Introduction#
Smart meter data in the UK is highly regulated and cannot be released to an organisation without explicit consent from the verified energy consumer at the property. An energy consumer is verified when they provide evidence that they are the resident at the property in question, using a SEC-approved verification method. Only once they've been verified can they give explicit consent for their data to be accessed by the organisation.Glow offers the most verification methods in the industry for verifying energy consumers, and the Glow IDV SDK (or Glow SDK) lets you seamlessly integrate a subset of these methods into your own front end.The Glow SDK is an embeddable identity and address verification component that integrates directly into your own front end as an iframe. It confirms that someone lives at a given address, establishing verified proof of residency before your application requests their consent to access their energy data. Verification is instant and easy to complete, keeping friction low and eliminating the need for manual intervention.This set of documentation describes how to use the SDK to verify your energy consumers, how to implement it into your own sign-up flow in either a web page or mobile application, and how a Verifiable Credential fits into the SDK-facilitated smart meter onboarding flow for the purpose of capturing verified consent.Definitions#
| Term | Definition |
|---|
| MPAN | Meter Point Administration Number — the unique identifier for an electricity supply point. |
| MPXN | Generic term used across this SDK to refer to a meter point identifier (MPAN for electricity, MPRN for gas). |
| IHD | In-Home Display — the device an energy consumer uses to view their energy usage from their smart meter. |
| CAD | A consumer access device, connecting directly to the smart meter at a property to access real time energy usage data. |
| EUI/GUID | The unique identifier assigned to an in-home display. This documentation uses "EUI" and "GUID" interchangeably in places. |
| Verifiable Credential (VC) | A cryptographically signed proof of identity or verification (as a claim), issued as the result of the IDV process. |
| Energy consumer / customer | The end user completing identity and address verification through the embedded SDK. |
| Application ID | The identifier issued to your organisation by Glow, used to initialise the SDK. |
| IDV | Identity Verification — the process of confirming an energy consumer's identity and address. |
| Verification | The required process of an energy consumer verifying their identity as the resident of a property. An energy consumer must go through verification following an approved protocol in order to grant consent for their data to be accessed. |
| Consent | The energy consumer's explicit agreement, captured via the consent API, allowing your application to access their energy data. Requires a valid verifiable credential as evidence. |
| SDK | Software Development Kit — the embeddable Glow IDV SDK itself, which performs IDV when integrated into your application. |
High level process flow#
The below diagram explains how an energy consumer interacts with the Glow IDV SDK.Table of Contents#
1.
Introducing the Glow SDK (this page) — definitions, and an overview of verification and consent.
2.
Supported Verification Methods — the onboarding flow the SDK fits into, and the two verification methods it offers.
3.
Implementation Guide — Web — step-by-step integration into a web page: script, container, initialisation, configuration, and event handling, with framework-specific examples.
4.
Implementation Guide — Mobile — step-by-step integration into a mobile application: script, container, initialisation, configuration, and event handling, with framework-specific examples.
5.
Verifiable Credentials — what a VC is, when it's issued, and its structure.
6.
optional: Verification Results Screen — presenting a verification result to your end-users.
7.
Consent Capture & Onboarding — how a VC is used to capture consent via the consent API.
Support#
If you have any issues or questions regarding this or subsequent documents on the Glow SDK — or on the tool in general — please contact support@glownetzero.com.Modified at 2026-09-02 10:32:36