In-Home Displays: What They Show and How to Use Them

An in-home display, usually shortened to IHD, is the small portable screen that comes with a smart meter. It shows, in pounds and pence, how much gas and electricity your home is using, in as near to real time as the system allows¹. It is not the meter itself: the smart meter sits in a fixed position, usually in a cupboard inside or outside your home, while the display is the handheld screen you can carry from room to room¹. Every household that gets a smart meter installed is provided with one³.

The display is the part of the smart metering system you actually live with day to day. Electricity figures update every 10 seconds; gas figures update every half hour⁴. You can set a budget on it and be alerted if you go over, look back over your usage for the past hour, week or month, and, if you prepay, watch your credit balance instead⁵. It costs less than £2 a year to run⁷, needs no wifi of your own⁸, and is covered by a 12-month warranty under which your supplier must repair or replace it free of charge if a fault appears and is not your doing⁹.

What the device is, and what it is not

An in-home display is a small portable screen that shows you how much energy you're using¹. It connects wirelessly to your gas and electricity smart meters and does nothing else: it cannot record information, it simply displays data from your smart meter⁴. That distinction matters more than it sounds. The display is a window onto the meter, not a store of records, and if it fails or is switched off, nothing is lost at the meter itself. It also does not affect the readings that are supplied to your energy company about your energy use¹⁰.

It is not the same thing as a smart meter, and it is not the same thing as an energy monitor you buy yourself. The smart meter is the fixed device that measures your consumption and sends readings to your supplier; the display is the portable screen that shows those measurements to you¹. A standalone energy monitor, by contrast, clamps onto your wiring and is not paired to any meter. If you want to understand the metering chain itself, see how smart meters work; if you are weighing up whether the display or an app suits you, see in-home display vs smart meter app.

The display is offered at the point of installation⁸, and it is provided as part of the smart metering arrangement rather than as a separate purchase. Official guidance on consumer rights notes that where goods such as an in-home display are provided as part of a contract for the supply of mains gas and electricity, and the consumer does not acquire ownership of the goods or make a separately identifiable payment for them, the contract is unlikely to be treated as a sales contract¹¹. In plain terms, the display arrives with the meter and is not something you buy outright.

Not every display looks the same. Whilst all in-home displays provide the same information, they won't all look the same, as each energy supplier may provide different models⁵. If you need to identify which model you have, for example to find its user guide, you can search by manufacturer or by the number of buttons on the front, and the count excludes the power and reset buttons².

Your screen tracks energy use in pounds, pence and kWh almost live

The core of the display is a live readout of consumption. It shows how much gas and electricity is being used in kilowatt hours (kWh) and its cost, in as near to real time as possible¹². Independent guidance describes the same thing from the householder's side: the device shows in near real time how much gas and electricity you're using, and what it's costing you⁸. Alongside the live figure, the display offers estimated costs in pounds and pence and daily, weekly and monthly usage trends¹³.

The two fuels update at different speeds, and this is by design rather than a fault. Electricity usage is updated every 10 seconds and gas usage every half an hour⁴. The reason is in how each fuel is measured: gas meters count volume, which must be converted to energy, and the system batches those figures into half-hourly updates. So the electricity figure on your screen is effectively live, while the gas figure is a running half-hourly picture. An easy-read summary puts it simply: the screen gives you updates about how much electricity you use, as you use it, and updates about how much gas you use, every half an hour¹⁴.

The cost figures are estimates based on the tariff information loaded onto the display, and the display also shows your meter readings¹⁵. That makes it a quick way to check a reading without opening the meter cupboard. What the display cannot do is act as a bill: the figures it shows are the meter's measurements priced at your tariff, not a statement of what your supplier will actually invoice, since a bill can include standing charges and other elements handled outside the display.

For households that want more than the display gives, there are routes to the same data in more usable forms. A consumer access device can pull the same half-hourly data into your own systems, and the display's figures can also help with using energy data to size solar, battery or heat pump systems.

Two payment types, two screens: pay as you go and credit

Your display has two modes, depending on how you pay for your energy³. The same physical device serves both, but the screens it prioritises change completely.

In credit mode, where you pay your bill at the end of each month or quarterly, the display shows your daily use and cost³. The emphasis is on consumption and spend: how much energy was used in the last hour, week and month, and what it cost⁵.

