Actual Prices

The base url of the Smart Charging API is https://api.voluespark.com/smart/v1.

Fetch actual spot prices

Actual spot prices can be retrieved by making a call to /prices/actual/{priceArea}, where priceArea is one of the five price areas in Norway (NO1, ..., NO5).

curl -X 'GET' \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <access_token>" \
  -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  'https://api.voluespark.com/smart/v1/prices/actual/NO1'

The response of this query will be a list of the current price for each individual hour in the day.

{
  "priceArea": "NO1",
  "priceUnits": {
    "currency": "EUR",
    "vat": {
      "rate": 1,
      "hasVAT": false
    },
    "energyUnit": "kWh"
  },
  "prices": {
    "2023-03-29T22:00:00+00:00": 0.08971,
    "2023-03-29T23:00:00+00:00": 0.08489,
    "2023-03-30T00:00:00+00:00": 0.08333,
    ...,
    "2023-03-31T21:00:00+00:00": 0.08318
  }
}

Fetch advice about spot prices

The API can give you the optimal charging interval given certain parameters, which can be retrieved making a call to /prices/actual/{priceArea}/advice The result from this type of query serves as an opinionated advice on when to start charging, and when to avoid.

As of right now, the algorithm takes advantage of both actual prices and forecast prices to generate charging advice, but additional variables will be taken into account in future iterations.

To make an API call simply run the following code (substitute parameters with your own values):

curl -X 'POST' \
  'https://api.voluespark.com/smart/v1/prices/actual/NO1/advice' \
  -H 'Accept: application/json' \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Authorization: Bearer <access_token>' \
  -d '{
  "priceUnitsParameters": {
    "currency": "NOK",
    "energyUnit": "kWh",
    "vatRate": 1.25
  },
  "chargingSessionParameters": {
    "powerInKiloWatts": 3.6,
    "duration": "06:00:00"
  },
  "startFrom": "2023-03-30T11:25:58.731Z"
}'

The result of this query will be a list of advices with total cost of the whole window, average price for the charging windows, as well as a describing how we categorized (type) the window. Advice will be given for the whole actual price-window (the next day or two), starting from the time specified in the startFrom parameter.

{
  "advice": [
    {
      "cost": 25.7748632505,
      "averagePrice": 1.1932807060416666,
      "from": "2023-03-30T11:00:00+00:00",
      "to": "2023-03-30T16:00:00+00:00",
      "type": "Best"
    },
    {
      "cost": 35.741399234,
      "averagePrice": 1.4232129275,
      "from": "2023-03-30T05:00:00+00:00",
      "to": "2023-03-30T06:00:00+00:00",
      "type": "Avoid"
    },
    ...
  ],
  "spotPrices": [
    {
      "time": "2023-03-30T11:00:00+00:00",
      "price": 1.14441452125
    },
    ...
  ],
  "priceArea": "NO1",
  "priceUnits": {
    "currency": "NOK",
    "vat": {
      "rate": 1.25,
      "hasVAT": true
    },
    "energyUnit": "kWh"
  },
  "chargingSession": {
    "powerInKiloWatts": 3.6,
    "duration": "06:00:00"
  }
}

Examples

Below are examples on how the data might be visualized. Here we use spotPrices to generate the bars, and colorize the bars depending on if they fall within a certain advice-window.

These examples can also be viewed in Storybook.

Spot prices advice graph

Now

Avoid

Spot price "charge right now" coin

24 kr

16:48 - 20:48

inkl. MVA