Smart meter might be doing an update, the IHD has changed from, showing some stuff, to saying waiting, is that due to an update of some type being in process ?
Power also went off for a few seconds at the same time as this new message appeared, coincidence, or expected behaviour ?
Smart meter was recently installed, so assume it might be doing some kind of update after a few weeks.
Best answer by shetland
Updated on 27/06/25 by Ben_OVO
I read someplace ( Can’t remember where ! ) to turn the IHD off for 24 hours and then turn it on again.
Did that, and less than 1 minute after turning it on I’d say, it is now working again.
If your property is affected by a power cut then your In Home Display (IHD) may be affected. If turning it off for 24 hours doesn’t fix it, please contact our Support Team who will try and fix the IHD remotely. You can find information around what to do in a power cut on our emergencies page.
+8Hi
Nope. Power stays on during firmware updates and config changes - this is a safety feature that’s critical to how these things work.
+4
Power also went off for a few seconds at the same time as this new message appeared, coincidence, or expected behaviour ?
Expected, but you have the cause and effect the wrong way round.
It was the power cut that triggered the IHD to reset.
When the power goes off the IHD wiill lose communication with the communications hub on top of the smart meter.
(Even if you have batteries in the IHD itself, there are none in the communications hub).
When the power comes back on the coms hub gets power again and the IHD can reconnect to it and reload everything.
Mine did it yesterday following a power cut here, and the power was off for less than a second.
It was that quick that I only knew it had happened because my house phone beeped as it started resetting itself.
My IHD was also resetting itself, - as was my boiler, and my laptop which I was using showed that the broadbancd was reconnecting so my router was resetting too.
The IHD never lost power as it is plugged into an UPS.
The UPS making a beep and seeing things that was not plugged into the UPS not working, made me notice that the power was off.
I wonder how long it takes the IHD to recover ?
+4Mine takes anywhere from 5 mins to an hour or two to reconnect after being disconnected.
I’m not sure just why that difference is, but suspect that it may have something to do with if the coms hub lost power or not and how long it had lost power for?
PS. It seems unnecessary to have the IHD on the UPS.
As you have found, if the power goes down then the coms hub goes down too, and there is nothing for the IHD to connect to anyway.
My hope with the IHD on the UPS is it would stop it jiggling around which wifi channel to settle on and just stick with the one it found so far to be least troublesome.
After no change in some 5 hours, I power cycled the IHD, eg. turned it off and on at the power socket, to see if that makes any difference, an hour later no change still.
I guess see how it is tomorrow !
We sometimes get some nasty power surges here, is the smart meter designed to cope with those just fine ?
Also, everything connected to the UPS goes through a large stand alone surge protector, to hopefully protect it more than just being in a standard non-UPS wall socket.
+4I’d forgotten that you were previously having problems with the Zigbee and IoT devices on the 2.4 GHz channels settling down.
Maybe that is why the IHD is now having issues reconnecting following the outage?
I don’t use any IoT devices on 2.4 GHz , (there’s just occasionaly my older laptop and the printer on my 2.4 GHz wifi, everything else uses the 5GHz), so I don’t have that potential issue.
This morning its still not working as it should and waiting for data.
It managed fine before when I unplugged it and moved it a bit, and that was for more than 5 seconds :-)
Maybe I need to leave it off for a few minutes and see if that makes any difference.
I find almost nothing works on 5 Ghz !
Plus, amazing how many modern and rather expensive devices, only work on 2.4 Ghz, with some even wanting their own little slice from the router, forcing your Android device to pick that one.
+8Well, that’s MediaTek and Aquantia for you - they’re generally regarded as lower quality than other options.
Mind you, the MediaTek Wi-Fi 6 adaptor in my gaming laptop works pretty well on 5GHz… But then again, I do have Ubiquiti UniFi...
+4
Let us know how you get on.
Updated on 27/06/25 by Ben_OVO
I read someplace ( Can’t remember where ! ) to turn the IHD off for 24 hours and then turn it on again.
Did that, and less than 1 minute after turning it on I’d say, it is now working again.
If your property is affected by a power cut then your In Home Display (IHD) may be affected. If turning it off for 24 hours doesn’t fix it, please contact our Support Team who will try and fix the IHD remotely. You can find information around what to do in a power cut on our emergencies page.
