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Configuration

Logging​

The default LogLevel settings for the application are found in the corresponding appsettings.json, which may contain the following section -- see here for additional details on Logging in .NET and on Logging Providers in .NET

  "Logging": {
    "LogLevel": {
      "Default": "Information",
      "Microsoft.AspNetCore": "Warning"
    }
  }

To permanently change the LogLevel, just update the appsettings.json for the app. To override a LogLevel at runtime, an environment variable can set the LogLevel value. For example to set the Logging:LogLevel:Default LogLevel to Debug: export Logging__LogLevel__Default="Debug"

Example using the CLI:

cd src/CarbonAware.CLI
export Logging__LogLevel__Default="Debug"
dotnet run -l westus

Example using the WebApp:

cd src/CarbonAware.WebApi
export Logging__LogLevel__Default="Debug"
dotnet run

Or, to change the LogLevel for just one run of the app:

cd src/CarbonAware.WebApi
Logging__LogLevel__Default="Debug" dotnet run

DataSources​

The SDK supports multiple data sources for getting carbon data. At this time, only a JSON file, WattTime and ElectricityMaps are supported.

Each data source interface is configured with a specific data source implementation.

If set to WattTime or ElectricityMaps, the configuration specific to that data provider must also be supplied.

JSON will result in the data being loaded from the file specified in the DataFileLocation property

{
  "DataSources": {
    "EmissionsDataSource": "Json",
    "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/"
      },
      "Json": {
        "Type": "Json",
        "DataFileLocation": "test-data-azure-emissions.json"
      }
    }
  }
}

WattTime Configuration​

If using the WattTime data source, WattTime configuration is required.

{
  "username": "",
  "password": "",
  "baseUrl": "https://api2.watttime.org/v2/"
}

Sign up for a test account: To create an account, follow these steps from the WattTime documentation

username​

The username you receive from WattTime. This value is required when using a WattTime data source.

password​

The WattTime password for the username supplied. This value is required when using a WattTime data source.

baseUrl (WT)​

The url to use when connecting to WattTime. Defaults to https://api2.watttime.org/v2/.

In normal use, you shouldn't need to set this value, but this value can be used to enable integration testing scenarios or if the WattTime url should change in the future.

Proxy​

This value is used to set proxy information in situations where internet egress requires a proxy. For proxy values to be used useProxy must be set to true. Other values should be set as needed for your environment.

  DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__UseProxy

WattTime Caching BalancingAuthority​

To improve performance communicating with the WattTime API service, the client caches the data mapping location coordinates to balancing authorities. By default, this data is stored in an in-memory cache for 86400 seconds, but expiration can be configured using the setting BalancingAuthorityCacheTTL (Set to "0" to disable the caching feature). The regional boundaries of a balancing authority tend to be stable, but as they can change, the WattTime documentation recommends not caching for longer than 1 month.

DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__BalancingAuthorityCacheTTL="90"

Json Configuration​

By setting DataSources__Configurations__Json__DataFileLocation=mycustomfile.json property when Data source is set to Json, the user can specify a file that can contains custom EmissionsData sets. The file should be located under the <user's repo>/src/data/data-sources/ directory that is part of the repository. At build time, all the JSON files under <user's repo>/src/data/data-sources/ are copied over the destination directory <user's repo>/src/CarbonAware.WebApi/src/bin/[Debug|Publish]/net8.0/data-sources/json that is part of the CarbonAware.WebApi assembly. Also the file can be placed where the assembly CarbonAware.WebApi.dll is located under data-sources/json directory. For instance, if the application is installed under /app, copy the file to /app/data-sources/json.

Emission data in JSON is cached by default, it means original data would be handled even if JSON is updated. You need to set DataSources__Configurations__JSON__CacheJsonData=false if you want to handle updated data.

cp <mydir>/mycustomfile.json /app/data-sources/json
export DataSources__Configurations=Json
export DataSources__Configurations__JSON__Type=JSON
export DataSources__Configurations__Json__DataFileLocation=mycustomfile.json
dotnet /app/CarbonAware.WebApi.dll

As soon a first request is performed, a log entry shows:

info: CarbonAware.DataSources.Json.JsonDataSource[0]
    Reading Json data from /app/data-sources/json/mycustomfile.json

ElectricityMaps Configuration​

If using the ElectricityMaps data source, ElectricityMaps configuration is required.

