How to get your Alectra Utilities usage data with Green Button

If you manage buildings, run an energy analysis, or build software that needs electricity data from customers served by Alectra Utilities, Green Button is the route the utility provides. It gives you the same interval and billing data the utility bills from, in a standard file format, either as a one-time download or as an ongoing authorized feed. The trouble is that most people searching for the Alectra Green Button portal are trying to figure out three things at once: where it is, what it hands back, and what to do with the file once they have it.

This guide answers those three questions using what Alectra publishes on its own Green Button page, plus the provincial rules that put Green Button in place. It then covers the part the utility page does not: turning the XML you receive into clean, standardized data that lands in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, RETScreen, Power BI, or your own system. Nothing here is a description of how Alectra treats any particular vendor; it is a walkthrough of the customer-facing process as the utility describes it.

Where the Alectra Green Button portal is

Alectra runs Green Button through a dedicated Green Button Portal rather than inside the main My Alectra account pages. The utility's page links to the portal at alectrautilitiesgbportal.savagedata.com, and both Green Button functions, Download My Data and Connect My Data, are reached from there. If you have been hunting through the regular billing account for a Green Button menu, that is why you have not found it.

Because the portal is separate, it helps to know in advance which function you need. Alectra's page describes two: a download of your own data in an industry-standard XML format, and an authorized sharing method that lets third parties receive the data directly. The difference between Download My Data and Connect My Data matters more than it looks, and choosing wrong costs weeks.

What Alectra says each option provides

Download My Data

Alectra describes Download My Data as access to your energy data in an industry-standard XML format through its Green Button Portal. The utility's own wording is that you can use this data with energy management applications and products to examine your historical and present electricity usage. In practice that means you log in to the portal, choose what to export, and receive a Green Button XML file you can load into an application that understands the format. The Alectra Green Button page lists the categories the portal covers: electricity usage, billing information, and utility account information.

Connect My Data

Connect My Data is the authorized-sharing method. Alectra's page frames it from the developer side, saying that third-party developers can quickly create and offer products, services, and applications that help Alectra Utilities customers find new ways to manage and conserve energy. From the customer side, the portal lets you authorize a third party by selecting which energy data and which time periods to share, and Alectra states that you can revoke the authorization at any time. That revocation point is worth remembering: the customer, not the third party, controls how long the feed lasts.

For most business uses, Connect My Data is the option to plan around. A one-time download is fine for a baseline study. An ongoing analytics dashboard, a monthly benchmarking submission, or a portfolio that adds accounts over time needs the authorized feed, otherwise someone is logging into the portal and exporting files every month. The OAuth authorization behind Connect My Data is what makes that ongoing access token-based rather than password-based.

Why Alectra offers this at all

Alectra's page notes that the province mandated Green Button with an announcement on November 1, 2021. The rule behind it is Ontario Regulation 633/21 under the Electricity Act, which the Ontario Energy Board summarizes as requiring rate-regulated electricity and natural gas utilities to provide customers with access to Green Button by November 1, 2023. The Ontario government's own page describes the result as access to natural gas and hourly electricity usage data in a standardized digital format, with the option to authorize automatic transfer to an application of your choice.

The Green Button Alliance, which runs the certification program for the standard, announced on November 2, 2023 that 55 Ontario-based utility platforms had been certified, covering nearly 5.4 million residential and business electricity customers and over 3.5 million natural gas customers. Alectra is one of the largest of those distributors, which is why so many searches for Green Button in Ontario are Alectra searches. If you want the regulatory detail, read our plain-language explainer on O. Reg. 633/21.

Step by step: getting your Alectra data

Decide whether you need a one-time file (Download My Data) or an ongoing authorized feed (Connect My Data). If more than one person will ever need the data again, plan for the feed.
Go to Alectra's Green Button Portal linked from the utility's Green Button page. Both functions are accessed there rather than through the regular billing account.
For Download My Data, select the data categories the portal offers (usage, billing, account) and the period you want, then save the XML file the portal generates.
For Connect My Data, the authorization is a selection of which energy data and which time periods to share with a named third party. Confirm the scope, and note that Alectra states you can revoke it at any time.
Keep a record of what was authorized and when. When you later hand the data to a consultant, a software vendor, or an auditor, that record is the answer to the question of where the data came from.

