electric-usage-downloader

This project reverse engineers the NISC SmartHub api, which is used by hundreds of utility co-ops throughout the United States. This allows downloading 15-minute resolution electic usage and cost data for your personal account if you have a smart meter.

In prior versions of SmartHub, it was possible to download CSV exports of 15-minute interval usage data by specifying an "hourly" interval, but since January 2024 only hourly data has been available via CSV. That's why I reverse engineered the API instead of automating a download of the CSV as I had previously done.

Data can be imported into InfluxDB or VictoriaMetrics.

Config

Download config.example.yaml and fill in your own values.

• extract_days is how many days to look back from the current day. Max is 45. if specific --start and --end flags are not specified.
• account is your account number, available on your bill and on the SmartHub website.
• service_location is an internal SmartHub number, and must be retrieved from your browser:
  • Open the Developer tools to the Network tab
  • Navigate to Usage Explorer (example: https://novec.smarthub.coop/ui/#/usageExplorer)
  • Find a call to services/secured/utility-usage/poll in the Network tab
  • Open the call, and copy the serviceLocationNumber field from the Payload tab.
• influxdb.insecure allows connecting to a server with certificate issues.
• The other fields should be fairly self-explanatory.

Running

• To download and insert the last extract_days, run like this arguments: electric-usage-downloader --config config.yaml
• To download and insert a specific date range, run with arguments: electric-usage-downloader --config config.yaml --start 2024-01-16 --end 2024-01-17
• The --debug flag can be used to log responses from the API for assistance debugging issues.

Details

The SmartHub api currently supports 15-minute resolution of data. This could change in the future; 15-minute interval usage data used to be available via CSV export, but that ability was removed in January 2024.

Measurement: electric

Fields:

• cost (in US cents)
• usage (in watts)

Dashboard

I have included my Grafana dashboard panel definition in the repo.

Features:

• Electric usage graphed in watts
• Trailing 1d and 7d averages
• Cumulative usage (right x axis)
• Integrated with data from my Ecobee thermostat, showing when my heat pump or aux oil heat is running.
  • See https://github.com/tedpearson/ecobeemetrics for how I get this data

Here's a screenshot of the dashboard panel in action: