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Table of Contents

  1. What Carbon Aware SDK Provide You?

    • CLI
    • WebAPI
    • SDK
    • Use cases
  2. How to Use Carbon Aware SDK

    2.1 Pre-requisites

    • Data sources
    • System requirement

    2.2 CLI

    • Setup
    • Usage

    2.3 WebAPI

    • Setup
      • Deploying with container
      • Deploying with Kubernetes
    • Usage
      • Calling WebAPI using CLI
      • Calling WebAPI using client libraries

    2.4 Configurations

1. What Carbon Aware SDK Provide You?

Carbon Aware SDK helps you reduce the carbon footprint of your application by analyzing the times and locations where it is most carbon-efficient. There are several ways to consume CarbonAware data for your use case. Each approach surfaces the same data for the same call (e.g. the CLI should not give you different data than the WebAPI for the same query). We provide a number of different endpoints to provide the most flexibility to integrate to your environment:

  • CLI
    You can run the application using the CLI and refer to more documentation here.

  • WebAPI
    You can build a container containing the WebAPI and connect via REST requests and refer to more documentation here.

  • SDK
    You can reference the Carbon Aware C# Library in your projects and make use of its functionalities and features.

Image 2Image 1
CLIWebAPI

Use cases

CarbonAwareSDK has been embraced by the industry leaders across the globe. Here we show some examples of the use case.

2. How to use Carbon Aware SDK?

2.1 Pre-requisites

Data sources

We support various data sources of carbon aware data:

There are a few constraints to select data sources to some functions of CarbonAwareSDK. You can also visit the Selecting a Data Source guide for further information on data sources options, and Data Sources for detailed architecture decisions around integrating different data providers into the carbon aware SDK.

System requirement

2.2 CLI

Set up

The CLI can either be run locally with .NET or in a container, e.g. using VSCode Remote Containers (Dev Container). To run locally:

  1. Clone CarbonAwareSDK to your environment: git clone https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/carbon-aware-sdk.git

  2. Change directory to: cd carbon-aware-sdk/src/CarbonAware.CLI/src

  3. If you have a WattTime account registered (or other data source) - you will need to configure the application to use them. By default the SDK will use a pre-generated JSON file with random data. This random data is meant to make it easier to get started with the SDK and doesn't represent actual Carbon data. To configure the application, you will need to set up specific environment variables or modify appsettings.json inside of src/CarbonAware.WebApi/src directory. Detailed information on configuration can be found in the overview.md file.

    Otherwise, you can follow an example configuration below (export these environment variables in the Terminal):

    export DataSources__EmissionsDataSource="WattTime"
    export DataSources__ForecastDataSource="WattTime"
    export DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Type="WattTime"
    export DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__username="<YOUR_WATTTIME_USERNAME>"
    export DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__password="<YOUR_WATTTIME_PASSWORD>"

    or

    export DataSources__ForecastDataSource="ElectricityMaps"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMaps__Type="ElectricityMaps"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMaps__APITokenHeader="auth-token"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMaps__APIToken="<YOUR_ELECTRICITYMAPS_TOKEN>"

    or

     export DataSources__EmissionsDataSource="ElectricityMapsFree"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMapsFree__Type="ElectricityMapsFree"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMapsFree__token="<CO2SIGNAL_TOKEN>"
  4. Run the CLI using dotnet run

The CLI will ask you to at minimum provide a --location (-l) parameter.

Usage

Calling the SDK via CLI To run the CLI, simply call dotnet run and provide it with any parameters. If you fail to pass any parameters, a help screen will be printed out with possible parameters and short explanations.

To get a list of all locations supported, you can use the Locations API, referenced in src/CarbonAware.CLI/src/Commands/Location and the command .\caw locations.

Expected output:

{
"eastus": {
"Latitude": 37.3719,
"Longitude": -79.8164,
"Name": "eastus"
},
...
"switzerlandnorth":{
"Latitude": 47.451542,
"Longitude": 8.564572,
"Name": "switzerlandnorth"
},
...
}

For example, to get emissions in the eastus and uksouth region between 2022-08-23 at 11:15am and 2022-08-23 at 11:20am, run: dotnet run emissions -l eastus,uksouth -s 2022-08-23T11:15 -e 2022-08-23T11:20

Expected output:

[
{
"Location": "PJM_ROANOKE",
"Time": "2022-08-23T11:20:00+00:00",
"Rating": 567.44405487,
"Duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"Location": "PJM_ROANOKE",
"Time": "2022-08-23T11:15:00+00:00",
"Rating": 564.72250065,
"Duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"Location": "UK",
"Time": "2022-08-23T11:20:00+00:00",
"Rating": 422.74808884000004,
"Duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"Location": "UK",
"Time": "2022-08-23T11:15:00+00:00",
"Rating": 422.74808884000004,
"Duration": "00:05:00"
},
]

