SolarNetwork Foundation offers subscriptions to the
SolarNetwork platform which are based on the amount of
data collected into and queried out of the platform. By subscribing to SolarNetwork not only are
you supporting our mission to provide tools to help educate people about renewable energy and
operate renewable energy assets, you gain access to the following SolarNetwork features:
Feature
Description
Priority support
Support straight from the SolarNetwork experts.
Bulk import
Import CSV data into SolarNetwork.
Bulk export
Export CSV data out of SolarNetwork, on an automated schedule or as a one-off.
Event hooks
Integrate with external applications based on events happening within SolarNetwork.
OCPP integration
Integrate electric vehicle charging stations with your SolarNetwork account via the Open Charge Point Protocol from the Open Charge Alliance.
Other subscriber-only features will be added over time. Want to sign up? Email us at
info@solarnetwork.net and we would be happy to help you get started.
SolarNetwork terminology
To understand the SolarNetwork subscription costs, the following terms are used:
Term
Definition
Account
A means to access SolarNetwork services based on registering a unique email address.
Node
A device that collects data for an account. Any number of nodes may be associated with an account. Each node is assigned a unique identifier by SolarNetwork.
Source
A unique identifier for a stream of data captured by a node. Often a source denotes a hardware device that a node is collecting data from. Sources are given short textual identifiers by node administrators, and can be organized using slashes into meaningful hierarchies. For example /home/weather might be used for a weather station source.
Datum
A timestamped sample of data specific to a source and uploaded to SolarNetwork.
Property
A uniquely named measurement captured in a datum. Each datum can have any number of properties within it. For example temperature: 20℃ and wind speed: 20 km/hr might be captured in a datum from a weather station source.
Subscription pricing
Once you sign up for a SolarNetwork subscription, you will be billed monthly based on your usage
across all nodes in your account, in the following categories:
Properties Posted — the total number of properties uploaded to SolarNetwork across all
datum for all sources for all nodes in your account.
Datum Queried — the number of datum returned via queries to the SolarNetwork API.
Datum Days Stored — number of datum stored in SolarNetwork, across all sources and nodes in
your account, calculated each day and summed for the month.
Each category has a tiered pricing structure, where the rate decreases as the usage volume increases.
Subscriptions are billed per month per account so tiers are applied on the sum total of all nodes
in each account.
Check out the Subscription Price Explorer
to interactively simulate subscription costs for a variety of usage patterns.
Pricing details
The following sections detail the pricing tiers for each subscription category.
Properties Posted
This price is calculated from the number of properties posted into SolarNetwork over the billing period.
Tier Start
Tier Rate
Tier Maximum
Tier Maximum Cost
> 0
$5 / million
500,000
$ 2.50
> 500,000
$3 / million
9,500,000
$ 28.50
> 10,000,000
$0.80 / million
490,000,000
$ 392.00
> 500,000,000
$0.20 / million
Datum Queried
This price is calculated from the number of datum returned from any SolarNetwork API query that
returns datum over the billing period. For API calls that return paged results (e.g. results 1 - 100
of 10,000, then results 101 - 200, and so on) only the number of datum returned in each page
response count towards the total. If a query requests aggregate values, only the number of aggregate
datum returned count towards the total. For example, requesting hourly aggregated datum given 1,000
raw datum that span 24 hours would return 24 datum that count towards the total.
Tier Start
Tier Rate
Tier Maximum
Tier Maximum Cost
> 0
$1 / 10 million
10,000,000
$ 1.00
> 1,000,000
$0.40 / 10 million
990,000,000
$ 39.60
> 100,000,000
$0.04 / 10 million
99,000,000,000
$ 396.00
> 10,000,000,000
$0.01 / 10 million
Datum Days Stored
This price is calculated from the total number of datum stored in SolarNetwork on each day over the
billing period. As nodes post datum, this value grows. SolarNetwork also stores rolled-up aggregate
datum derived from the raw datum—at hourly, daily, and monthly aggregate levels. Each of these
aggregate datum are counted in this total as well.
Tier Start
Tier Rate
Tier Maximum
Tier Maximum Cost
> 0
$5 / 100 million
10,000,000
$ 0.50
> 10,000,000
$1 / 100 million
990,000,000
$ 9.90
> 1,000,000,000
$0.30 / 100 million
99,000,000,000
$ 297.00
> 100,000,000,000
$0.20 / 100 million
Examples
The following sections illustrate how the SolarNetwork subscription costs are calculated.
Properties Posted
A node collects temperature and wind speed properties from a single weather station
source once per minute. Over one 30-day month that would equate to:
The following example builds off the Properties Posted example above, in which 1 datum is posted
every minute. A script requests the following datum:
Query
Result Count
Schedule
all datum for the past month, aggregated daily
30
every hour
all datum for the past 2 hours
120
6 times per hour
all datum for the past 24 hours, aggregated hourly
24
every hour
most recently available datum
1
every minute
Over the course of a 30 day month that would equate to:
(30 daily + (120 datum × 6) + 24 hourly + 60 most recent) × 24 hours × 30 days = 600,480 datum
Tier
Calculation
Cost
1
600,480 × $1 ÷ 10,000,000
$0.06
Total
$0.06
Datum Days Stored
The following example builds off the Properties Posted example above, in which 1 datum is posted
every minute. A node has been running for a year and has 525,600 raw, 8,760 hourly aggregate, 365
daily aggregate, and 12 monthly aggregate datum stored in SolarNetwork, for a total of 534,737. Each
day the number of new datum stored would equate to:
(((60 datum per minute + 1 hourly aggregate datum) × 24 hours) + 1 daily aggregate datum = 1,465 datum
Over the course of the next 30 day month the datum storage cost would equate to:
for d = 1..30: d = dprev + 534,737 + (d × 1,465) = 16,723,335 datum
Tier
Calculation
Cost
1
10,000,000 × $5 ÷ 100,000,000
$0.50
2
6,723,335 × $1 ÷ 100,000,000
$0.07
Total
$0.57
Overall cost
The overall monthly subscription cost for properties posted, datum queried, and datum stored for the
previous examples would be: