Hi,
In U.K. Currently every energy provider is in process of installing smart meters for every household. Don’t know nothing about these meters but just wonder if there is a chance to read data of them in order to display it on ooenhab ? I’m using gas and electric in our home and will be getting new smart meters before summer next year. At this time I got a chance to change supplier if find other will provide better meter.
Does anybody knows if it’s possible to read data out of these meters?
I short, NO. At least not yet. The meter use a sort of encrypted zigbee protocol to communicate with the GSM unit and the little home display unit.
Thanks for information. I hope this type of meters will be available in near future-let’s wait.
Here in the US, the answer is “it varies” and “your provider has to allow it”. Most of the big providers have a way, but it’s not cheap.
That Rainforest Eagle looks good to me. Last I looked it wasn’t available for me, but it may be now - they were supposed to e-mail me and I missed it - so maybe I’ll try.
So, look at your utility’s website and see what information they have about accessing your data.
Except the Eagle-100 has been discontinued, and the Eagle-200 requires a cloud connection and doesn’t protect your data very well. BOO.
Hi, @marklavercombe
The question was about the smart meters intalled by utility companies in the UK.
The first generation of smart meters becomes dumb when switching suppliers.
The second generation has begun the roll out but they are not “open”, and use this proprietary encrypted zigbee-ish protocol. There have been attempts to sniff the signal or “hack” them but there have been no reported success as yet.
Fair enough. Seems you know what you’re talking about 
The Eagle-200 binding mentioned above uses the local API, no cloud required.
Cheers,
-Th
Hi!
There are some ways to get at least some data out of these meters, but none of them are really smart (in the sense of using the “smart” meter capabilities):
Most of them have a reflector/magnet/LED(IR) to calibrate - so for example you might have an LED on the meter that flashes 10000 times for each kWh used.
You can count these using a photo diode and report the consumption via MQTT (e.g. using an ESP8266).
Same goes for the water meter and gas.
Some electric meters have optical interfaces where some of the information is transmitted in small data packages. There exist DIY reader tutorials on the web - just google a bit and you’ll find much info.
Here’s a link from another thread: http://jasper.sikken.nl/gwemeter/
I’d missed that, and it makes me pretty happy. Great work avoiding going to the cloud for this simple information!
Since I’m already running 2.3., I may give this a try. That would be all kinds of awesome!
Thanks for making sure my error didn’t spread! This is really good news!
You can buy own meters and install it directly in our house energy distributing box, before distributing companies meters.
They should communicate with Modbus for example. With Modbus binding you can read out Modbus registers with necessary values.
If the meters has own public web API, then you can use http requests from http binding and parse answer into openhab items.
With regards to own power meter in distribution box that’s probably the best solution for now till there are some proper (open- read only) “smart meters” available in U.K. What’s the best reliable energy power meter (electricity) I should consider installing in ?
Guessing it will be difficult to get anything for gas meter as I can’t really tamper with it?
I like the idea of counting LED flashes, I seen this topic before and seems to very interesting. I had a look at our meter today and there is red LED flashing frequently on the meter so I may consider looking into this option here. I just wonder how reliable this solution could be, so if anyone could provide some feedbacks that would be great.
Our gas meter is indoor under stairs with quite easy access , however our water meter is located outside property buried underground on public footpath so I couldn’t run any data cables back from it unless go for battery only operaring/wireless. Also it’s always underwater in rainy days. I just wonder how water utility company is obtaining data from those meters. If I remember it correctly, this unit has radio link so when they sent guy around to record usage he doesn’t need to access the unit at all but I may be wrong on that.
For measuring power I installed an ABB A41 112-100 meter on the live side of the consumer unit. It’s MODBUS readable and I’ve got it being read by Openhab.