Hildebrand Glow (DCC) Integration

Home Assistant integration for energy consumption data from UK SMETS (Smart) meters using the Hildebrand Glow API.

This is a fork of the original HandyHat/ha-hildebrandglow-dcc project, which is no longer maintained, updated to fix issues with sensors no longer updating.

This integration works without requiring a consumer device provided by Hildebrand Glow and can work with your existing smart meter. You'll need to set up your smart meter for free in the Bright app on Android or iOS. This will only work when using the Data Communications Company (DCC) backend, which all SMETS 2 meters and some SMETS 1 meters do. Once you can see your data in the app, you are good to go.

The data provided will be delayed by around 30 minutes. To get real-time consumption data, you can buy Hildebrand Glow hardware. Although this integration will technically work with their hardware, you should instead use the Local MQTT integration or the Cloud MQTT integration to get real-time consumption data which is not delayed.

Installation

Automated installation through HACS

You can install this component through HACS to easily receive updates. Once HACS is installed, click this link:

<details> <summary>Manually add to HACS</summary> Visit the HACS Integrations pane and go to <i>Explore and download repositories</i>. Search for <code>Hildebrand Glow (DCC)</code>, and then hit <i>Download</i>. You'll then be able to install it through the <i>Integrations</i> pane. </details>

Manual installation

Copy the custom_components/hildebrandglow_dcc/ directory and all of its files to your config/custom_components/ directory.

Configuration

Once installed, restart Home Assistant:

Then, add the integration:

<details> <summary>Manually add the Integration</summary> Visit the <i>Integrations</i> section in Home Assistant and click the <i>Add</i> button in the bottom right corner. Search for <code>Hildebrand Glow (DCC)</code> and input your credentials. <b>You may need to clear your browser cache before the integration appears in the list.</b> </details>

Sensors

Once you've authenticated, the integration will automatically set up the following sensors for each of the smart meters on your account:

• Usage (Today) - Consumption today (kWh)
• Cost (Today) - Total cost of today's consumption (GBP)
• Standing Charge - Current standing charge (GBP)
• Rate - Current tariff (GBP/kWh)
• Last reading - Time of the newest reading the Glow platform holds for the meter, with the start of the available history and the resource details as attributes (diagnostic)
• Tariff - Name of the tariff currently applied to the meter, with the rate, standing charge and full tariff history as attributes (diagnostic; only created when the API holds tariff history for the meter)
• Meter point - One sensor per MPAN/MPRN on the account showing the meter point number, with the verification status, consent expiry date and the DCC inventory (meter manufacturer, model, firmware, serial/EUI, SMETS version) as attributes (diagnostic)

Where the API can report it, the meter's own identifying number is also recorded as the serial number on the meter's device in Home Assistant's device registry.

If your account has Glow hardware (an IHD/CAD), the integration detects this automatically at startup and creates these additional entities:

• Power (now) - Live electricity power draw in watts, polled once a minute. Marked unavailable if the hardware stops reporting for more than 10 minutes.
• Meter reading - The cumulative register reading as shown on the meter itself. On a dual-rate meter, such as Economy 7, this is the combined total of the day and night registers rather than either one on its own, so it will not match either figure shown individually on the meter's display. Meters report this in different units (Wh, kWh, or m³ for volume-based gas registers); whichever unit the API reports is used, and energy registers are displayed in kWh.
• Connectivity - A binary sensor per gateway device showing whether it is still sending data to the Glow platform, with the last-seen time as an attribute (diagnostic)

Accounts without Glow hardware simply don't get the hardware entities; the endpoints are probed once at startup and skipped silently if unsupported.

The usage and cost sensors will still show the previous day's data until shortly after 01:30 to ensure that all of the previous day's data is collected.

If the data being shown is wrong, check the Bright app first. If it is also wrong there, you will need to contact your supplier and tell them to fix the data being provided to DCC Other Users, as Bright is one of these.

Update frequency

Hildebrand's DCC backend only publishes new smart meter readings roughly twice an hour, so all sensors are refreshed on the same cadence rather than continuously:

• Home Assistant polls the integration every 5 minutes, but a new API request is only actually made when the clock is between :00-:05 or :30-:35 past the hour. Outside of those windows, the sensors keep their last known value.
• This applies to the four DCC-sourced sensors: Usage, Cost, Standing Charge and Rate. The two tariff sensors (Standing Charge and Rate) share a single update per resource, driven by a single coordinator, so they always update together.
• The hardware-sourced entities are not tied to the half-hourly DCC cadence: Power (now) and Connectivity refresh every minute, while Meter reading and Last reading refresh every 5 minutes.
• In practice this means you should expect each sensor's value (and its "last updated" time) to change shortly after each half hour, not every 5 minutes.
• The Glow API access token expires after 7 days. The integration renews it automatically ahead of expiry — by exchanging the current token for a fresh one where possible, falling back to your stored credentials — so no restart is needed to keep data flowing.
• If a sensor hasn't updated for longer than about 35 minutes, first check that the data is up to date in the Bright app, then try the hildebrandglow_dcc.catchup and hildebrandglow_dcc.clear_cache services, and finally enable debug logging and look for errors from the integration.

Services

Two services are provided for when the data looks stale or wrong. Both accept a device target, or no target at all to cover every meter on the account:

• hildebrandglow_dcc.catchup - Asks the Glow platform to pull the latest available readings from the DCC. The integration already does this on its normal update cycle; the service is for forcing it by hand or from an automation.
• hildebrandglow_dcc.clear_cache - Drops the Glow platform's cached data for the meter, so the next request is answered from the underlying data.

Energy Management

The sensors created integrate directly into Home Assistant's Home Energy Management. It is recommended you use the daily usage and cost sensors in the Energy integration.

Debugging

To debug the integration, add the following to your configuration.yaml

logger:
  default: warning
  logs:
    custom_components.hildebrandglow_dcc: debug

Development

To begin, it is recommended to create a virtual environment to install dependencies:

python -m venv dev-venv
. dev-venv\Scripts\activate

You can then install the dependencies that will allow you to develop: pip3 install -r requirements-dev.txt

This will install black, homeassistant, isort and pylint. The integration itself has no external dependencies: it talks to the Glowmarkt API directly via custom_components/hildebrandglow_dcc/glow_api.py.

Code Style

This project makes use of black, isort and pylint to enforce a consistent code style across the codebase.

Credits

Thanks go to:

• HandyHat and the HandyHat/ha-hildebrandglow-dcc project, the original version from which this fork is derived.

• The pyglowmarkt library, which was used to interact with the Hildebrand API before the integration switched to its own API client.

• The Hildebrand API documentation and Swagger UI.

• The original project from which HandyHat's project was forked.

• The Hildebrand-Glow-Python-Library, used for understanding the API.

• All of the contributors and users, without whom this integration wouldn't be where it is today.