Help:Energy Hackathon Resources

Energy Hackathon Resources (Data, APIs, Examples) for Cleanweb Hacks and Energy Mashups

Browse Energy APIs

NEW: browse energy APIs available to developers!

Energy datasets

OpenEI now federates datasets from a variety of resources. Check out its live energy datasets search.

Hackathon API and dataset resources

• OpenEI resources
  • OpenEI search - a great place to start browsing the compendium of open energy data; includes search results from external data partners
  • OpenEI web services - sample queries for OpenEI's SPARQL endpoint, Ask queries and RESTful API for utility rate data
    • Utility rate web service - this web service is a subject matter expert-reviewed utility rate database with time of use rate information; contact for more information on integrating this data into your app.
    • See the Utility Rate Database to find rates given a zip code or lat/lon
    • Incentives and policies - use this web service to get RESTful access to incentives
      • DSIRE data is directly available in quantitative form and qualitative form
  • Green Button
    • OpenEI Green Button Developer Page
    • EnerNoc has a repository of Green Button data
    • See also greenbuttondata.org
    • Existing Green Button apps
    • Energy.gov/developer is a collection of the government data sources we've found and various Green Button sample data and resources
    • Broad ideas for Green Button apps, based on a conversation with Matthew L
• NREL resources
  • NREL's developer site - links and documentation for a growing number of APIs for transportation, solar, electric areas
  • The System Advisor Model (SAM) Software Development Kit (SDK) is available for free. The SAM engine is compiled in various platforms (Linux, windows, mac, etc.) and has wrappers and documentation in Java, C#, C++, Python and Matlab. All the PV functionality is available although it takes some time with SAM to get up to speed to use the API interface.
  • The Open PV Project API - restful api to access Open PV data for info and locations on 179,000+ US solar installs
  • OpenStudio is an open-source, cross-platform (Windows, Mac, and Linux) collection of software tools to support whole building energy modeling using EnergyPlus and advanced daylight analysis using Radiance
• DOE resources
  • Fuel Economy API: The Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) jointly announced the development of a new interface for data from the fueleconomy.gov website. The API will provide access to all of the data currently displayed in the “Find and Compare Cars” interactive tool, which includes model years 1984 through 2013.
  • EIA Electricity API (beta): The Energy Information Administration (EIA) announced the development of an API for its series on monthly, quarterly, and annual data for electric generation, consumption, and retail sales
  • DOE Apps for Energy resources Good page of links and APIs for the Apps for Energy Challenge that includes OpenEI data (including the utility rate data)
  • Other announcements from the October 1st, 2012 Energy Datapalooza on energy APIs being released
• Data.gov/energy resources
  • Energy.data.gov data and tools
  • Data.gov energy data resources (governmental and non-governmental)
  • Data.gov raw data with Socrata capabilities
• REEGLE resources
  • Clean Energy Information Portal
  • REEGLE data and developer resources
• Tendril resources
  • Tendril Connect APIs
• Genability resources
  • Genability Developer Network
• People Power resources
  • Appcessories
• Buildings Energy Databook
  • Databook on EERE
• MyEnergy
  • MyEnergy Developers Program

Open data from Vehicles

The Department of Energy has recently released new data that represents what most people can access directly from their own cars (if they had the right tools). As cars become more like laptops, this type of data will become increasingly valuable to drivers as they seek to improve their fuel efficiency and increase vehicle safety.

• What is OpenXC data?
  • Raw data in the form of single-vehicle trace files, available as either a single valued message or event message. See the Data
• How do I connect to OpenXC data?
  • A sample dataset in OpenXC format is available for download (TXT, 1.2 MB), with information about the data here and here.
  • Examples of API integration are available from the OpenXC Platform website
• OSIsoft OpenXC PI System Interface
  • OSIsoft offers the PI System for management of real-time data and events.
  • The PI System allows users to collect, historize, find, analyze, deliver and visualize real-time data.
  • OSIsoft vCampus
    • The OSIsoft Virtual Campus (vCampus) is a subscription-based, online offering that provides developers with resources for developing applications/solutions on the PI System.
    • Members get access to a Development PI System with access to features such as server components, client components, data and asset management, web services and SDKs.
    • The OSIsoft vCampus also includes a discussion forum, a library with documentation and whitepapers, code samples and monthly webinars.
    • OSIsoft vCampus FAQ
  • Getting vehicle data with the PI System
    • Hackathon PI System vehicle data guide
    • Vehicle Data RESTful API * See above guide for details on how to use
    • There is also an IRC chat server for the OSIsoft PI system.

