Hydra

-## TL;DR No words, just gimme action!: WEBSITE <-- click here

What it looks like

Hydro Quebec has installed network-connected meters and provides on its website a log of the records.
As a data-lover, chart fanatic engineer, although excited for the availability of such data, I would like to see more elaborated, easy-to-read, exciting data visualization.

I don't own this data, I have made my best effort to determin the legality of this project but ultimately I haven't been able to find more. Therefore the following remains what I just said: a fun project. Use it as such.

How did I make it work

I am programmatically querying hydroquebec's website and using the JSON their calls return. They don't offer an API (no surprise there) so the stability of such project is a bit brittle. To avoid server-side redirects I have decided to let NODE make the following request to the original site. This could perhaps be avoided with a frame or by cancelling the redirect but I decided for this easy (perhaps temporary) solution. As such HydroQuebec credentials will need to be passed over the wire which does not excite me a lot. At this point everything is running locally so I am not too concerned, but in the near future I may need to implement SSL-encryption to protect them. I submitted the project to github pages which is protected by SSL encryption. Heroku (which will make the requests to HydroQuebec's site) is also protected by SSL so there should be no room for MITM attacks.

What I'd like to see done

• HydroQuebec doesn't seem to have in place triggers that notify users of outages in area of interest. Perhaps this could be offered with the assistante of Twilio.
• Triggers when consumption is higher than defined threshold.
• Next bill prediction based on whether forecast and previous consumption (this is a cool one!).

Electricity cost calculation

I followed this document. Calculation is not perfect, based on the limited data I have available there is still a ~$5 offset with official value. Also HydroQuebec calculates the cost on average per month (their reps told me they are moving towards a 'per day' calculation but they are not there yet.). Hydra is.

Documentation

Technology used

Client

• Typescript
• REACT + Router
• Webpack (module bundler)
• ChartJS v2

Server (repository)

• MEAN stack (almost, no A)
  NodeJs + Express + MongoDB

Authenticating

To login make a POST request to:
https://www.hydroquebec.com/portail/web/clientele/authentification?p_auth=EbW90P8A&p_p_id=58&p_p_lifecycle=1&p_p_state=maximized&_58_struts_action=/login/login&_58_action=login

with body:

{
   login: username
  _58_password: password  
}

Logging in returns a bunch of cookies but only the two with key JSESSIONID matter. Attach those cookies to any subsequent request.

Retrieving Data

After having logged-in we have the cookies necessary to get the data. Before making the actual request to retrieve the data we need to do a GET request at the page:
https://www.hydroquebec.com/portail/fr/group/clientele/portrait-de-consommation

Set header content-type to "application/x-www-form-urlencoded" and on success (TODO: define what success looks like) make one the following request.

To get a summary of your data make GET request to:
https://www.hydroquebec.com/portail/fr/group/clientele/portrait-de-consommation?p_p_id=portraitConsommation_WAR_lswrb_INSTANCE_G4WcPdIy6LKl&p_p_lifecycle=2&p_p_resource_id=resourceObtenirDonneesPeriodesConsommation

• All the params in the URL are mandatory
• A JSON object is expected as return

To get details of your data make a GET request to
https://www.hydroquebec.com/portail/fr/group/clientele/portrait-de-consommation?p_p_id=portraitConsommation_WAR_lswrb_INSTANCE_G4WcPdIy6LKl&p_p_lifecycle=2&p_p_resource_id=resourceObtenirDonneesQuotidiennesConsommation&dateDebutPeriode=yyyy-mm-dd&dateFinPeriode=yyyy-mm-dd

• dateDebutPeriode and dateFinPeriode work as expected
• All the params in the URL are mandatory
• A JSON object is expected as return

Logging out

To logout make GET request to:
https://www.hydroquebec.com/portail/fr/c/portal/logout

Experimental

To further test
http://poweroutages.hydroquebec.com/pannes/donnees/v3_0/bismarkers{yyyymmddhhmmss}.json

• Replace {yyyymmddhhmmss} with the time of the report
• The JSON data structure returned is obfuscated. An array of pannes contains the outages

Example of an outage

[
    2, 
    "2016-12-17 13:00:21", 
    "2017-01-31 00:15:00",
    "P", 
    "[-61.64773372602691, 47.56419005411159]", 
    "A", 
    "5",
    "58",
    "2510",
     ""
]

Outage JSON item example
0. number of people affected

1. outage start date
2. outage end date
3. type (e.g.p if is outage)
4. coordinates
5. status 6: ??
6. cause
7. municipalityID
8. idMessage

Cause code
11:"Cause: Equipment failure"
12:"Cause: Equipment failure"
13:"Cause: Equipment failure"
14:"Cause: Equipment failure"
15:"Cause: Equipment failure"
21:"Cause: Weather"
22:"Cause: Weather"
24:"Cause: Weather"
25:"Cause: Weather"
26:"Cause: Weather"
31:"Cause: Accident or incident"
32:"Cause: Accident or incident"
33:"Cause: Accident or incident"
34:"Cause: Accident or incident"
41:"Cause: Accident or incident"
42:"Cause: Accident or incident"
43:"Cause: Accident or incident"
44:"Cause: Accident or incident"
51:"Cause: Damages due to vegetation"
52:"Cause: Damages due to an animal"
53:"Cause: Damages due to an animal"
54:"Cause: Accident or incident"
55:"Cause: Accident or incident"
56:"Cause: Accident or incident"
57:"Cause: Accident or incident"
58:"Cause: Equipment failure"
70:"Cause: Equipment failure"
72:"Cause: Equipment failure"
73:"Cause: Equipment failure"
74:"Cause: Equipment failure"
79:"Cause: Equipment failure"
defaut:"Cause: Equipment failure"

Status code

A: "Status: Work assigned"
L: "Status: Crew at work"
R: "Status: Crew on its way"
default: ""