Unlocking energy insights: Why coding with NET2GRID’s APIs is a breeze

In today's rapidly evolving energy landscape, consumers are increasingly demanding more control over and insights into their energy usage. Meanwhile, utilities and service providers are constantly searching for better ways to engage customers and deliver value. NET2GRID tackles these challenges while making energy data accessible, actionable, and surprisingly easy to integrate.

The challenge of energy data integration

As a Solutions Architect at NET2GRID, I'm frequently asked the same question by potential customers: "How easy is it to actually develop against your APIs?" It's a valid concern. Energy data integration has historically been complex and time-consuming, requiring specialized knowledge and significant development resources.

So, I decided to put our APIs to the test with a practical experiment. Rather than just simply explaining the technical documentation or showing pre-built demos, I wanted to demonstrate the actual development experience from scratch. My goal was simple: to build a functional energy insights dashboard using our APIs within a single workday.

As a developer who hadn't directly worked with our customer-facing APIs before, I approached the task from the perspective of a new customer. I set up a fresh development environment, obtained API credentials, and dove into the documentation. What followed surprised even me.

Within just a few hours, I successfully integrated real-time power monitoring and basic gas and electricity consumption metrics into a functional dashboard. The simplicity of the API endpoints, the consistent data structures, and the comprehensive documentation made the integration process remarkably smooth.

While my experiment focused only on total consumption metrics, adding more advanced features like appliance-level breakdown would also be a breeze. The /disaggregation endpoint follows the same intuitive pattern as the basic consumption endpoints, allowing developers to seamlessly enhance their applications when ready. This progressive implementation approach means customers can start with core functionality and easily expand to more sophisticated insights without significant refactoring.

What makes NET2GRID’s APIs different?

NET2GRID EnergyAI® platform offers a comprehensive set of APIs designed specifically for energy retailers, OEMs, and service providers who want to give their customers deeper insights into household energy consumption. What makes these APIs special is how they abstract away the complexity of energy data processing while providing rich, actionable insights.

NET2GRID’s Customer Engagement API was built from the ground up with developer experience in mind. What impressed me the most during the implementation was the focus on simplicity and integration. With just a few lines of code, we were able to tap into powerful energy analytics that would have taken months to develop in-house.

Let's take a look at how simple it is to retrieve real-time power consumption data:

You can find the above example in our Github repository at https://github.com/net2grid/power-monitor.

Powerful features with minimal effort

These APIs allowed our team to build features our customers love, with a fraction of the development effort we had anticipated:

• Real-time energy monitoring dashboards

• Personalized energy-saving recommendations

• Appliance-level consumption breakdowns

• Alerts for unusual energy usage patterns

• Cost projections and budget tracking

  
  

The best part? We didn't need to understand the complex AI and machine learning behind it. NET2GRID handles all the heavy lifting of energy disaggregation and analysis through their Non-Intrusive Load Monitoring (NILM) technology. We just make simple API calls and get back rich, actionable data.

Why it matters

Energy data without context is just numbers. What NET2GRID's APIs provide is the ability to transform raw energy consumption data into meaningful insights that drive action. The service handles the complex data processing while providing simple, intuitive endpoints that any developer can work with.

For energy retailers, this translates into deeper customer engagement. For OEMs, it means value-added services. For consumers, it provides greater control over their energy usage and costs.

Getting started

If you're looking to enhance your energy services with powerful analytics and customer engagement features, NET2GRID's APIs are the way to go. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can build and deploy powerful energy management solutions.

To help you jumpstart your development, I've made the source code for the dashboard mentioned earlier available as an open-source project. You can find it at https://github.com/net2grid/energy-usage-dashboard. This project demonstrates how to implement basic energy consumption metrics using the /instantaneous and /energy-measurements endpoints, with clear examples of how you can extend the functionality as your needs grow.

This resource serves both as a practical example and a template you can adapt for your own implementation. Even if you're using a different programming language or framework, the patterns and API interactions remain consistent.

Ready to start building with NET2GRID's APIs? Visit api.net2grid.com to access comprehensive documentation and get your development journey started today.