Octopus Energy Gas Meter

Energy
1

I am using the Octopus Energy integration to monitor my electricity import and export. I have also got a GivEnergy battery integrated. This seems to be working well and looks good on the energy dashboard which shows a report of usage every hour.

However, I have tried to add a similar entry for the gas consumption, but when I look at the data I dont get anything like frequency of data I get for the electricity.

I seem, to be getting data on a random basis. Sometimes once every 2 or 3 days, then maybe a gap of 3 weeks and before the next day. Sometimes I only get data once in a month. The daily consumption in HA is comparable to that I see in my Octopus dashboard.

So my question for those of you that know, am I missing something to allow me to get the data regularly?

2

Guessing you are in the UK? If so gas meters are battery powered and therefore send their data every 30 minutes. I believe they use a locked down version of Zigbee. They transmit their data to your electricity meter which then sends it on.

Could be distance between the meters or interference and you are only getting occasional updates. Mine are about 5m apart and work fine but again only get readings every 30 minutes.

PS If you get the free Octopus mini you’ll get even more often updates, or get the data from your GivEnergy inverter and it is almost realtime.

3

You are right I am in the UK. I was just puzzled how Octopus was getting the data on a regular daily basis, but the integration was only getting it so sporadically? I recall hearing about the Octopus Mini, but thought that was only a beta program that had ended, but will see if I can follow that up.

4

The gas meter is read into the smart meter every 30 minutes. Both electricity and gas consumption data is pushed to the UK meter network during the night. This data is retrieved by Octopus at some point, and then added to your account.

The Octopus Energy Integration polls the API regularly, and will download to the entity sensors an update when the data becomes available in your Octopus account. The electricity data is usually there by mid morning the day after. Gas data is less reliable, and in my experience will arrive sometime after teatime, or the next day, or later, or not at all.

At the moment my gas readings are arriving around 02:00 in the morning two days after, hence I got the consumption for Jan 12th (it is now the 14th) only this morning.

You can check that your gas meter is being read by the smart meter using your IHD (in home device) or by checking the smart meter registers on the meter itself. You can check to see what Octopus knows by using the Octopus app, and clearly that will not show anything if Octopus does not have the data, and if Octopus does not have the data then the Integration has no way to get it either.

If you have big gaps over several days, but you can see that Octopus has the electricity data, then it may be worth checking that the smart meter can see the gas meter. Otherwise it is just a case that the gas readings seem to be treated as second class mail.

If you want anything better, then you have to access the smart meter HAN (Home Area Network) which is what the IHD connects to, and what the Octopus Mini uses to push “real-time” readings to your Octopus account via the internet. The alternative to a Mini is a smarter IHD that can be connected to, there are a couple of brands out there I believe.

The Octopus Mini is certainly a game changer, and appears to still be available.

5

The IHD is the one we had from British Gas before we switched to Octopus. That seems to be getting regular readings from the gas meter, which is what I assume is being sent to Octopus and why their app data shows a full data set.
However, its now approaching 7pm and reviewing the data in the app for my energy usage, I can see that the data for electricity is upto yesterday, but the data for gas is up to the day before.
I wonder if this extra day delay is possibly at the heart of the issue?

6

Update from Octopus Energy.
Unfortunately, I cant get an Octopus mini as the smart meter is SMET 1 and it seems the Octopus mini only operates with SMET 2 meters.
I see that Octopus have an API available, although that might only be available for users signed up to Octopus Agile. It would be nice if this could be used to pull usage data directly.

7

Octopus Energy provide open access via API.

This API is used for the Octopus Energy Integration (BottlecapDave). Standard product information and tariffs are available without authorisation. Your account information is available, with authorisation.

You can do this, yourself, in about 5 minutes, just using the web browser you are using to read this post.

  • log in to your Octopus Account online
  • on the Home Page, click on the “personal details” link under your name & account ref number
  • under the block “Developer Settings” click on the “API Access” button
  • on this page you will find:
    • your API key. Take a copy of this and keep it safe somewhere. DO NOT DISCLOSE THIS KEY TO ANYONE
    • your gas meter point MPRN
    • your gas meter serial number
  • create a URL using https://{{apikey}}:@api.octopus.energy/v1/gas-meter-points/{{mprn}}/meters/{{meter}}/consumption
    • in this string, replace {{apikey}} with your API key
    • replace {{mprn}} with your MPRN
    • replace {{meter}} with your meter number
  • Paste this entire string directly into a browser search/URL bar [and hit the enter key]

You will see the results of the API call directly in the browser window. If you are using Chrome (I don’t know about other browsers) the browser will recognise that the return is JSON and offer to ‘pretty print’ it for you . This helps.

You will get something like [I have *'d out my MPAN and meter number:

{
  "count": 288,
  "next": "https://api.octopus.energy/v1/gas-meter-points/**********/meters/**************/consumption/?page=2",
  "previous": null,
  "results": [
    {
      "consumption": 0,
      "interval_start": "2026-01-20T23:30:00Z",
      "interval_end": "2026-01-21T00:00:00Z"
    },
    {
      "consumption": 0,
      "interval_start": "2026-01-20T23:00:00Z",
      "interval_end": "2026-01-20T23:30:00Z"
    },
    {
      "consumption": 0,
      "interval_start": "2026-01-20T22:30:00Z",
      "interval_end": "2026-01-20T23:00:00Z"
    },

Easy to do.

This returns the very latest Gas Consumption data that Octopus have for your account.

Note
At this point in time, 15:00 on Thursday 22nd January, Octopus have my gas consumption data up to the period 20th at 23:30 to midnight.
This is not yesterday’s data, this is the day before yesterday. Octopus do not have yesterday’s gas data, and therefore there is no way either I or the Octopus Energy integration can get this.

Gas readings are always late, often very late, and sometimes never there.

8

Magnificent. I have already got the API which was needed for the Octopus Integration. I just need to try and build a sensor with this as the input data and use that to populate the energy dashboard.

9

Octopus have a programme to replace SMETS1 with SMETS2 meters, I’d beg/bug/plead to get bumped up the replacement programme. I have found them fairly good although getting someone to fix smart meter issues was a bit slow for me, wort a try.

2 Likes
10

I didn’t know about the replacement programme. Do you know what is driving the change and if there might be a reason that could be used to help support the case? If I understand correctly, the move is required due to the impending shutdown of the G2/G3 network, which the SMET 1 meters use, but that is not due until 2033 right?

11

If you ask nicely they might get it replaced in a couple of months.

The other option would be if the meter breaks, but I wouldn’t recommend that.

I suspect part of this may be SMET1 being less reliable at pushing the updates up to the network potentially which causes issues.

I have SMET2 with Octopus Home Mini and reliably get my 30 minute gas readings into home assistant with only around 1 hour lag.