Financially account for your energy consumption and/or production between billing cycles.

PVOutput aggregates and stores data on solar photovoltaic output and energy consumption. Feed in and consumption tariffs can be entered in PV Output so that it calculates charges or credits from your electricity provider inclusive of standing charges. As electricity providers billing cycle is often quarterly, it is useful to know at any point in time what your upcoming bill will contain. If you use accounting software this credit or debit amount can be entered as an asset or a liability.

This application generates a QIF file based on your electricity charges from PVOutput via their API which can be imported into your favourite accounting package. Developed and tested with GNUCash.

Also provided is a basic Ruby wrapper around the PVOutput API.

For more information see my blog post on the subject here.

Usage

Edit config file pvoutput_qif.yml or pass configuration at the command line. Command line options override options in the config file.

      pvoutput_qif.rb

      Usage: pvoutput_qif.rb [--sysid=SYSID] [--apikey=APIKEY] [--datefrom=DATEFROM] [--dateto=DATETO] [--assetacct=ASSETACCT] [--liabilityacct=LIABILITYACCT] [--expenseacct=EXPENSEACCT] [--outputfile=QIFFILEPATH] [--configfilepath=CONFIGFILEPATH]

      Options:
        --help                             Show this screen.
        [--sysid=SYSID]                    PVOutput system ID.
        [--apikey=APIKEY]                  PVOutput API authentication key.
        [--datefrom=DATEFROM]              date from <ddmmyyyy>.
        [--dateto=DATETO]                  date to <ddmmyyyy>.
        [--assetacct=ASSETACCT]            QIF asset account name.
        [--liabilityacct=LIABILITYACCT]    QIF liability account name.
        [--expenseacct=EXPENSEACCT]        QIF expense account name.
        [--outputfile=QIFFILEPATH]         Path to generate QIF file.
        [--configfilepath=CONFIGFILEPATH]  Path to optional config file [default: pvoutput_qif.yml]

Unit Tests

Some MiniTest unit tests can be found in the test directory.

Tests can be run using:

rake test

or with Guard:

bundle exec guard

Debugging

If you run into issues calling the PVOutput API, enable Rest Client logging run as follows:

RESTCLIENT_LOG=stdout pvoutput_qif.rb

this will show the exact http call made to the API.

To Do

• test coverage
• package into a gem
• utilise qif gem rather than source
• refactor

Future Development

Open an issue to request enhancements.

Pull requests welcome.

License

MIT. Use and abuse. No comeback.