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In Home Display

What is a Smart Meter In Home Display (IHD)?

The easiest way to look at your energy data is to use the IHD that was supplied with the meter.

Typical facilities are:

• Now - See the energy being used now.
• Fuel - Select the fuel type - electricity or gas.
• Calendar - See consumption so far today or by week, month or year.
• Readings - See your current meter readings. These are used to calculate your bill.
• Low / Medium / High Indicators - The IHD compares your current consumption with a recent period (usually the previous week) or the budget you have set, and shows red (high), amber (medium) or green (low) indicators.

On most IHDs the budget can be set for either day, week or month so that the IHD will let you know if you have gone over this amount. Going over will not stop your supply. The ability to set a budget on the IHD is of limited use as the energy you use will vary over the seasons. You will have to alter your budget setting regularly to make use of this through the year.

Just to help you in your conversations with suppliers, the industry call IHDs "In Home Devices".

How does a In Home Display work?

The IHD uses the Home Area Network set up by the Communications Hub on top of the electricity meter to talk to the Smart Meter system.

If your IHD is along way from your electricity meter it may have problems communicating reliably, various solutions to this are being developed.

How much data is stored?

The IHD stores a limited amount of data for display purposes. The minimum is laid down in the SMETS specification paragraph 6.4.4.7 on Historic Consumption as follows:

• Last 8 days
  • historic Energy Consumption
  • cost of historic Energy Consumption in £s
• Last 5 weeks
  • historic Energy Consumption
  • cost of historic Energy Consumption in £s
• Last 13 months
  • historic Energy Consumption
  • cost of historic Energy Consumption in £s.

Does the Smart Meter work without an IHD?

Yes. The smart meter works even if:

• The IHD is unplugged
• The IHD breaks
• The IHD loses connection.

Will I still get billed without an IHD?

Yes. Even without an IHD, your smart meter will continue to provide accurate readings and your supplier will generate energy bills based on those readings.

Although your meter calculates your bill to send to the IHD for information, this is not used by suppliers for billing purposes.

How to use your IHD

Suppliers have provided customers with many types of IHD, so it's best to find the supplier's documentation on how to use your IHD.

Our Recommendation - Use an App - Suppliers IHDs have many limitations, sometimes they don't communicate well with the meters (actually the comms hub) which is hard to rectify, and the features cannot be updated or expanded easily. Therefore, our recommendation is to use your suppliers app or a third party alternative.

Replacing your IHD

If your IHD has broken energy suppliers are obliged to maintain them for 12 months following installation.

Beyond 12 months the government have set up the Smart meter In-Home Display: voluntary replacement principles which should at last give customers a way to get a working IHD free of charge. Most large suppliers have signed up to this (The link provides a list of suppliers).

Here are the four principles:

1. When a domestic customer identifies that their IHD may be broken or missing, a supplier should offer the customer a clear path to resolution and maintain an effective triage approach for customers seeking an IHD replacement.
2. Once the IHD is confirmed as being missing or broken and cannot be repaired, a supplier should offer a replacement IHD or provide a means by which a replacement can be purchased.
3. After the replacement IHD has been provided to the customer, a supplier should ensure the new IHD is working and correctly paired with their smart meters in a timely manner.
4. To monitor the effectiveness of these principles, a supplier should maintain a record of how many IHDs have been requested, repaired and replaced, and share this data with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and Ofgem when requested.

So, if your IHD is broken or lost contact your supplier who should be able to offer you a replacement.

Alternatively, replacement IHDs can now be purchased from official third-party suppliers. Don't buy IHDs from sources such as EBay or Facebook as these are very unlikely to work as they must be commissioned and linked to your meter by your supplier or an official product provider.