To get the best time and location from a list of locations and a specified time window, use the --best flag. E.g. to get the best time and location in a 24 hour window on the 23rd of August in the regions: eastus, westus, westus3,uksouth, run the command:

dotnet run -l eastus,westus,westus3,uksouth -s 2022-08-23T00:00 -e 2022-08-23T23:59 --best

Expected output:

[
{
"Location": "UK",
"Time": "2022-08-23T08:50:00+00:00",
"Rating": 384.64632976,
"Duration": "00:05:00"
}
]

2.3 WebAPI

Setup

Deploying with Container

First we need to set up the GitHub repository https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/carbon-aware-sdk.git:

  1. git clone https://github.com/Green-Software-Foundation/carbon-aware-sdk.git

  2. Change directory into the repository: cd carbon-aware-sdk

  3. Open VSCode: code .

  4. Open VSCode Command Palette: (Linux/Windows: ctrl + shift + P, MacOS: cmd + shift + P), and run the command:

    • Remote-Containers: Open Folder in Container
  5. If you have a WattTime account registered (or other data source) - you will need to configure the application to use them. By default the SDK will use a pre-generated JSON file with random data. To configure the application, you will need to set up specific environment variables or modify appsettings.json inside of src/CarbonAware.WebApi/src directory. Detailed information on configuration can be found in the overview.md file.

    Otherwise, you can follow an example configuration below (export these environment variables in the Terminal):

    export DataSources__EmissionsDataSource="WattTime"
    export DataSources__ForecastDataSource="WattTime"
    export DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Type="WattTime"
    export DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__username="<YOUR_WATTTIME_USERNAME>"
    export DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__password="<YOUR_WATTTIME_PASSWORD>"

    or

    export DataSources__ForecastDataSource="ElectricityMaps"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMaps__Type="ElectricityMaps"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMaps__APITokenHeader="auth-token"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMaps__APIToken="<YOUR_ELECTRICITYMAPS_TOKEN>"

    or

     export DataSources__EmissionsDataSource="ElectricityMapsFree"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMapsFree__Type="ElectricityMapsFree"
    export DataSources__Configurations__ElectricityMapsFree__token="<CO2SIGNAL_TOKEN>"
  6. In the VSCode Terminal:

  7. Change directory to: cd src/CarbonAware.WebApi/src

  8. And run the application using: dotnet run

  9. By default, it will be hosted on localhost:5073

Deploy Web API on Kubernetes with Helm

You can deploy Web API as a Kubernetes application via Helm. GSF provides a chart as an OCI container, so you have to use Helm v3.8.0 or later.

Following command creates carbon-aware-sdk namespace and deploys Web API into it with specified values.yaml.

helm install casdk -n carbon-aware-sdk --create-namespace oci://ghcr.io/green-software-foundation/charts/carbon-aware-sdk --values values.yaml

values.yaml should contain appsettings.json which would be used in Web API at least. It should include data source definitions and their credentials. It would be stored as Secret resource.

appsettings: |-
{
"DataSources": {
"EmissionsDataSource": "WattTime",
"ForecastDataSource": "WattTime",
"Configurations": {
"WattTime": {
"Type": "WattTime",
"Username": "username",
"Password": "password",
"BaseURL": "https://api2.watttime.org/v2/"
}
}
}
}

Also you can include following configuration into values.yaml.

# Number of replicas
replicaCount: 1

image:
repository: ghcr.io/green-software-foundation/carbon-aware-sdk
pullPolicy: IfNotPresent
# You can set specified tag (equivalent with the SDK version in here)
tag: latest

# Set the value if you want to override the name.
nameOverride: ""
fullnameOverride: ""

serviceAccount:
# Specifies whether a service account should be created
create: true
# Annotations to add to the service account
annotations: {}
# The name of the service account to use.
# If not set and create is true, a name is generated using the fullname template
name: ""

podAnnotations: {}

podSecurityContext: {}
# fsGroup: 2000

securityContext: {}
# capabilities:
# drop:
# - ALL
# readOnlyRootFilesystem: true
# runAsNonRoot: true
# runAsUser: 1000

service:
type: ClusterIP
port: 80

ingress:
enabled: false
className: ""
annotations: {}
hosts:
- host: carbon-aware-sdk.local
paths:
- path: /
pathType: ImplementationSpecific
tls: []
# - secretName: carbon-aware-sdk-tls
# hosts:
# - carbon-aware-sdk.local

resources: {}
# limits:
# cpu: 100m
# memory: 128Mi
# requests:
# cpu: 100m
# memory: 128Mi

autoscaling:
enabled: false
minReplicas: 1
maxReplicas: 100
targetCPUUtilizationPercentage: 80
# targetMemoryUtilizationPercentage: 80

nodeSelector: {}

tolerations: []

affinity: {}

env: []

