Bayou Energy July 2023 product release
Overview
New home for documentation: Now Bayou’s API reference, product documentation and support are hosted in one place, https://docs.bayou.energy/.
Instant data: Instant access to customer utility data within one minute or less for 12 utilities.
New utility support: With the addition of PNM (Public Service Company of New Mexico) and El Paso Electric, Bayou Energy now supports 36 utilities.
Customer hierarchy: Bayou's customer records now accommodate multiple utility account numbers and meters linked to a single set of utility login credentials, ensuring comprehensive access to utility data from all customer utility accounts and meters.
Developer experience: Developers can now easily and programmatically determine customer onboarding and bill status through a collection of new data fields and webhooks.
New home for documentation
Now Bayou’s API reference, product documentation and support are hosted in one place, https://docs.bayou.energy/.
A few pages of note include:
Instant data
Instant data, defined as receiving data from a newly onboarded Bayou customer within one minute or less, is now available for 12 utilities:
Ameren
ConEd
ComEd
Entergy
Eversource
Jersey Central Power and Light
National Grid Massachusetts
National Grid New York
Pacific Gas and Electric
Puget Sound Energy
Seattle City Light
Xcel Energy
Instant data is revolutionizing customer acquisition for clean energy companies, offering an unprecedented level of convenience to customers. With instant access to customer utility data companies can seamlessly present clean energy offers to customers in real-time, all with just one click. This groundbreaking approach not only reduces customer acquisition costs but also drastically improves conversion rates throughout the customer acquisition funnel, providing a consumer-grade experience for buying clean energy akin to Venmo's instant account authentication.
New utility support
With the addition of PNM and El Paso Electric, Bayou Energy is now supporting 36 utilities.
Customer hierarchy
Bayou customer records now support multiple utility account numbers and meters linked to a single set of utility login credentials. Data from all customer utility account numbers and meters is now parsed and made available to Bayou users.
From residential customers owning multiple homes to commercial customers managing their entire business’s energy footprint, customers often have multiple to dozens of utility account numbers and meters behind the same set of utility login credentials. Understanding this complex hierarchy is crucial for clean energy companies to deploy tailored solutions effectively. We recognize this challenge and have designed our customer object to provide a comprehensive view of the entire customer hierarchy, ensuring access to the precise data needed to drive successful projects. View the new data model in Bayou’s API reference here.
Developer experience
Companies and their developers require an organized method to track individual customers who share their utility credentials and gain a comprehensive understanding of the customer’s available data. To address this need, Bayou is introducing new data fields and webhooks that provide a systematic framework for tracking customer status and ensure a transparent view of data availability for each customer.
New data fields:
bill_status: All bill objects now have one of the below statuses. (Learn more about locked and unlocked bills here)
“Unlocked”: bill data that Bayou has collected for a customer and that the company has chosen to receive
“Locked”: bill data that Bayou has collected for a customer but that the company has not yet chosen to receive
“Unparsed”: Bills that have been fetched from the customer’s utility portal but not yet parsed
“Not supported”: bills uploaded from a utility or in a format that aren’t yet support
utility_data_velocity: How quickly to expect data will be available for a given customer or utility bill object, used in both webhooks outlined below. The valid options are:
Instant
2 hours
24 hours
48 hours
New webhooks:
customer_has_filled_credentials: This webhook is sent when a customer successfully shares their utility credentials. The webhook contains the customer’s unique identifier(s), the customer’s utility and the current data velocity for that utility. Sample webhook JSON:
{ "event": "customer_has_filled_credentials", "customer_id": 12345, "customer_external_id": "MSCOTT123", "utility": "con_edison", "utility_data_velocity": "24 hours" "has_filled_credentials": true, "has_filled_credentials_on": "2022-07-01T14:05:00Z" }
new_bill_status_unparsed: When bill data is not available instantly this webhook is sent to allow developers to determine bill status. The webhook contains the customer’s unique identifier(s), the customer’s utility and the expected data velocity for the bill object. Sample webhook JSON:
{ "event": "new_unparsed_bill", "external_id": "BILL_123", "id": 12345, "status": "unparsed", "customer_id": 12345, "customer_external_id": "MSCOTT123", "utility": "con_edison", "utility_data_velocity": "24 hours", "file_url": "https://private.bayou.energy/bills/12345.pdf?X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Credential=XYZ&X-Amz-Date=20220701T000000Z&X-Amz-Expires=1800&X-Amz-Signature=ABCEF0123456&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host" }