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deleted deleted   •   over 14 years ago

Free API for the SDG&E Customer Personal Energy Usage Metadata

Tendril Connect APIs offer a great interface for Green Button data, which is the dataset labeled “SDG&E Customer Personal Energy Usage.”

Check out greenbuttonconnect.com/home. This is where people sign up and upload their Green Button file, which gets stored in Tendril Connect. You can then access the stored Green Button data using the Tendril Connect Green Button Download Data API call, documented at dev.tendrilinc.com/docs/greenbutton. You can also submit your app for inclusion in the Tendril Connect App Gallery so that it's easily accessible for San Diego residents (and everyone else too). Support for Tendril Connect APIs is online through the Forum.

The best part is that this is all FREE!

One note: To use our APIs other than the Green Button Download Data call, you need access to a Tendril Connect instance, which we offer through dev.tendrilinc.com with sample user profiles. To access San Diego's Tendril Connect instance with real user data would require their permission.

Chrysa Caulfield
Tendril Application Developer Program
ccaulfield@tendrilinc.com

  • 2 comments

  •   •   over 14 years ago

    How would you have them give permission if you're using a app? Is there a specific username and password they setup first?

  •   •   over 14 years ago

    Erik et al.

    The credentials created at http://greenbuttonconnect.com basically represent the end user, say the SDG&E customer who uploads their Green Button data. These credentials are stored in the Tendril Connect platform, and greenbuttonconnect.com supports drag-and-drop xml file uploads.

    For you the developer -- To use our /connect/greenbutton API, you register as a developer and register your application at http://dev.tendrilinc.com. It's a simple registration process, and only an application name is required to get an app key, though you can provide more data if you'd like (an icon URL, app description, etc).

    Once your application is registered, you can use the application key just as you would with any OAuth-supporting development platform. This is how the app user is able to specifically authorize the application to access the user's data. So, a redirect occurs to the Tendril OAuth sever from the application and the user logs in there. The user then authorizes the application to access the user's Green Button data. Same type of thing you might see with a Facebook application.

    It's the same app registration and OAuth mechanisms you'll see used by Facebook, Google, Paypal, Twitter and all other major development platforms.

    The Green Button API is documented on the dev site, and you can play with it immediately in our API Explorer there as well. There are sample sandbox users that have meter data that we return in Green Button format in the explorer.

    I can provide sample PHP code for the Green Button API call, and for parsing the data it returns. (Never fear, we support JSON). This should save you lots of time by not having to do a bunch of parsing yourself. I've also got sample OAuth client PHP code to help anyone get past that hurdle.

    Please feel free to contact me with any questions -- tbreeden@tendrilinc.com.

    Good luck to all of you. This is cool stuff you're doing.

    Tim

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