Smart meter with Octopus Home Mini

MWT

Phones4Chris said:

@[Deleted User] If there aren't "technical differences", then it wouldn't be a case of returning the IHD, it's just a case of getting the IHD's GUID correctly registered with the address and the SMETS2 meter. Something Octopus ought to be able to do (remotely) and had one been wise to this at the time, the installer of the SMETS2 should have been able to do it (again assuming there wasn't any technical limitation with the IHD itself).

I do not believe this is quite as easy as you suggest, the IHD has to be whitelisted by the energy supplier before it can be paired with a meter by the installer.

Many suppliers have declined to whitelist individual IHD CAD devices and the sellers of such devices tend to be registered as 3rd parties for access rights so they can whitelist their own products before selling them to end users.

pete-20-11

matelodave said:

Qyburn said:

Presumably there's no way the Mini could continue to work if you switch away from Octopus.

This is what Octopus say, so I guess it wont work with other suppliers if it relies on the Cotpus platform to collect and present the data

"The Octopus Home Mini is a small, palm-sized device that beams live readings from your smart meter to our cloud-based platform Kraken, so we can show you up-to-the-minute smart insights via your Octopus Energy app"

Other energy suppliers use Kraken, so maybe they could offer a similar device, but perhaps not call it an octopus mini of course. 

QrizB

[Deleted User] said:

I'm not sure if there are technical differences between SMETS1 and SMETS2 smart meters that would stop this

Hildebrand (who sell aftermarket IHDs and CADs) have different models for SMETS1 and SMETS2 meters, so it seems quite likely that they're not compatible.

Phones4Chris

MWT said:

Phones4Chris said:

@[Deleted User] If there aren't "technical differences", then it wouldn't be a case of returning the IHD, it's just a case of getting the IHD's GUID correctly registered with the address and the SMETS2 meter. Something Octopus ought to be able to do (remotely) and had one been wise to this at the time, the installer of the SMETS2 should have been able to do it (again assuming there wasn't any technical limitation with the IHD itself).

I do not believe this is quite as easy as you suggest, the IHD has to be whitelisted by the energy supplier before it can be paired with a meter by the installer.

Many suppliers have declined to whitelist individual IHD CAD devices and the sellers of such devices tend to be registered as 3rd parties for access rights so they can whitelist their own products before selling them to end users.

We were talking about an IHD linked to the user's previous SMETS1 meter, not some random 3rd party IHD so this "whitelisting" point most likely might not be relevant as it would have been whitelisted originally. It may simply depend on whether BG and Octopus ever used the same models of SMETS1 at any time, quite possible as back in those days there weren't so many about. It doesn't mean that there aren't technical differences that may prevent it from working though.