If you manage buildings in Ottawa, run an energy study for a client there, or write software that needs electricity data from Hydro Ottawa customers, Green Button is the route the utility provides. It hands over the same interval and billing data Hydro Ottawa bills from, in a standard XML file, either as a one-time download or as an ongoing authorized feed. Most people searching for Hydro Ottawa Green Button are trying to answer three questions at once: where it is, what it gives you, and what to do with the file.
This guide answers those questions using what Hydro Ottawa publishes on its own Green Button page and its usage pages for residential and business customers, plus the provincial rules behind the feature. It then covers the part the utility pages do not: turning the XML into clean data that lands in ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, Power BI or your own system. Nothing here describes how Hydro Ottawa treats any particular vendor; it is a walkthrough of the customer-facing process as the utility describes it.
Where Hydro Ottawa's Green Button lives
Hydro Ottawa puts usage data in two places. The first is MyAccount itself: the utility's track your usage page says residential customers can log in to view and download up to 24 months of hourly electricity usage, choosing Excel, PDF or Green Button (XML) formats. Its Green Button FAQ describes the path as logging in to MyAccount, going to usage, selecting a date range and downloading. The second is a dedicated Green Button portal, which the Green Button page links to and which accepts either MyAccount credentials or the 20-digit account number, total kWh consumption and bill due date from a recent bill.
Business customers get the same two routes. Hydro Ottawa's business usage page says business customers can view and download up to 24 months of electricity usage and demand data in MyAccount, at the meter's specific interval (5 or 15 minute), in Excel, PDF or Green Button XML, and points to a business Green Button page for the Green Button portal and Connect My Data. So a spreadsheet export and a Green Button export are both available from the same login; which one you want depends on what will consume it.
What Hydro Ottawa says each option provides
Download My Data
Hydro Ottawa describes Green Button as a province-wide standard for accessing and sharing energy usage and billing data in a machine-readable XML format. For Download My Data, its page says you can retrieve up to 24 months of electricity usage and billing data, including electricity consumption data from your smart meter and billing data such as payments, generation and distribution charges, demand charges and third-party charges. For history beyond 24 months, the page links to a meter data request form; the utility's data request page says those requests take staff time to research and are charged at an hourly rate listed on that page, billed in 15-minute increments with a one-hour minimum.
Connect My Data
Connect My Data is the authorized sharing route. Hydro Ottawa's page says you can give third-party apps and service providers secure access to your energy data, that you control who can access your data, how long they can access it and the type of data they can see, and that you can revoke or change access at any time through your account settings. Two details from the same page matter for planning: third-party authorization needs to begin in the third-party software or app, which then links to Hydro Ottawa for authentication, and personally identifiable information is transmitted separately from energy usage data.
For anything ongoing, plan around Connect My Data. A one-time file is fine for a baseline study; a dashboard, a monthly benchmarking submission or a portfolio that adds accounts over time needs the authorized feed, or someone is exporting files every month. Our comparison of Connect My Data versus Download My Data sets out the trade-offs, and the OAuth authorization behind Connect My Data explains why the feed is token-based rather than password-based.
Interval resolution and what is in the file
Hydro Ottawa is specific about resolution. Its Green Button page says the data uses the same intervals as captured by your smart meter, giving 15-minute, hourly and daily as examples, and its business page says business customers get data at the meter's interval of 5 or 15 minutes. For residential accounts the usage page describes hourly data. In practice that means a Hydro Ottawa Green Button file for a commercial account can be finer than the hourly data most Ontario distributors provide, which is useful for demand analysis and less useful if your downstream system expects hourly rows; aggregate deliberately.
| Account type (per Hydro Ottawa's pages) | Interval described | History | Formats offered in MyAccount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Residential | Hourly | Up to 24 months | Excel, PDF, Green Button XML |
| Business | Meter interval, 5 or 15 minute | Up to 24 months (usage and demand) | Excel, PDF, Green Button XML |
| Either, older than 24 months | As held by the utility | By meter data request, charged hourly | Per request |
The XML itself follows the Green Button standard. The Green Button Alliance describes the underlying ESPI standard, released by the North American Energy Standards Board in 2011, and notes that Connect My Data can deliver 5-minute, hourly, daily or monthly intervals depending on what the utility makes available. Readings are nested in interval blocks with start times as epoch seconds and values in scaled units, so a spreadsheet is not the right tool; our walkthrough of the Green Button data format explains the structure and what to parse.