With an account token:

NOTE The ElectricityMaps API does not currently support access to historical forecasts. This means that functionality such as the CLI emissions-forecasts --requested-at flag and the API /forecasts/batch > requestedAt input will respond with a NotImplemented error.

Depending on the goal, the historical measured emissions commands may be a reasonable workaround. This would treat the measured emissions as a "perfect historical forecast" effectively. Otherwise, use a data source that has support for historical forecasts, such as WattTime.

{
  "APITokenHeader": "auth-token",
  "APIToken": "<api-token>",
  "baseUrl": "https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/"
}

With a free trial token:

{
  "APITokenHeader": "X-BLOBR-KEY",
  "APIToken": "<api-token>",
  "baseUrl": "https://api-access.electricitymaps.com/<url-token>"
}

Sign up for a free trial: Select the free trial product from the ElectricityMaps catalog. Note that there are some restrictions on the free trial product.

API Token Header​

The API Token Header for ElectricityMaps. If you have a paid account, the header is "auth-token". If you're using the free trial, the header is "X-BLOBR-KEY"

API Token​

The ElectricityMaps token you receive with your account or free trial.

BaseUrl​

The url to use when connecting to ElectricityMaps. Defaults to "https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/" but can be overridden in the config if needed (such as for free-trial users or enable integration testing scenarios).

Emission Factor Type​

String value for the optional emissionFactorType parameter to be sent on every ElectricityMaps API request that accepts this parameter.

See the ElectricityMaps API Documentation for more details and valid values.

Disable Estimations​

Boolean value for the optional disableEstimations parameter to be sent on every ElectricityMaps API request that accepts this parameter.

See the ElectricityMaps API Documentation for more details.

ElectricityMapsFree Configuration​

If using the ElectricityMapsFree data source, ElectricityMapsFree configuration is required.

With an account token:

NOTE The ElectricityMapsFree API does not currently support access to historical forecasts. This means that functionality such as the CLI emissions-forecasts > --requested-at flag and the API /forecasts/batch > requestedAt input will respond with a NotImplemented error.

The ElectricityMapsFree API also does not currently support access to historical emissions data. It only supports getting the single latest emissions data point for the given location.

If either of these restrictions are an issue, a data source that has support for historical forecasts, such as WattTime or historical emissions, such as ElectricityMaps may be preferable.

{
  "token": "<api-token>",
  "baseUrl": "https://api.co2signal.com/v1/"
}

API Token​

The ElectricityMapsFree token you receive with your account.

BaseUrl​

The url to use when connecting to ElectricityMapsFree. Defaults to "https://api.co2signal.com/v1/" but can be overridden in the config if needed (such as to enable integration testing scenarios).

Cache​

Frequent access to data sources could cause problems such as performance trouble or exceed rate limit. To avoid them, you can configure data cache like this:

{
  "EmissionsDataCache": {
    "Enabled": true,
    "ExpirationMin": 30
  }
}

The behavior of current cache implementation:

  • Only emissions data are cached
    • Forecast data are not stored
  • The result of the latest query to data sources is cached
  • Use cache rather than data sources if even one datum in cache match with the query
    • Even though more data in data sources would be matched, they are not retrieved
  • Cached data are stored in memory
    • They are cleard when the process of the SDK is down

CarbonAwareVars​

This section contains the global settings for the SDK. The configuration looks like this:

{
  "carbonAwareVars": {
    "TelemetryProvider": "ApplicationInsights",
    "VerboseApi": "true",
    "webApiRoutePrefix": ""
  }
}

Tracing and Monitoring Configuration​

The application uses Opentelemetry to create traces locally in the console. In order to configure it to send the traces to a tracing app like Zipkin, Jaeger etc, please refer to the Open Telemetry documentation.