+4Good to hear that you got it going.
We had lightning storm here earlier, first flash and the power went off for 2 or 3 seconds.
My IHD was showing a ‘Reconnected’ message within 3 minutes of the power coming back on.
+8Unlikely - this is deep config stuff saved in non-volatile memory.
Making both lose power at once requires killing the entire supply. You’d need an engineer for that.
+4Making both lose power at once requires killing the entire supply. You’d need an engineer for that.
Or a network outage, as in my case yesterday with a bolt of lightning zaping the transmission wires.
Where I am, we get 60+ powercuts a year, so not long to wait for the next one. :-)
Though I prefer most of my electronics to be on the other side of a large surge protector, currently using one of these plugged in before the UPS:
https://www.comms-express.com/products/surgex-sa-132-surge-eliminator-with-advanced-series-mode-2-x-bs1363-receptacles/
https://www.shetnews.co.uk/2018/07/13/thousands-lose-power/
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OVER 4,500 properties across Shetland lost power on Friday morning after a lorry struck an overhead power line at the Lerwick Power Station.
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That took out my UPS with its own small built in surge protector, so decided to get something bigger for next time:
Can anyone recommend something bigger still in case it isn’t big enough ?
+8Well… At this rate you may need to go for bigger UPS units. Depends how much juice you need really, but you may have to start looking at Eaton type stuff if your issues don’t get solved soon.
If your plan is max runtime, they do that Eaton 9PX thing for example, which can run for ages depending on how you configure it and what you hook it up to.
I mean bigger surge protector, but a bigger UPS could be good too !
Ideally one that plugs in via a standard 13amp plug socket to avoid the need to get an eletrician in to wire up anything more expensive.
Eco-Flow devices seem pretty good, have a Delta 2 here running UPS duty, not as many bells and whistles as the APC unit here. ( 1500i I think. ).
Thunderstorm last night, power went off for a few seconds, and now the IHD is again not conecting.
So this time I’m going to experiment and leave it be for a week+ and see if it reconnects without me doing anything, before I try the turning it off for 24 hours thing.
After that, if I remember, I’m going to try it on a non-UPS socket to see if it connects when both it and the meter lose power and come on at the same time. ( Since when the meter was fitted, it was working straight away, so perhaps the engineer knew how to kick into action straight away. )
Meanwhile, I have a cheap as chips Chinese smart bulb that when the power goes, likes to default to flashing mode..
Which also requires a working internet connetion to stop it doing that !
Thank goodness I got just the one to test and not fited the entire house out with them !
+8If memory serves, Eaton (and others) do offer models that don’t require hardwiring. However, regardless of manufacturer, larger UPS units do tend to require hardwiring to overcome the 13A limits of non-hardwired units.
Either way, for any future UPS you get, I’d suggest getting one that’s Line Interactive given your dodgy power. These ones react MUCH faster to power loss events and basically make it so the protected equipment doesn’t even lose power for more than a few milliseconds. They also do protection from more than just power cuts so are worth paying the extra for compared to an Offline UPS.
The other option is an Online UPS… But given your use case they’re not worth the extra costs.
+4This thread is generating some excellent discussion, and I'm finding it very helpful so I learn more about UPS systems and power outages.
Well done
+8It’s interesting stuff! And pretty complicated because having a UPS means having to do additional maintenance to look after it properly - these things aren’t exactly Set and Forget solutions.
If you look at the Eaton 9PX range for example, some of those are beasts! That’s an awful lot of battery to manage...
Oh yes, the APC UPS’s I’ve had for 20+ years, has been a right pain to keep going !
From firmware bugs to deal with, to configuration issues, especially with networking cards and tempreature sensors, plus annoying things like needing your own email server if you want it to behave as it should in alerting you ( You may also need an email to SMS service as well ), to it not working right via its USB port and needing something with an RS232 port to kick life in it from time to time.
I sure would have liked something less hassle, but everything else was far more expensive.
Talking of which, sealed lead acid batteries are not cheap things either, and I’ve waited years for someone to make an UPS with anything but.
Eco-Flow may be a cheaper solution there, but I haven’t had one for 20 years yet to find out all of its issues !
Getting batteries delivered where I am, is almost impossible, and cheap batteries delivered here, even harder !