Why Hydro Ottawa offers this
Green Button in Ontario is a regulatory requirement, not a courtesy. 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 O. Reg. 633/21, and the province describes the result as access to hourly electricity usage data in a standardized format with the option to authorize automatic transfer to an application. The Green Button Alliance announced on November 2, 2023 that 55 Ontario utility platforms had been certified. Hydro Ottawa's third-party registration page says providers must complete onboarding and test and certify through the Green Button Alliance before they can request customer authorizations.
Step by step: getting your Hydro Ottawa 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.
- For a quick look or a spreadsheet, log in to MyAccount, open usage, choose a date range and download in Excel or Green Button XML.
- For Download My Data through the Green Button portal, sign in with MyAccount credentials or with the account number, total kWh and bill due date from a recent bill, then choose the period (up to 24 months) and save the XML.
- For Connect My Data, start in the third party's software; it will send you to Hydro Ottawa to authenticate and confirm what data is shared and for how long. Note that Hydro Ottawa's pages say only the verified account holder, or someone they have given written authorization to, can request or share usage data.
- For history older than 24 months, submit the meter data request form and expect the hourly research charge described on Hydro Ottawa's data request page.
- Keep a record of what was authorized and when.
If you are collecting data for many accounts, each account holder authorizes separately. Our guide on onboarding utility accounts at scale covers how to organize that consent process so it does not stall a project, and the broader guide to getting utility data from Ontario utilities covers portfolios that span Hydro Ottawa and neighbouring distributors such as Hydro One.
Common problems and how to avoid them
- Choosing Download My Data for a use case that needs fresh data every month, then discovering the file is stale by the time the report is due.
- Assuming hourly rows. Business accounts can come at 5 or 15 minute resolution; aggregate to hourly if that is what your model expects, and keep the raw data.
- Expecting more than 24 months. Plan a one-time meter data request for the baseline, then let the feed accumulate history going forward.
- Forgetting that the customer can revoke or change access at any time through account settings. Build a process to notice a stopped feed and re-request access.
Hydro Ottawa's implementation is one of the more clearly documented in Ontario, with explicit statements about interval resolution and history. For comparison, our guide to Alectra's Green Button shows a utility that runs the feature through a separate portal only.
Frequently asked questions
Where is Green Button in Hydro Ottawa MyAccount?
Hydro Ottawa's FAQ says to log in to MyAccount, go to usage, select a date range and download, with Green Button XML offered alongside Excel and PDF. There is also a separate Green Button portal linked from the utility's Green Button page that accepts MyAccount credentials or bill details.
How much history does Hydro Ottawa Green Button provide?
Up to 24 months of electricity usage and billing data, according to Hydro Ottawa's Green Button page. Older data is available by meter data request, which the utility charges for at the hourly rate listed on its data request page.
Is Hydro Ottawa interval data hourly or 15 minute?
Hydro Ottawa's pages say the data comes at the interval captured by the smart meter: hourly for residential accounts and 5 or 15 minute for business accounts, with usage and demand data available for business.
Can EZGB get my Hydro Ottawa data for me?
EZGB works with the Green Button functions Hydro Ottawa provides to its customers, plus PDF bill digitization where a digital feed is not available. The account holder authorizes access through Hydro Ottawa's own process; EZGB then standardizes the data and delivers it by API, CSV or SFTP. EZGB does not claim any special status with Hydro Ottawa or any other utility.
How EZGB fits
EZGB collects consumption and billing data from Hydro Ottawa and other Ontario utilities through authorized utility connections and Green Button (Download My Data and Connect My Data), with BillScan for accounts or commodities that have no digital feed, such as the gas and water bills for the same buildings. Automated bill and meter data retrieval keeps collecting on a schedule, typically daily; the XML is parsed, checked for gaps and duplicates, aggregated to the interval you need, and delivered by REST API, SFTP, JSON or CSV into Portfolio Manager, Power BI or your own database. How EZGB works describes the pipeline, and EZGB pricing lists the plans.
For a Hydro Ottawa account, that means the customer completes the authorization once and the ongoing data arrives in your system in the shape you asked for, without anyone re-exporting files. If you are deciding whether to build that pipeline yourself or use a connector, bring a sample Hydro Ottawa account to a demo and watch it come through end to end. Request a demo on the pricing page.
Sources
- Green Button (Hydro Ottawa)
- Track your usage, residential (Hydro Ottawa)
- Track your usage, business (Hydro Ottawa)
- Business Green Button (Hydro Ottawa)
- Green Button and third-party registration (Hydro Ottawa)
- Data request (Hydro Ottawa)
- Green Button FAQs (Hydro Ottawa)
- Green Button (Ontario Energy Board)
- Lower your energy bills with Green Button (Government of Ontario)
- Green Button Alliance: 55 Ontario utility platforms certified
- Green Button standards (Green Button Alliance)
Source: hydroottawa.com