Configuring with Application Insights​

Application monitoring and tracing can be configured using the TelemetryProvider variable in the application configuration.

CarbonAwareVars__TelemetryProvider="ApplicationInsights"

This application is integrated with Application Insights for monitoring purposes. The telemetry collected in the app is pushed to AppInsights and can be tracked for logs, exceptions, traces and more. To connect to your Application Insights instance, configure the ApplicationInsights_Connection_String variable.

ApplicationInsights_Connection_String="AppInsightsConnectionString"

You can alternatively configure using Instrumentation Key by setting the AppInsights_InstrumentationKey variable. However, Microsoft is ending technical support for instrumentation key�based configuration of the Application Insights feature soon. ConnectionString-based configuration should be used over InstrumentationKey. For more details, please refer to the documentation.

AppInsights_InstrumentationKey="AppInsightsInstrumentationKey"

Configuring telemetry log​

WebAPI configures console exporter of OpenTelemetry by default. You can configure whether the exporter is enabled with EnableTelemetryLogging. Set false if you want to reduce the log.

CarbonAwareVars__EnableTelemetryLogging=false

Prometheus exporter for emissions data​

DISCLAIMER: The /metrics Prometheus exporter is currently unsupported, and is used for internal GSF needs, and may change in the future. It will retrieve all emissions data and create heavy load on your data API's. It is turned off by default.

In the WebApi project, this application can exporse latest carbon emissions data as a prometheus exporter.

CarbonAwareVars__EnableCarbonExporter="true"

The scraping endpoint is <ROOT_PATH>/metrics like this:

http://localhost/metrics

By default, the exposed data are latest ones within last 24 hours. If you would like to change the period in some reasones, you can configure the value like this:

{
  "CarbonExporter": {
    "PeriodInHours": 48
  }
}

Verbosity​

You can configure the verbosity of the application error messages by setting the 'VerboseApi' environment variable. Typically, you would set this value to 'true' in the development or staging regions. When set to 'true', a detailed stack trace would be presented for any errors in the request.

CarbonAwareVars__VerboseApi="true"

Web API Prefix​

Used to add a prefix to all routes in the WebApi project. Must start with a /. Invalid paths will cause an exception to be thrown at startup.

By default, all controllers are off of the root path. For example:

http://localhost/emissions

If webApiRoutePrefix is set, it will allow calls to controllers using the prefix, which can be helpful for cross cluster calls, or when proxies strip out information from headers. For example, if this value is set to:

CarbonAwareVars__webApiRoutePrefix="/mydepartment/myapp"
/mydepartment/myapp

Then calls can be made that look like this:

http://localhost/mydepartment/myapp/emissions

Note that the controllers still respond off of the root path.

LocationDataSourcesConfiguration​

By setting LocationDataSourcesConfiguration property with one or more location data sources, it is possible to load different Location data sets in order to have more than one location. For instance by setting two location regions, the property would be set as follow using environment variables:

"LocationDataSourcesConfiguration__LocationSourceFiles__0__DataFileLocation": "azure-regions.json",
"LocationDataSourcesConfiguration__LocationSourceFiles__0__Prefix": "az",
"LocationDataSourcesConfiguration__LocationSourceFiles__0__Delimiter": "-",
"LocationDataSourcesConfiguration__LocationSourceFiles__1__DataFileLocation": "custom-regions.json",
"LocationDataSourcesConfiguration__LocationSourceFiles__1__Prefix": "custom",
"LocationDataSourcesConfiguration__LocationSourceFiles__1__Delimiter": "_",

This way when the application starts, it open the files specified by DataFileLocation property that should located under location-sources/json directory. The format of these files is the same as the Location Model class. In order to differentiate between regions, a Prefix and Delimiter properties are used to allow the user to select the region when a request is performed. By settings the properties, the region should be made of region=Prefix+Delimiter+RegionName, so when the query is performed, it would be found. The following example shows how to perform an http request:

PREFIX=az
DELIMITER='-'
REGION=${PREFIX}${DELIMITER}eastus
curl "http://${IP_HOST}:${PORT}/emissions/bylocations/best?location=${REGION}&time=2022-05-25&toTime=2022-05-26&durationMinutes=0"

At build time, all the JSON files under <user's repo>/src/data/location-sources are copied over the destination directory <user's repo>/src/CarbonAware.WebApi/src/bin/[Debug|Publish]/net8.0/location-sources/json that is part of the CarbonAware.WebApi assembly. Also the file can be placed where the assembly CarbonAware.WebApi.dll is located under location-sources/json directory. For instance, if the application is installed under /app, copy the file to /app/location-sources/json.