APC plug in models go up to around 975w or so, Dell do a 1,500w model, but is harder to find, the Eco-Flow Delta 2 is 1,800w apparently, though not tested it to that much yet. But everything extra yo uplug in takes you nearer that 975w APC limit..
Interestingly, the newer APC models, the fan is on 24/7, whilst the older models the fan only comes on at 80% load, and its a very loud fan ! ( Hence at the moment, I’m a fan of the older model. )
The Eco-flow has the fan on all the time, but fan speed is variable, so as your load goes up, so it becomes louder…
I don’t think I’d want one in my bedroom.
The Eco-Flow uses LiFePO4 / LFP battery types, which should be safer than lead acid ( Less concern about thermal runaway, which I nearly had once, the batteries got so hot you couldn’t touch them and took 3 days to cool down once off, no wonder the batteries come in a big steel box ! ) and last longer. ( Sealed lead acid last anything from 3 years to 10, depending upon it seems the brand and how gentle you are with them, eg. lots of long powercuts, not so good. )
The eco-flow isn’t so fast to switch to battery power, as some YouTube video tests show, some computers/etc. can’t manage and shut off too quickly. So far testing here, nothing seems effected, but still more things to test that are not yet plugged in ! ( New W11 PC’s for example, I’ve yet to finish building to replace the W10 ones. )
Price wise, reconditioned Eco-Flow units is about the same as a second hand APC + new batteries, with about the same capacity.
The Eco-flow do come with the added benefit of being able to plug some solar panels into them.
But I suspect you need planning permission for those solar panels !
Anyone know ?
+8Yeah, that sounds like the eco-flow unit you’ve got might be an Offline UPS - these do take longer to switch over when there’s a power loss event. That’s why I prefer recommending Line Interactive for non-critical stuff and Online for critical stuff.
Solar panels are probably fine if you’re using those portable ones that you can just pick up and put away when you’re done using them - it’s only fixed ones that’d require approval.
For my future use case though… I’m gonna need the beast UPS units cuz servers use a lotta juice.
Mmm.. so if I get 30,000w of portable solar panels, and tie them with velcro to something heavy, no planning permission required ?
Last I read was even if you have solar panels on a vehicle, you need planning permission if you use them to power something inside your home. ( This could effort Vehicle to Grid if your vehicle has solar panels on it. )
My interest is, after moving in, will need power straight away and fossil fuel generators are quite expensive to run, so a few solar panels would be helpful. but I get the impression you can’t even have one outside if its powering something inside the home.
If a few are helpful, why not have more than a few and run everyrthing you need for a bunch of Eco-flows each with a few solar panels attached to them, eg. one eco-flow per room say.
Eventually build say, some greenhouses and hang them off those inside, since the cost of a greenhouse isn’t that much more than the cost of frames to just hold just solar panels, and you end up with something more useful at the end of the day.
Heard you don’t need planning permission if the solar panels are floating on a pond, but if you want to build a new pond, you need planning permission. ( I wonder, does that mean old ponds automatically don’t need planning permission, and if so, how old do they have to be to qualify ?
So many rules and regulations to be aware of, and quite hard to find out about them all I find.
Maybe consider using all that heat from the servers to warm your house. :-)
My eventual aim is to be off grid, pondering a 12v DC system, with DC to AC converters for those things that need AC to work, since I hear there are no regulations that need an expensive electrican for if you are dealing with below 50v DC.
Plus the issue of finding quality tradesfolk who know their stuff, since I’ve been hearing for decades stories from folk about someone doing a bad job, and the only real way to spot it, is to know enough yourself !
At which point, you start thinking, I could do that, if only I was qualified !
Better instead to find solutions that don’t require you to spend several lifetimes getting qualifications in everything you want to do within your budget, since we can’t all afford to just hire someone to do something every time something needs fixing/updating.
Like earlier, I could have called a professional to fix a lose door handle, waited 3 months for them to arrive, and charged me £300 or more.
Or I could take it apart myself, see what I had to do to fix it, which involved a screwdriver a hammer and a handy granite step, along with a bit of oil.
IHD is back working this morning 7.30am, so it appears you just have to wait a couple of days and do nothing.
So that means, we get on average a powercut here every 6 days, so 4 days a week it will be working !
Let me try that experiment, and move the IHD to a non-UPS socket and see what happens next time there is a powercut.
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