In prepay mode, the display becomes a balance checker. You'll see your available balance for each fuel and how close you are to your next top-up³. Independent guidance fills out the picture: the prepay screen shows how much credit you have left, how much emergency credit you have and when it has been activated, your debt balance if you have one, and whether your credit is getting low⁵. Smart prepayment meters also let you add credit automatically or without having to visit a shop¹⁶, which removes one of the old inconveniences of key and card meters.

The figures above are drawn from independent and official descriptions of both modes⁵. Smart meters can operate in credit or prepayment mode, and a household that switches payment type, for instance moving from prepayment to direct debit, will find the display changes mode with the meter rather than needing a new device¹⁷. For more on paying in advance, see smart prepayment meters and how to check credit on a smart prepayment meter.

Alerts, spending limits and a year plus a month of records

Both modes allow you to set budgets to make your spending more effective³. In practice this means choosing a daily, weekly or monthly spending figure on the display, which will then alert you if you go over the amount you've chosen¹³. Many models also allow alerts that warn you when you're getting close to your limits, or when there are sudden increases in consumption and spending³.

The history screens are the quieter half of the device and often the more useful one. The display shows how much energy was used in the last hour, week and month, and what it cost⁵. For direct debit and credit customers, the display holds historical energy consumption data for up to 13 months⁶, which is enough to compare this winter against last, or to check whether an insulation job or a new appliance actually changed your consumption.

Two things are worth knowing about how the history behaves. First, because the display cannot record information itself⁴, its history is only as complete as its connection to the meter: long periods switched off in a drawer will show as gaps. Second, the history is consumption only. It does not reconcile against your bills, and estimated meter reads are not classed as accurate if they differ from actual consumption, a point Ofgem makes in its work on monitoring billing accuracy¹⁸. The display is a measurement tool, not an accounting one.

Some models add a traffic-light indicator: coloured LEDs which indicate electricity usage, giving a glanceable signal of whether consumption is low, moderate or high¹⁹. The accessible in-home display, discussed below, uses the same idea in a form designed for people with sight impairment.

The unit links to the meter and remains part of the property

The in-home display is paired with the smart meter by the installer, so it only shows information from that particular smart meter²⁰. The pairing is what makes the display work out of the box and what stops it working anywhere else. Your smart meter sends data to your in-home display using the Home Area Network, which is a secure network⁴, separate from your broadband and from the wide-area network the meter uses to talk to your supplier. For the wider picture of those links, see how smart meters communicate.

The Home Area Network in Great Britain's smart metering system uses Zigbee, an open wireless standard. Zigbee operates in unlicensed bands worldwide at 2.4GHz globally, 915MHz in the Americas and 868MHz in Europe, and it uses over-the-air AES-128-CCM encryption²¹. Two properties of Zigbee matter to a householder. It still works if the internet is down and doesn't require connection with, or communication to, the cloud²¹, which is why a broadband outage never takes your display offline. And transmission distances range from 10 to 100 meters depending on power output and environmental characteristics²¹, which is why a display at the far end of a large house, or behind certain walls, can lose signal while one near the meter never does.

The pairing also has a consequence when you move. The display is left behind for the next resident, because the device will not normally work in a different property⁶. Independent guidance is just as direct: the display is designed to work with the smart meter installed at that property, so it stays with the home⁷. The same rule runs the other way for landlords: when tenants move out, the display stays in the property, as it is connected to that property's smart meter²⁰.

Switching supplier, by contrast, does not break anything. Smart meters let you switch easily and quickly between energy suppliers without any disruption to your smart service¹⁷. The display keeps working through a switch, though the screen layout may differ from a friend's because each supplier may provide different models⁵.

Price, day to day costs and one year of cover

The display itself is not something you pay for separately. The costs of the smart metering programme, including the displays, are spread across everyone's bills, just as the cost of running and maintaining traditional meters already was⁵. If you want the fuller picture of who pays for what, see how much does a smart meter cost and do you have to pay for an in-home display.

Once installed, the display costs less than £2 per year to run, and displays have been designed to be as efficient as possible⁷. That figure covers the device's own electricity draw, which is small enough that it does not meaningfully offset the awareness the screen creates.

The warranty position is set by the Energy Ombudsman's guidance: if you report a fault with the in-home display within 12 months of the date of installation, and your supplier is satisfied the fault is not due to your failure to keep the device in good working order, the supplier must repair or replace it free of charge⁹. After 12 months the position changes: the supplier may apply a charge²². There is a softening beyond that date, though. Some energy suppliers have agreed to help resolve issues with the display after the 12-month period, under voluntary principles⁷, so it is worth asking your supplier before assuming you must pay. For the detail, see can I get a broken in-home display replaced.

