
Show HN: Pulse – Develop the Future of Energy Services - traviswingo
http://pulse.energy/#
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irunbackwards
Only PGE right now? Are you implementing Green Button Connect? How are you
getting past the requirement for users to fill out CISR forms to allow 3rd
party to manage data?

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traviswingo
We're trying to lower the barriers to entry to building helpful energy
services by building a standardized and centralized API to allow developers to
easily authenticate with user utility accounts and use their data.

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1_listerine_pls
If I understood correctly, you are connecting directly with each utility
company's API and exposing your own API.

Are their APIs used for bill payments? is yours?

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traviswingo
Yes, we connect with each utility company API and expose our own. Each utility
API is a little bit different, so we simplify this sort of the way segment
simplified analytics integrations or Plaid simplified bank account
integrations.

Their APIs are read-only, no bill paying through them. We can see different
types of data, though, from usage to billing intervals.

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1_listerine_pls
Do you register with these companies to use their APIs or are they exposed to
everyone?

Are you planning to monetize it as subscription?

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traviswingo
We have to register as a company with a tax ID. We plan to open it up as a
flat subscription model based on the amount of requests required. There will
be a free "developer" plan that allows unlimited use with request limits.

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asimuvPR
Whats the stack? Im mostly cuellos about the db of choice. I built something
similar for another market and the database choice was PostgreSQL for its json
capabilities and full text search.

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jqkeller
Are you helping utilities that don't have an API to setup one?

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zucker4573
What's the difference between this and the PGE api?

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traviswingo
If you're just using the PGE api, then not much. If you're building an app
that doesn't discriminate between utilities and your users are from all over,
then this is a solution. We're trying to simply make it so the API from every
utility looks exactly the same, so developers can write code once, and it
works regardless of what utility the user is a part of.

