One of the most meaningful API projects I work on with the US government is the Green Button API, which provides access to energy data for US consumers across the country. First, what is the Green Button API? The Green Button builds on top of the Green Button data initiative which is:
...an industry-led effort that responds to a White House call-to-action: provide electricity customers with easy access to their energy usage data in a consumer-friendly and computer-friendly format via a "Green Button" on electric utilities' website.
Which Todd Park, Assistant to the President and U.S. Chief Technology Officer states:
Giving residential and commercial customers secure access to their own energy data in a standard, easy-to-understand format will help them visualize their energy use and identify opportunities to save money. At the same time, Green Button is spurring the development of new online tools and services that add value to this information, creating an innovative new domain for entrepreneurship and job creation.
The Green Button API delivers flexible access to Energy Usage Information through a set of RESTful interfaces, providing access any consumers Green Button data. The Green Button API is being designed by EnergyOS, providing a solution that any utility can download and run to mediate access between their retail energy customers, and 3rd parties who will provide energy data driven services to them.
I’m very excited to announce that the Green Button API definition has been added to the API Commons. The Green Button API represents why 3Scale and API Evangelist launched API Commons, to provide a place where we can hang the most important, and meaningful API interfaces, and underlying data models, to encourage re-use.
You can find the Swagger specification for the Green Button API on Github, complete with interactive documentation and other resources. The project is a work in progress, with the final specification still being hammered out by EnergyOS and utilities across the country, but the API is fully functional, and since it is on Github—the entire project is open for comment.
If you’d like to know more about the project, feel free to contact me directly at @kinlane or @apicommons.