Limits of the display: no solar, appliance detail or billing support

The display's limits are worth stating as firmly as its benefits, because none of them can be fixed by a settings change.

• Solar generation is not shown. If you already have a smart meter and solar panels, your in-home display will currently only display the energy you're using and will not show how much power your solar panels are generating²². The display shows how much energy you are buying from your supplier, and in future may also be able to reflect self-generated energy such as from solar panels, but that is a future capability, not a present one⁶. To see generation you need solar and battery system monitoring.
• No appliance-level detail. The display shows whole-house consumption. It cannot separate the fridge from the washing machine; for that you need smart plugs and appliance-level monitoring.
• It is not a bill. The cost figures are estimates at your tariff, and billing accuracy is a separate matter: Ofgem's monitoring work tests regular energy bills to ensure actual meter readings match real consumption and charges are applied correctly, and estimated reads that differ from actual consumption are not classed as accurate¹⁸.
• It cannot record. The IHD simply displays data from your smart meter; it cannot record information⁴, so its history depends on it being on and connected.
• Gas always lags. Gas updates every half hour against electricity's 10 seconds⁴, so the gas figure is never live in the way the electricity figure is.

There is one important variation in what is available: accessible in-home displays. These have been designed to help people who might benefit from a larger display, easier to use buttons and audio options, and they are available from some energy suppliers for people with sight impairment, dexterity problems or memory loss²³. Features may include audio features, larger text, high-contrast screens and spoken energy information⁶. The accessible version has a TFT screen with a high contrast colour scheme optimised for visual impairment and colour blindness, a large typeface, and coloured LEDs which indicate electricity usage¹⁹. It is being offered at no extra cost to selected customers, but is not yet available with every supplier¹⁹, so availability has to be checked with your own supplier.

Solving a blank screen or lost information, and getting a new unit

Most display problems fall into three patterns, and each has a straightforward fix.

A blank screen is usually power. It could be that the device has run out of battery: plug it in and let it charge for a few moments, then turn it back on¹⁰.

No data, or stale figures is usually signal. The fix is to turn the display off and move it closer to where your electricity meter is located, then turn it back on; this should restore the connectivity and begin to display your data again within 24 hours¹⁰. A display that has been off for some time may take up to 24 hours to reconnect and begin showing updated information again in any case⁶. Also bear in mind that the readings on your display can take longer to update than the ones on your meters; this is normal¹⁰.

Electricity showing but no gas has its own reset. Press the on/off switch and unplug the charger, then hold the on/off switch down for a few seconds while plugging the charger back in. The display should then reconnect to both meters after a few minutes¹⁰. The detail is covered in in-home display shows electricity but no gas.

If none of that works, the supplier is the next stop. If the supplier gave you the display less than a year ago, it can often repair it or replace it¹⁰. Within the 12-month warranty the repair or replacement is free of charge provided the fault is not down to you⁹; after that a charge may apply, though voluntary principles mean some suppliers will still help⁷. And because the display does not affect the readings supplied to your energy company¹⁰, a dead screen does not put your billing at risk while you sort it out. Wider meter faults are covered in smart meter faults and troubleshooting.

How the display helps a home manage on its own

The in-home display is the one part of the smart metering system that is genuinely local. It needs no wifi, no internet and no cloud: the Zigbee link it uses still works if the internet is down and doesn't require connection with, or communication to, the cloud²¹. A household with a working display can see its own consumption even when everything else fails, which is a small but real form of independence.

The dependence that remains is worth naming. The display is paired to the meter and supplied by your energy supplier, so you rely on that supplier for the device, its warranty and its replacement⁹. Its cost figures depend on tariff information loaded by the supplier, and its history is capped at up to 13 months and cannot be exported in any useful form⁶. For households that want to own their energy data rather than borrow it, the display is a starting point, not a destination: consumer access devices and local data access take the same meter measurements and put them under your control.

Used for what it is, though, the display does the job it was issued for. It shows near real-time electricity use, half-hourly gas use, pounds and pence, budgets and alerts, and up to 13 months of history⁴, for less than £2 a year⁷. The habits that come from glancing at it, switching things off, spotting a sudden rise, noticing what a budget actually feels like, are the practical first step towards the bigger decisions: sizing a solar or battery system, joining time-of-use tariffs, or taking part in household flexibility schemes. The display does not make a home self-sustaining, but it is the instrument that tells you what there is to work with.