DateTime.LocalNow doesn't return the right date and time for the local zone

Good day pmscorca,

One thing to watch for is that DateTime.LocalNow() in the Power BI Service is the local time of the Service. For example I am in the UK but my Power BI Service is hosted in a different time zone. A workaround I have used is to call out to an API, e.g. https://worldtimeapi.org/ to get the local time for a zone of my choice.

I wrote a function to do this. You can copy and paste it into a blank query. The timezones are listed https://worldtimeapi.org/timezones. Hope this helps.

let
//Function definition
  fn = (area as text, location as text, optional region as text) as datetime =>
  let
    reg = if region <> null then region else "",
    dt = DateTimeZone.RemoveZone(
    DateTimeZone.From(
      Json.Document(
        Web.Contents("https://worldtimeapi.org/api/timezone/" & area & "/" & location & "/" & reg)
      )[datetime]
    )
   )
in
  dt,
//Function type definition
fnType = type function (
area as (
type text meta [
Documentation.FieldCaption = "area",
Documentation.FieldDescription = "www.worldtimeapi.org area",
Documentation.SampleValues = {"europe"},
//Documentation.AllowedValues = {},
Documentation.IsMultiline = false,
Documentation.IsCode = false
]
),
location as (
type text meta [
Documentation.FieldCaption = "location",
Documentation.FieldDescription = "www.worldtimeapi.org location",
Documentation.SampleValues = {"london"},
//Documentation.AllowedValues = {},
Documentation.IsMultiline = false,
Documentation.IsCode = false
]
),
optional region as (
type text meta [
Documentation.FieldCaption = "region",
Documentation.FieldDescription = "www.worldtimeapi.org region",
Documentation.SampleValues = {" "},
//Documentation.AllowedValues = {},
Documentation.IsMultiline = false,
Documentation.IsCode = false
]
)
) as datetime meta [
Documentation.Name = "DateTimeSafeLocalNow",
Documentation.LongDescription = "
Purpose<br>
Consider you have a table of time-series data, collected in your timezone.
You want to calculate the age of each reading and so you try a calculation,
Age = DateTime.LocalNow() - Readings[Datetime]
All works well. Then you publish to the Power BI Service, in a different timezone.
For the Service, DateTime.LocalNow() is different from your desktop.
Your calculation gives the wrong age.
<p>
The purpose of this function is to give a Local Now which is always in the same time zone.
<p>
Method<br>
The function reaches out to a 3rd party api, https://worldtimeapi.org/.
Your ask the api for the time in a timezone of your choice.
This would normally be the timezone of your readings.
<p>
The timezone is specified by area, location and region parameters.
Allowed values are documented at https://worldtimeapi.org/timezones.
<p>
The function calls the api and a record is returned.
The record contains a field ""datetime"". 
Despite its name, it contains zone data.
This is converted to type datetimezone.
Then the zone is removed.
It would not work to convert type to datetime from datetimezone.
This is because the conversion converts to UTC.
You must remove the zone instead.
",
Documentation.Examples = {
[
Description = "Find the local datetime in New York",
Code = "LocalDateTime( ""America"", ""New_York"" )",
Result = "Returns the local datetime in New York"
],
[
Description = "Find the local datetime in Buenos_Aires",
Code = "LocalDateTime( ""America"", ""Argentina"", ""Buenos_Aires"" )",
Result = "Returns the local datetime in Buenos Aires"
]
}
]
in
//Make fnType the type for fn.
Value.ReplaceType(fn, fnType)