Add support for enumeration of Suppliers/Grid Operators to Catalogue API

[forsberg]

Use Case

We're building an energy optimization system with battery, EV charger, etc. In order for our algorithm to do the right thing, we need to know the tariffs for each individual facility.

Current Solution using Eltariff-API

The Eltariff-API seems to have all the information we need, but the question is how to map each individual customer facility to the right tariff.

According to the Sequence Diagram, the idea is to ask the customer for their MPID, ask the Catalogue API for the Grid Operator's API endpoint, then ask the Grid Operator's Endpoint for the Tariff ID for the MPID, then finally ask the Grid Operator's Endpoint for the Tariff information.

Problems

1. I don't think it's viable to ask the facility owner for their MPID in all cases. It's a very long number that needs to be entered by the user either manually (prone to errors) or by scanning a bar code on the meter (expensive app development).

2. We already see in Införa mer flexibilitet för API-registrering #19 (comment) that Grid Operators are only including the tariff information in their APIs, not the search API to find the connection between MPID and Tariff ID.

   It's unclear to me if this will change, and if the lookup will be behind some kind of authentication. Even more unclear how a third party could gain access to the information if it's behind authentication. I guess Three-Legged Auth might be one option, but this will again raise barriers and increase the amount of technical skill required to make use of the information.

Suggested Solution

As an alternative to the MPID lookup, make it easy to build UIs where the user can choose between different Grid Operators and their Tariffs, built on top of the information in the public information published by the various Grid Operators.

In order to enable this, add an endpoint to the catalogue endpoint which replies with a list of all registered SupplierEntry. This would allow us to enumerate all Grid Operators and their tariffs automatically, populating the list of tariffs and end user would choose from in our UI.

Internally we would then store a persistent persistent product ID in order to be able to lookup the tariff options for a specific facility. This of course makes #9 very important.

The information in this API is very useful - let's make it easy to use for many different use cases!

[larwa99]

Great that you've found the API useful for your needs! It is correct that the grid operators with live tariffs (Tekniska verken and Göteborg Energi) at this point only expose the endpoint with the public tariff information while we clarify the technical solution and legal aspects of the search endpoint. For example, we consider if there is a need to utilize similar customer approval procedures as for EU regulation 2023/1162.

The search endpoint is primarily needed to support a fully automated procedure, and we share your view that with a small effort from the customer you can accomplish the same thing - to connect a specific tariff to a customer. We have therefore agreed to make the tariff.product attribute stricter to ensure it can be used as a static reference and simplify tariff management for a customer. This change will be included in the next release of the specification and the live tariffs will be updated accordingly by then.