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Consumers Energy

Description: Consumers Energy is an electric and gas utility in Michigan.

Website: https://greenbutton.consumersenergy.com/

Utility ID: CONSUMERSENERGY (this is the utility identifier you use in our API)

Third Party Registration

In order for you to request data from Consumers Energy customers, you must register with Consumers Energy as a third party company.

As part of their Green Button Connect My Data (GBCMD) program, Consumers Energy is using UtilityAPI's EE/DER Engagement Platform to allow third-party companies to request data access from Consumers Energy customers. Authorizations use the Green Button OAuth process, which means that third-parties have to be pre-registered with Consumers Energy so they can be assigned a client_id.

Data Access

After registering with Consumers Energy as a third party, to request authorizations from Consumers Energy customers and test accounts, you can use any of these methods:

• Option 1: When you Request Data from your dashboard, select "Consumers Energy" in the utility dropdown.
• Option 2: Using your default Template, set the Utility ID to CONSUMERSENERGY in the url parameter or when you create a Form.
• Option 3: The Green Button OAuth process using the Consumers Energy OAuth Authorize Endpoint found in your OAuth settings.

Once a customer has authorized, you will see an Authorization appear on your dashboard and via both our JSON API and Green Button API.

Sandbox Mode

When your first register as a third party, your registration status is set to Sandbox mode. This means you can only request data from test accounts, so you can try it out or start building an integration, but real customers won't be able to authorize data sharing with you yet. Consumers Energy will review your registration, then you'll get an email letting you know that you can now switch your status to Live mode in your settings.

Authentication Options

During the OAuth authorization flow, we by default try to authenticate Consumers Energy customers via "Single Sign-On" (SSO). However, since third parties may not have a real customer account when they start, we also offer a "test account" option. Third parties can pre-select which option (SSO or test) they want their OAuth authorize request to default to by their preferred authentication choice to the scope string. In general, you'll probably only find this useful for automated testing with test accounts, since the default (SSO) is what you probably want to use for real Consumers Energy customers.

Scope parameter format:
auth-{type}[-{value}]

Full scope string example with authentication option (percent encoded):
scope=FB%3D4_16_51%3BAdditionalScope%3Dauth-test-test_commercial

Test Credentials

Since the Consumers Energy OAuth authorization flow uses their SSO system by default, that means you can't use UtilityAPI's default test usernames to manually simulate a test scenario. Instead, below we have created a special test account input page you can simulate authenticating as an Consumers Energy user under various test scenarios.

When you use these test accounts, you won't get redirected to Consumers Energy's SSO system, but instead be automatically authenticated as a test account and go straight to the OAuth authorization page.

Try one with your Consumers Energy data share link
(you aren't logged into an account that has a registered Consumers Energy client)

Test Accounts

Demo Third Party

To demonstrate how you can integrate the GBC OAuth authorization process into your apps and websites, we offer a demo third party website that can be configured with any GBC client, so long as it has a specific redirect_uri added. We have also created public, sandbox-only GBC clients that you can try out (see table below).