Note: Under <user's repo>/src/data/location-sources there is a template file custom-azure-zones.json.template that can be used for locations that don't have latitude and logitude, and the underline datasource requires a zone name. This is the case for data source ElectricityMaps where the routes can be accessible using lat/lon, but some regions are zone name based.

One can also specify these values in appsettings.json like this:

{
  "LocationDataSourcesConfiguration": {
    "LocationSourceFiles": [
      {
        "DataFileLocation": "azure-regions.json",
        "Prefix": "az",
        "Delimiter": "-"
      },
      {
        "DataFileLocation": "custom-regions.json",
        "Prefix": "custom",
        "Delimiter": "_"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Sample Configurations​

Configuration for Emissions data Using WattTime​

DataSources__EmissionsDataSource="WattTime"
CarbonAwareVars__WebApiRoutePrefix="/microsoft/cse/fsi"
DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Proxy__UseProxy=true
DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Proxy__Url="http://10.10.10.1"
DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Proxy__Username="proxyUsername"
DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Password="proxyPassword"
DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Username="wattTimeUsername"
DataSources__Configurations__WattTime__Password="wattTimePassword"

Configuration for Forecast data Using ElectricityMaps​

{
  "DataSources": {
    "ForecastDataSource": "ElectricityMaps",
    "Configurations": {
      "ElectricityMaps": {
        "Type": "ElectricityMaps",
        "APITokenHeader": "auth-token",
        "APIToken": "token",
        "BaseURL": "https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration for Emissions data using ElectricityMaps and Forecast data using WattTime​

  "DataSources": {
    "EmissionsDataSource": "ElectricityMaps",
    "ForecastDataSource": "WattTime",
    "Configurations": {
      "WattTime": {
        "Type": "WattTime",
        "Username": "username",
        "Password": "password",
        "BaseURL": "https://api2.watttime.org/v2/",
      },
      "ElectricityMaps": {
        "Type": "ElectricityMaps",
        "APITokenHeader": "auth-token",
        "APIToken": "token",
        "BaseURL": "https://api.electricitymap.org/v3/"
      }
    }
  }

Configuration for Emissions data using ElectricityMapsFree and Forecast data using WattTime​

  "DataSources": {
    "EmissionsDataSource": "ElectricityMapsFree",
    "ForecastDataSource": "WattTime",
    "Configurations": {
      "WattTime": {
        "Type": "WattTime",
        "Username": "username",
        "Password": "password",
        "BaseURL": "https://api2.watttime.org/v2/",
      },
      "ElectricityMapsFree": {
        "Type": "ElectricityMapsFree",
        "token": "token",
        "BaseURL": "https://api.co2signal.com/v1/"
      }
    }
  }

Configuration For Emissions data Using JSON​

{
  "DataSources": {
    "EmissionsDataSource": "Json",
    "Configurations": {
      "Json": {
        "Type": "Json",
        "DataFileLocation": "test-data.json"
      }
    }
  }
}

Configuration Using WattTime and Defined Location Source Files​

{
    "DataSources": {
        "EmissionsDataSource": "WattTime",
        "Configurations": {
          "WattTime": {
            "Type": "WattTime",
            "Username": "user",
            "Password": "password"
        }
    },
    "locationDataSourcesConfiguration": {
        "locationSourceFiles": [
            {
                "prefix": "az",
                "delimiter": "-",
                "dataFileLocation": "azure-regions.json"
            },
            {
                "prefix": "custom",
                "delimiter": "_",
                "dataFileLocation": "custom-regions.json"
            }
        ]
    }
}