How to get your Toronto Hydro usage data with Green Button

Toronto Hydro serves the largest city in the country, so a lot of the people who need Ontario electricity data need Toronto Hydro data specifically: property managers benchmarking a downtown portfolio, consultants modelling a retrofit, software teams onboarding customers in the city. Toronto Hydro describes Green Button on its site as a simple, secure way to download and share your electricity usage data. This guide walks through what that means in practice, using the utility's own Green Button page, its Connect My Data customer guide, and its third-party terms.

The aim is to get you from "I need this building's usage" to a clean dataset in your own tools, without guessing at any step. Everything about the Toronto Hydro process below comes from the utility's published material. The last part covers what the utility does not do for you: parsing the file, checking it, and delivering it where it needs to go.

The two things Toronto Hydro's Green Button does

Download My Data

Toronto Hydro's Green Button page says Download My Data lets you download your data to gain better insight into your electricity use and patterns, and specifies that the data includes consumption details, billing information and customer information. To use it you log in to the self-serve portal, or register for an online account if you do not have one. The output is a Green Button XML file, the standard format that the Green Button Alliance describes as based on the Energy Services Provider Interface standard released by the North American Energy Standards Board in 2011.

Connect My Data

Connect My Data is the sharing function. Toronto Hydro describes it as sharing data with pre-approved Green Button third-party companies for additional insight into your electricity usage, and the portal lets you manage and remove any third-party connections. One detail on the utility's page is easy to miss: Toronto Hydro says it is not able to provide a list of participating third-party companies, and customers are expected to select and authorize third-party companies of their choice. So the authorization starts with the company you want to work with, not with a directory on the utility site.

If you are unsure which of the two you need, the rule of thumb is simple. A study that needs one historical snapshot can use Download My Data. Anything ongoing, from monthly benchmarking to a live dashboard, should use Connect My Data so the data keeps arriving without a person exporting it. Our comparison of Connect My Data and Download My Data goes deeper on the trade-offs.

The Connect My Data authorization, step by step

Toronto Hydro publishes a Green Button Connect My Data customer guide (dated October 2024) that lays out the authorization flow. Condensed, the steps are:

You receive a link from the third party: by email, from the third party's mobile app, or from the third party's web page. The link takes you to Toronto Hydro's authentication page.
You authenticate one of two ways. Option A is signing in with your Toronto Hydro online account email and password. Option B, for customers without an online account, is "Connect with account information", where you provide account details instead.
On the Data Connection Authorization page, you verify the data types (Account, Billing, and Usage information) that you selected on the third party's website. The guide notes that if you want to change that selection, you cancel and are sent back to the third party's site to reselect.
You choose which account numbers to connect, either one by one or with the "Select all" button.
You read the third-party statement and the review section, with Toronto Hydro's privacy policy and terms and conditions opening in a separate tab, and tick the box accepting the terms.
You click Submit. An email confirmation goes to the address on the account. Clicking Cancel instead sends you back to the third party without submitting.

Afterwards, the guide says you can log in to your Toronto Hydro online account and go to "Green Button Connections" to view and revoke third-party authorizations. Customers without an online account profile are directed to call Customer Care at 416-542-8000, Monday to Friday, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The mechanism underneath all of this is the OAuth authorization flow the Green Button standard uses; our explainer on OAuth in Connect My Data describes why the third party never sees your password.

What third parties agree to

It helps to know what the receiving company has signed up for, because it tells you what protections travel with your data. Toronto Hydro's page says any company that wants to register as a Green Button application provider must submit an online application, complete a connectivity test, and comply with the utility's Third Party Terms and Conditions for Green Button Connect My Data. Those terms state that a customer may revoke an authorization independently at any time, at their sole discretion, and that the third party's entitlement to data is contingent on authorization by a Toronto Hydro customer.

The terms also describe the purpose the data is provided for, presenting opportunities to those customers of solutions that may optimize their energy usage, require third parties to carry commercial general liability and professional liability insurance, and extend confidentiality obligations to five years after the data is received. Toronto Hydro can terminate access for non-compliance, with three business days to remedy a default. None of that is something the customer has to manage, but it explains why the authorization page reads the way it does.

Why this exists: the Ontario rule

Toronto Hydro did not invent this process on its own. 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, and the province describes the data as natural gas and hourly electricity usage data in a standardized digital format. The Green Button Alliance reported on November 2, 2023 that 55 Ontario-based utility platforms had been certified, covering nearly 5.4 million electricity customers and over 3.5 million natural gas customers. The regulation itself is O. Reg. 633/21; we have a plain-language summary if you want the detail without the legal text.

What you have once the file arrives

Whether it comes as a download or through the authorized feed, Toronto Hydro's data arrives as Green Button XML. The file wraps interval readings and billing summaries in Atom entries, with timestamps in epoch seconds and values in scaled integer units. It is designed for software, not for reading. Our guide to the Green Button data format walks through the structure, and the practical takeaway is that you want a parser that has already handled the edge cases: missing intervals, duplicate entries after a meter exchange, and billing periods that do not line up with calendar months.

Getting it into your systems

EZGB (Easy Green Button Connector) is built for the step after the utility portal. It collects consumption and billing data from utilities through authorized utility connections, Green Button (Download My Data and Connect My Data), and PDF bill digitization for accounts that have no digital feed. It parses and validates the data, standardizes units and fields across utilities, and delivers it by API, CSV, or SFTP into ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager, RETScreen, Power BI, a CRM, or a custom application. EZGB is part of MartinAI, built by Screaming Power.

For a Toronto Hydro account, the customer still completes the authorization on Toronto Hydro's own pages, exactly as the customer guide describes. What changes is everything after that: the data keeps flowing into your reporting without a monthly export, and it looks the same as the data from every other utility in your portfolio. If you want to see that with one of your own accounts, book a walkthrough at ezgb.ca. For portfolios that span several distributors, start with our overview of getting utility data from Ontario utilities.

Frequently asked questions

Where do I find Green Button in my Toronto Hydro account?

Download My Data is done from the self-serve portal after you log in or register for an online account. Connect My Data authorizations are started from the third party's link, which takes you to Toronto Hydro's authentication page; existing connections are managed under "Green Button Connections" in your online account.

What data is included?

Toronto Hydro's page says the download includes consumption details, billing information and customer information. During a Connect My Data authorization you confirm which of the Account, Billing, and Usage information types the third party will receive.

Can I authorize a third party if I do not have an online account?

Yes. The customer guide describes Option B, "Connect with account information", for customers who are not registered for a Toronto Hydro online account. To later view or revoke connections without an online account, the guide directs you to call Customer Care.

How do I revoke access?

Log in to your Toronto Hydro online account and use "Green Button Connections" to view and revoke third-party authorizations. Toronto Hydro's third-party terms confirm that customers may revoke authorization independently at any time.

Does Toronto Hydro recommend specific Green Button companies?

No. The utility says it is not able to provide a list of participating third-party companies and that customers select and authorize companies of their choice. Any company receiving data has agreed to Toronto Hydro's third-party terms, but that is a registration requirement, not an endorsement.

Sources

Source: torontohydro.com