Can I connect my In Home Display (IHD) to my Solar Inverter to show my exported energy?

Hi @12like ,

This is a good one actually. The exact answer depends on your setup. As far as I’m aware, it’s impossible for an IHD to show data from anything that’s not on the Home Area Network like a generation meter. If you had Smart Export Guarantee with your smart meter handling export metering, the IHD may be able to show this data depending on the IHD you’ve got, however this functionality is not supported for the Feed-in Tariff if memory serves.

I’m afraid in your case, there’s nothing out there that I can recommend because FiT cannot integrate with any smart meter that I’m aware of. I think @kevinmcintyre09 might have some advice though.

@Blastoise186 Is correct there is no easy integration of solar generation with smart meters.

We have had a number of solar monitoring products, but recently discontinued the devices as they were so old. This includes a pre-smart meter that measured import, export and generation, and we calculated consumption.

Justifying integration of this capability into our smart meter IHDs, we have struggled to do.

Within smart metering there is a twin element meter, which can be wired I believe to support generation. However, they are not very common, and I seem to recall some challenges with data going into the DCC.

The best you will do is buying a solar monitor, and manually working it out.

Our IHDs with the newer firmware support showing import/export live on a dial, and give you the import and export meter reads, but that is about it today.

Sorry I cannot be of more help Kevin @geo

Thanks @Blastoise186 and @kevinmcintyre09 

Can you supply a link to the new IHD which can show import export live on a dial so I can see what this looks like and what it takes to capture solar data.  I’m not so much interested in billing level accuracy rather to decide at a moment in time if there is enough solar to switch on both the washing machine and dishwasher without importing too much from grid.

Photos of that kind of IHD are extremely hard to come by I’m afraid. I can definitely show you photos of what the displays on a regular Geo IHD look like with the dial though. Their website at https://geotogether.com/ has a few photos of them if that helps.

The other snag is that Geo doesn’t currently sell any IHD products directly to consumers that I know of and if their solar monitors are gone, that doesn’t leave many options. Kevin happens to be very clued up as well with these things, so he’d know if there was anything else that he could recommend.

Depending on your solar setup, there might be other options though. Could you tell us what system you’ve got as I might be able to call in some help from a few other members.

If that is your goal, why don’t you just look at the export? My IHD shows export just as it would show import (and in fact the two are virtually indistinguishable, only separated by a few tiny pixel).
One potential problem is that both the washing machine and the dishwasher will have vastly different power requirements as they go through their cycle. Heating does use a lot of power for both, but it is only active intermittently. 

Was your IHD supplied by OVO, @MrPuds?

Be really interested to hear how the export reading can be viewed if so. We were under the impression that our IHDs weren’t able to show this info so happy to update this topic if we’re incorrect.

As for other ways to view export data, @12like, I know we’ve got plenty of solar-panel users here who might be able to direct you to some great third-party apps they use - @Jequinlan, @ArundaleP, @f0rtune?

@12like apologies missed this one :)

Normal dial when installed with a system with no export

For a system with export we change the dial by adding an export segment (ignore the prepay tab, only shown if you meter is in prepay mode)

When exporting it looks like this.

We don’t use negative numbers on the UI for energy, so the text helps reinforce what it is showing you.

Why grey out the dial? We did this to make it easier to see from across the room if you were importing or exporting.

Example of the meter reading screen with export readings

As noted by @ArundaleP some meters give us the full import/export value, some zero out export. In that the latter case, we will stay with the normal dial as there is no export as far as we are concerned.

@Blastoise186 is right, we do not sell SMETS IHD directly today.

Thanks Paul.  My export meter isn’t Smart and I don’t think I can have it changed as I’m on a FiT contract.  Can it still be connected to Glow Stick using a cable clamp?

Thanks Kevin,  does the export part need a SMETs meter which mine isn’t.  Or can a cable clamp be used to monitor export current?   

Hildebrand has been pretty friendly with me recently, and they’ve been teaching me about their offerings in order to help me to help other forum members out.

I’m afraid from their information, the Hildebrand Glow Stick cannot be connected to cable clamps and incompatible with non-smart meters of any kind.

It’s a bit of a nightmare to “smartify” non-smart stuff of this kind I’m afraid, and I can’t think of any way to make such devices be able to join the HAN for a SMETS1 or SMETS2 site - not least because you’d have to get through ZigBee Certification for starters. And that’s a long process before you even go through literally any other certifications.

Thanks it’s a shame that the display devices don’t support real world use cases.  The solar FiT meter isn’t smart as the government required quarterly readings only deem that I export 50% of what I generate. I’m on a 20 year contract for solar and don’t expect a meter change unless OVO who  administer the FiT scheme tell me differently .   So I need to monitor generation and try to maximise my usage of solar.   I have two old monitors side by side for that purpose.  Getting an OVO smart display will add yet another display but not help

with optimising solar usage.  

Yes all of the Trio devices work with SMETS meters.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to do this. We used to sell twin-element meters with a display and hub (prior to the bottom falling out of FiTs), this would measure import, export, generation and calculate consumption. 

Today in a SMETS world you would need a SMETS IHD monitoring import/export and have the ability to support a meter transmitter either LED or CT for generation. It is technologically possible, however justifying the business case is much harder.