled all the outer walls and put foil backed insulating into the batten spaces, so while not exactly a Faraday cage, it is all fairly well screened. It's very apparent when you look at the phone signal when you enter. It also helps prevent RF interference from the transmitting aerials out back.
It means I have to use two access points for the Wifi ... and power up two more if I have visitors to cover the blank spots.
The meter stores all kinds of info from weekly, monthly to yearly consumption and costing if you input the unit price, but the fact is I always have it on 'current usage' and that's about it.
Mind if I ask the yield of your solar? Know your location is a little different, but a local 4kw system seems to get about 3600/year.
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
Because I know that I will start obsessing over every unit used. And I don’t want to.
Mine is for planning purposes only, the IHD will go off after for exactly that reason! Can't get the SEG without it though, and most won't fit solar to my current meter.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
10 years old. So far this year they've generated 3609 kwh (according to the software.) There's 16 panels and my roof faces virtually due south so ideally positioned. Max power at a given time I've ever seen is about 3.8 kw but that was mid-summer and a clear sunny day.
 

Gramaisc

Forum O. G.
10 years old. So far this year they've generated 3609 kwh (according to the software.) There's 16 panels and my roof faces virtually due south so ideally positioned. Max power at a given time I've ever seen is about 3.8 kw but that was mid-summer and a clear sunny day.
I started a weekly record of the consumption of the house in Ireland - from February on, it never varied much, generally about 7kWh a day - if yours are producing 10+ a day, I could disconnect from the mains...
 

tek-monkey

wanna see my snake?
I started a weekly record of the consumption of the house in Ireland - from February on, it never varied much, generally about 7kWh a day - if yours are producing 10+ a day, I could disconnect from the mains...
The one in Stafford averages 10 per day, but obviously thats heavily summer loaded producing about 2 per day in the worst months.
 

BobClay

Well-Known Forumite
Ahhh if only I only used 7kwh hours a day .... that would be nice. I'm all electric. I used to have calor gas central heating but I ripped all that out, I'm an ex tanker man, I wont have gas in the house. So I replaced all that with an all electric boiler, changing the system to fully pumped for not only the central heating, but hot water as well as that was convection/gravity with the gas boiler. Even so the immersion gets used mostly for hot water. I do my own plumbing and you can buy the control system as a complete bundle, including the three position valve. I'm not a great fan of central heating to be honest which is probably good as the electric boiler climbs up to 9 kw.
 
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