If you are collecting data for many accounts, the portal steps above happen once per account, and each account holder has to make the authorization themselves. Our guide on onboarding utility accounts at scale covers how to organize that consent process so it does not stall a project.

What the XML file actually contains

Green Button files are XML documents based on the Energy Services Provider Interface standard, which the Green Button Alliance notes was released by the North American Energy Standards Board in the fall of 2011. The same source says the interval granularity can be 5-minute, hourly, daily, or monthly depending on what the energy provider decides. For Ontario electricity distributors the provincial description is hourly usage data, which matches the smart-meter reads behind time-of-use billing.

Opening a Green Button file in a spreadsheet is not a productive afternoon. Readings are nested inside interval blocks with start times expressed as epoch seconds and values expressed in scaled units. Our walkthrough of the Green Button data format explains the structure. The short version: you need a parser, and once you have one, every certified utility's file parses the same way.

From Alectra XML to a usable dataset

This is where EZGB (Easy Green Button Connector) fits. EZGB collects consumption and billing data from utilities through authorized utility connections, Green Button (both Download My Data and Connect My Data), and PDF bill digitization for the accounts or commodities that have no digital feed. It parses the XML, checks it for gaps and duplicates, converts it into consistent units and clean fields, and delivers it by API, CSV, or SFTP into ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, RETScreen, Power BI, a CRM, or whatever system you already run. EZGB is part of MartinAI, built by Screaming Power.

For an Alectra account, that means the customer completes the authorization on Alectra's portal once, and the ongoing data arrives in your system in the shape you asked for, without anyone re-exporting files. If you are weighing whether to build that pipeline yourself or use a connector, book a walkthrough at ezgb.ca and bring a sample account; the fastest way to judge the fit is to see your own data come through.

Common problems and how to avoid them

Looking for Green Button inside the regular billing account instead of the separate Green Button Portal that Alectra's page links to.
Choosing Download My Data for a use case that needs fresh data every month, then discovering the file is already stale by the time the report is due.
Authorizing less history than the analysis needs. Select the time period deliberately when you set up sharing.
Forgetting that the customer can revoke the authorization at any time. Build a process to notice and re-request access rather than silently losing data.
Treating the XML as if it were a CSV. Use a parser, or use a service that already has one.

Alectra's Green Button is one of the better-documented implementations in Ontario, and for a large share of the province's customers it is the direct route to real interval data. Our broader guide to getting utility data from Ontario utilities covers what happens when your portfolio spans several distributors.

Frequently asked questions

Is Alectra's Green Button portal the same as My Alectra?

No. Alectra's Green Button page links to a dedicated Green Button Portal at a separate address, and both Download My Data and Connect My Data are reached through that portal rather than through the regular account pages.

What data does Alectra provide through Green Button?

Alectra's page lists electricity usage, billing information, and utility account information, covering historical and present consumption. The file format is industry-standard Green Button XML.

Can I stop sharing my Alectra data with a third party?

Yes. Alectra states that a customer who has authorized a third party through Connect My Data can revoke the authorization at any time. The OEB's guidance adds that you can also revoke an authorization by contacting your utility.

Does Alectra have to offer Green Button?

Yes. The Ontario Energy Board states that rate-regulated electricity and natural gas utilities were required to provide customers with access to Green Button by November 1, 2023, under Ontario Regulation 633/21.

Can EZGB get my Alectra data for me?

EZGB works with the Green Button functions Alectra provides to its customers, plus PDF bill digitization where a digital feed is not available. The account holder authorizes access through Alectra's own portal; EZGB then standardizes the data and delivers it by API, CSV, or SFTP. EZGB does not claim any special status with Alectra or any other utility.

Sources

Source: alectrautilities.com