Smart Meter IHD

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Countrypaul
Posts: 560
Joined: Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:50 am

Smart Meter IHD

#1

Post by Countrypaul »

We had a holiday recently in Wales and my wife saw that the cottage we stayed in had an IHD linked to the smart meter in the place. Soon as we got back she asked can we get one of those displays, how much do they cost...

Therefore we had a so called Smart Meter fitted yesteday, the engineer was good fitted the meter changed the tails an reterminated all the tails to the Henley blocks, then put a seal on everything he worked on and finally got the IHD setup and showed me it working. Great thought I, that was pretty straightforward. Our meter is under the house in what effectively is a basement, we have Beam and block floor with 120mm PUR insulation - so 2 layers of aluminium plus nearly 200mm of concrete. Result is the IHD works fine plugged into the sockets near the meter, but soon as it is inside "Connection lost" other than in my sons bedroom window almost directly above the meter.

I have since read up about these IHDs and they only expect 70% of those installed to work. This seems to be something that the suppliers keep very quiet about (obviously). For such a comon problem the suppliers seem to be doing very little about it (I wonder why?), althought one, Octopus I think is looking at supplying boosters so the signal from the meter can be used further from the meter than the current limitation.

Has anyone else had this, and found any sort of a work around?
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Galahad
Posts: 72
Joined: Mon May 31, 2021 1:24 pm

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#2

Post by Galahad »

I have exactly the same problem. Our IHD only works if it is virtually next to the meter the other side of a concrete block wall.

Which means it never gets used because there is no where near there to plug it in to power it. It has rechargeable batteries but they last hours rather than weeks before needing a recharge.
Countrypaul
Posts: 560
Joined: Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:50 am

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#3

Post by Countrypaul »

Looks like a temporary solution will be to put an ip camera to view the IHD when it is near the meter. Not very elegant, but it should mean we can view it from any PC/ipad/iphone/? in the house. Hoping I can use a camera that is usb powered from the router I have down there anyway!

Better solution stil being looked for.
Oliver90owner
Posts: 392
Joined: Wed Jun 16, 2021 3:48 pm

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#4

Post by Oliver90owner »

Countrypaul wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 10:09 am Looks like a temporary solution will be to put an ip camera to view the IHD when it is near the meter. Not very elegant, but it should mean we can view it from any PC/ipad/iphone/? in the house. Hoping I can use a camera that is usb powered from the router I have down there anyway!

Better solution stil being looked for.
Only a very minimal partial solution, as only one screen can be viewed unless the appropriate buttons/touch screen are used to select other screens.
patrickl
Posts: 13
Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2022 3:49 pm

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#5

Post by patrickl »

If you are of a technical bent, you could add your own monitoring solution. In addition to the various suggestions in a recent thread here on monitoring re. EMON and similar, I've had good success with PZEM-004T modules from Aliexpress for the measurement side and ePaper displays for prevailing Octopus tariff, consumption cost display and so on. But most definitely a tinkerer thing rather than plug-and-play.
Oldgreybeard
Posts: 1873
Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2021 3:42 pm
Location: North East Dorset

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#6

Post by Oldgreybeard »

Setting up an easy to use monitoring system does make a really significant difference, we've found. Initially I just knocked up a fairly simple indoor display that took data from an extra meter that had a data output (these only cost around £30) and used that to display our power consumption or export on a small 2 line LCD display. We used that for several years, until I installed the battery system, and it worked very well as something simple, yet informative, that we used to see whether it was OK to turn on things like the dishwasher or washing machine.

I've been running Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi for a while now. That just serves a web page display that can be accessed by any device on our home network. It display a pretty simple dashboard, showing key information and also a 3 hour and a five day weather forecast (taken from the Met Office API) that is useful for planning ahead.

This is what my Home Assistant dashboard screen looks like (just screen shotted this a minute or two ago). It looks much the same on my wife's iMac or her iPad, so is cross platform, just needs a browser to view it:
Home Assistant.jpg
Home Assistant.jpg (67.33 KiB) Viewed 1547 times
25 off 250W Perlight solar panels, installed 2014, with a 6kW PowerOne inverter, about 6,000kWh/year generated
6 off Pylontech US3000C batteries, with a Sofar ME3000SP inverter
patrickl
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Joined: Sun Aug 28, 2022 3:49 pm

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#7

Post by patrickl »

OGB, what format did your meter output? £30 sounds like a bargain!
Tinbum
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Joined: Mon May 31, 2021 9:55 pm

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#8

Post by Tinbum »

Eventually you run out of space and need to reorganise!! :D :D

Image
85no 58mm solar thermal tubes, 28.5Kw PV, 3x Sunny Island 5048, 2795 Ah (135kWh) (c20) Rolls batteries 48v, 8kWh Growatt storage, 22 x US3000C Pylontech, Sofar ME3000's, Brosley wood burner and 250lt DHW
Oldgreybeard
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Location: North East Dorset

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#9

Post by Oldgreybeard »

patrickl wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 5:43 pm OGB, what format did your meter output? £30 sounds like a bargain!
It was a Chinese DIN rail mount meter, with an RS485 interface, so was pretty easy to connect to a cheap PIC microcontroller that just read registers in the meter and displayed a simple import/export display plus the average power over the previous 10 seconds. Just had a quick look on Aliexpress and it seems the price has come down in the past few years, they are now available for a bit over £20:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004342879536.html

Another £12 or so gets you a WiFi one: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004633322897.html
25 off 250W Perlight solar panels, installed 2014, with a 6kW PowerOne inverter, about 6,000kWh/year generated
6 off Pylontech US3000C batteries, with a Sofar ME3000SP inverter
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SafetyThird
Posts: 201
Joined: Wed Mar 23, 2022 11:32 am
Location: North Devon

Re: Smart Meter IHD

#10

Post by SafetyThird »

Tinbum wrote: Mon Sep 05, 2022 6:23 pm Eventually you run out of space and need to reorganise!! :D :D

Image
Fancy doing a little run down of how you have everything set up? I'm currently putting together monitoring stuff on the various systems and looking to get a RPi to run home assistant for displaying everything. Not explored the HA options yet but will be soon.
6kw PV (24 x REC Solar AS REC 250PE)
Clausius 5-25kw GSHP
Luxpower Squirrel Pod
Pylontech 21kwh
Eddi Diverter
250l hot water tank with 2 immersions
2 x Woodwarm stoves
7 acres of old coppice woodland
Ripple Kirk Hill 3.8kw
Ripple Derril Water 3.963 kW
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