News » SolarQuery meter reading API added

SolarQuery has a new REST endpoint /datum/reading that is designed to provide easy-to-use “meter reading” values. This is used to determine how much a measurement changed over a period of time. Often billing systems need this type of information, for example the difference between an energy meter reading at the start and end of a month shows how much energy was used and thus should be billed for.

A nice aspect of this new endpoint is that it accepts dates in “SolarNode local time”. If you manage SolarNodes across multiple time zones, this is a convenient way to say “give me results for each node in their own time zone” and allows you to make a single API request for all nodes, rather than multiple requests for each different time zone as would otherwise be required. Even if you only manage nodes within a single time zone, using local dates can be convenient, as otherwise all dates must be specified in UTC.

An example API call that asks “give me the meter reading difference for July 2018” looks like the following (notice the localStartDate and localEndDate parameters):

/solarquery/api/v1/pub/datum/reading?readingType=NearestDifference&tolerance=P1D&nodeIds=18&sourceIds=/CON/1&localStartDate=2018-07-01&localEndDate=2018-08-01

Here’s an example response, which shows that 10.32 kWh of energy was consumed over the month:

{
	"created": "2018-07-01 03:59:42.014Z",
	"nodeId": 18,
	"sourceId": "/CON/1",
	"localDate": "2018-06-30",
	"localTime": "23:59",
	"wattHours": 10320000,
	"wattHours_end": 805703000,
	"wattHours_start": 795383000,
	"endDate": "2018-08-01 03:58:42.014Z",
	"timeZone": "America/New_York",
	"localEndDate": "2018-07-31 23:58:42.014"
}

There are a couple of other queries that can be made by changing the readingType parameter, so check out the documentation for more information.

This feature was developed with support from our friends at Ecogy Energy.