Scientific Data resources

Read about the data science toolkit, a "collection of the best open data sets and open-source tools for data science, wrapped in an easy-to-use REST/JSON API with command line, Python and Javascript interfaces."

Ideas

 

Building-specific ideas

• Important note: this data may not be released yet, and may not be accessible. We will update this section on building ideas when we know that this dataset exists for public consumption.

• Ideas from the DOE Building Technologies Program, Cody T

1. Idea: create a public database of building characteristics and energy usage data that can be available to researchers and businesses to use to devise innovative solutions. If it is easy to contribute to and query-able by third party tools through some kind of API, it could quickly grow to be very useful. This could be built on the core of the SEED Platform (see below). Could perhaps let people contribute Green Button data and add other types of relevant data about their buildings. Background: We're creating a national Buildings Performance Database (BPD - see attached fact sheet) that is a repository of data on building characteristics and energy usage data that can be used by professionals in the banking, utilities, and building management industries to evaluate the energy savings from installing particular energy-saving equipment in particular types of buildings. This can help to facilitate investment in energy efficiency. The BPD is currently in a closed beta and we're trying to substantially grow the dataset from around 50,000 buildings today. A crowd-sourced public database of building characteristics and energy usage data could be a great way to help supplement this. There are lots of interesting problems to solve in this area. E.g. figuring out a way to do this that lets people contribute near-real-time data associated with their address if they want to, but protects from people knowing when someone's away on vacation by e.g. defaulting a one-month delay on data release.
2. Idea: accelerate development of Standard Energy Efficiency Data SEED Platform, currently in beta, to help cities around the US who are starting to use this software to manage and publish building energy performance data. I know several cities whose energy staff would be thrilled if the SEED application was suddenly easier, more powerful, and more intuitive to use. Background: the SEED Platform is an open-source web-based database developed by DOE to assist state and local governments in managing building energy performance data. It can be easily installed on Amazon EC2, and includes a MySQL database built on the same data taxonomy as BPD. We are in-between development phases right now and could use student teams' help to rapidly execute several of our development tasks that cities are asking for to use the software. They want this right now to help manage their data (SF and Berkeley are both among those who have expressed interest, though neither has begun using it yet). Seattle, Austin, DC, NYC, and others have also been working with us to tell us their needs, which include:
   1. Building an API to help cities publish data in a standardized format and allow 3rd parties to easily access the data.
   2. create and improve data import options
   3. implement historical versioning of data to support multiple years
   4. build support for real-time data analysis and editing through the web interface
   5. etc…
3. Idea: open challenge: start with the Standard Energy Efficiency Data SEED Platform, currently in beta, and build something really cool on top of it. Background: the SEED Platform is meant to become an open-source foundation upon which people can build various tools for building energy data input, management, analysis, and sharing. We think the big play here is in moving to one national standard approach to storing building characteristics and energy usage data that will enable data sharing and innovation by having many similar datasets out there. Students could build and demonstrate tools that either help people manage and analyze their data better, or help them share it more effectively, or help them gather data that's currently hard to gather.
4. Idea: Starting with the SEED database, build a publicly-accessible and easy-to-contribute-to database for universities to publicize the energy usage and building characteristics of buildings on their campuses. Background: This site could facilitate challenges among universities to disclose their data. Having that data available AND having good analysis tools with it could help them identify opportunities to save energy and money. This could be enhanced by having a mechanism for students to be involved in crowdsourcing some of the information - e.g. smartphones could snap and upload pics of light fixtures, windows, other building equipment. Find good ways to get students into this data collection, and good ways to make the data actually useful (hint: probably something more than dashboards). This would be a more data-driven cousin to http://honestbuildings.com/ but focused on universities, and I'm sure honest buildings would want to pull in the public data to their platform as well.

Solar-specific Resources

• The Open PV Project features crowd-sourced location, size and cost data for over 179,000 solar installs. The API follows an easy action based restful interface.
• Solar Tools with API's from NREL, including:
  • PVDAQ a public interface to some of the PV performance data contributed to NREL
  • PVWAtts service that estimates the performance of hypothetical residential and small commercial PV installations
  • Solar DNI layer from NREL's Solar Prospector.

Apps for Energy Examples

• Data.gov and RPI wiki, multiple examples and tutorials for using Data.gov data
• Browsable list of apps for energy in the mobile, web and desktop space
• Browsable list of energy apps with a focus on governmental data and apps
• 2010 Mashup with data.gov, OpenEI, U.S. census data and SmartGrid.gov - includes source code that performs SPARQL query, simple Google Map integration
• DSIRE widget - uses OpenEI's SPARQL endpoint, one example of pulling incentives from a web service