SolarAnywhere® data is now available in a streamlined, real-time synchronous API as a beta! The synchronous API points support fast, reliable data retrieval without compromising data quality. Read more below.

Why is this important for the renewable energy industry?

Renewable energy asset management is becoming increasingly digital with the adoption of novel monitoring technologies. In addition, systemic underperformance of solar plants has increased the focus on performance benchmarking and operational gap closure amongst asset managers. However, missing data, inadequate coverage, poor quality data, or high latency data feeds are significant barriers to operations.

SolarAnywhere real-time irradiance and weather data, through a synchronous API, enables fast identification of underperformance and strengthens the resiliency of data pipelines required for modern-day asset management.

The real-time API is well-suited for use cases such as:

Real-time solar performance monitoring

• Benchmarking your global solar assets against total solar potential to identify areas of improvement
• Calculating key solar monitoring metrics for reports, like performance ratio (PR)
• Identifying true underperformance vs natural deviations

SCADA integration and dashboarding

• Filling missing or faulty instrument data to ensure continuous monitoring and analytics
• Integrating with modern monitoring systems
• Providing highly reliable data with frequent, sub-hourly updates

Try the Synchronous API

Access to the synchronous API beta is available with a SystemCheck® license and can be enabled at any time. Contact support@solaranywhere.com to trial the new API today.

If you’re a license manager (learn more about SolarAnywhere user roles here) on your SolarAnywhere account, you can create an API client by navigating to the License page after signing in and following these instructions:

1. Scroll down to the section marked “API Client Management”
2. Select “Synchronous API (Beta)” and wait for the pop-up
   (Note: the “Asynchronous API” button creates API keys for all licensed SolarAnywhere data products)
3. Type a name into the text box (the name doesn’t do anything; it’s just a useful identifier)
4. Click “Confirm” to create your API key
5. Securely store the API key given to you in the pop-up
   (Note: we do not store your API key, so we cannot regenerate it on your behalf)

You’ll need to submit a valid Synchronous API key with every request. The key should be included as a request header in the following format:

‘X-Api-Key’: “[64-character API key]”

Examples using the API key in Postman and the full Synchronous API documentation are available below:

API Documentation

Other Technical Details

How is the SolarAnywhere Synchronous API different?

The SolarAnywhere synchronous API streamlines the automation and retrieval of irradiance and weather data by using a serverless cloud architecture. In other words, requests are distributed amongst the vast pool of computational resources instead of a limited number of servers. This architecture, coupled with a streamlined design, leads to notable performance benefits:

• Optimized near-term (now through trailing 48hrs) data retrieval and high frequency calls
• Strong load scaling
• Lower spread of API latency for reliable performance

This API also improves user experience through:

• Streamlined data delivery payloads for more efficient processing
• JSON data delivery for easy parsing
• Simplified parameter definitions

Why Beta?

The synchronous API will be in beta for several months so that we can gather feedback and listen to customers. While in a beta-state, the API is subject to and it is not recommended for production environments. Examples of changes may be naming of fields or organization of endpoints. Once the API exits the beta stage, parameters will not change and will be versioned and stable for production.

SolarAnywhere will collect feedback to improve the synchronous API to better serve customers in the future.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous: When to Use Which?

In a synchronous API, a client makes a request to the server and waits for a response before continuing while in an asynchronous API, information must be fetched in a separate request. Because responses are generally fast, synchronous APIs are most effective when operational data needs to be exchanged at high frequency and reliability. On the other hand, asynchronous APIs are excellent for high volumes of data delivery or computationally intensive applications where processing times may vary.

The best API to use – synchronous or asynchronous – depends highly on the end use case. For high frequency, random call patterns (common in user-interfaces) the synchronous API has clear benefits. However, for data intensive applications that periodically update (common in monthly reporting), the asynchronous API might be better. The synchronous API also covers select data types (for now) while the asynchronous API supports the full suite of SolarAnywhere data services.

If you would like guidance on implementing SolarAnywhere data at scale, please contact our technical support team or email support@solaranywhere.com.

Data Quality & Sources

The synchronous API end points support fast, reliable data retrieval without compromising data quality. As seen in the table below, the data sources behind each API are held to the same data quality standards.

See our API Documentation for the most up to date specifications.

Performance, Scalability and Throttling

The synchronous API is designed for scalability and low latency. This means users can expect a reliable response within seconds. The results of our scalability testing show that over 99% of calls are completed in less than 2000 ms (2 seconds).¹ To keep performance reliable for all users, the synchronous API does have a default throttling limit (updated in Table 1). Contact support@solaranywhere.com if you need adjustments to this throttling limit.

¹ Actual API performance varies. Results shown here represent target performance only, not guaranteed performance for users.