# appsettings.json
appsettings: |-
{
"DataSources": {
"EmissionsDataSource": "ElectricityMaps",
"ForecastDataSource": "WattTime",
"Configurations": {
"WattTime": {
"Type": "WattTime",
"Username": "username",
"Password": "password",
"BaseURL": "https://api2.watttime.org/v2/",
"Proxy": {
"useProxy": true,
"url": "http://10.10.10.1",
"username": "proxyUsername",
"password": "proxyPassword"
}
},
"ElectricityMaps": {
"Type": "ElectricityMaps",
"APITokenHeader": "auth-token",
"APIToken": "myAwesomeToken",
"BaseURL": "https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/"
}
}
}
}

The video in below is demonstration to install Carbon Aware SDK via Helm. Note that installing the SDK from local directory ( ~/github-forked/carbon-aware-sdk/helm-chart ), not an OCI container.

!Demonstration to intall Carbon Aware SDK from local with Helm

Usage

Calling the Web API via command line

Prerequisites:

With the API running on localhost:5073, we can make HTTP requests to its endpoints, full endpoint description can be found here

To get a list of all locations supported, you can use the Locations API endpoint /locations referenced in src/CarbonAware.WebApi/src/Controllers/LocationsController.cs.

Expected Output:

{
"eastus": {
"Latitude": 37.3719,
"Longitude": -79.8164,
"Name": "eastus"
},
...
"switzerlandnorth":{
"Latitude": 47.451542,
"Longitude": 8.564572,
"Name": "switzerlandnorth"
}
}
Calling the /emissions/bylocation endpoint

In console, we can run the below command, to request data for a single location (currently Azure region names supported) in a particular timeframe:

curl "http://localhost:5073/emissions/bylocation?location=westus&time=2022-08-23T14%3A00&toTime=2022-08-23T14%3A30" | jq

You can omit the | jq to get the JSON data raw and unparsed. This is a request for data in the westus region from the date 2022-08-23 at 14:00 to 2022-08-23 at 14:30. (Note: semicolons : are encoded as %3A in URLs).

The sample data output should be:

[
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:30:00+00:00",
"rating": 439.07741416000005,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:25:00+00:00",
"rating": 438.62382179,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:20:00+00:00",
"rating": 438.62382179,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:15:00+00:00",
"rating": 439.53100653,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:10:00+00:00",
"rating": 439.98459890000004,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:05:00+00:00",
"rating": 456.31392422000005,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T14:00:00+00:00",
"rating": 439.98459890000004,
"duration": "00:05:00"
},
{
"location": "CAISO_NORTH",
"time": "2022-08-23T13:55:00+00:00",
"rating": 445.42770734000004,
"duration": "00:05:00"
}
]

Calling the Web API via client libraries

The SDK can work with libraries for up to 50 languages generated with the Open API Generator (Swagger). This guide will provide a tutorial to generating clients for java, Python, JavaScript, .NET and GoLang. There is also a walkthrough of an example Python script interacting with the SDK.

2.4 Configurations

This project uses the dotnet standard Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration mechanism, which allows the user to configure their environment variables in a unified view while making use of different configuration sources. Review the link to understand more about the IConfiguration type.

The WebAPI project uses standard configuration sources provided by ASPNetCore. Please review this link to understand how configuration is loaded and the priority of that configuration.

Please note that configuration is hierarchical. The last configuration source loaded that contains a configuration value will be the value that's used. This means that if the same configuration value is found in both appsettings.json and as an environment variable, the value from the environment variable will be the value that's applied.

See configuration.md for details about how to configure specific components of the application.

Environment variables

When adding values via environment variables, we recommend that you use the double underscore form, rather than the colon form. Colons won't work in non-windows environment. For example:

  DataSources__EmissionsDataSource="WattTime"

Note that double underscores are used to represent dotted notation or child elements that you see in the JSON below. For example, to set proxy information using environment variables, you'd do this:

  DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__UseProxy

Local project settings

For local-only settings you can use environment variables, the Secret Manager tool , or an untracked Development appsettings file to override the default project settings.

To use the settings file, rename a copy of the template called appsettings.Development.json.template to appsettings.Development.json and remove the first line of (invalid) comments. Then update any settings according to your preferences.

Wherever possible, the projects leverage the default .NET configuration expectations. Thus, they can be configured using any file matching the format: appsettings.<ENV>.json. Where <ENV> is the value of the ASPNETCORE_ENVIRONMENT environment variable. By convention projects tend to use the provided HostEnvironment constants Development, Staging, and Production.