Utilities

From Open Energy Information

The Utilities Gateway houses OpenEI's free, community-editable utility rate repository. OpenEI users may browse, edit and add new electric utility rates to OpenEI's repository. EIA provides the authoritative list of utility companies in the United States, and thus OpenEI limits utility rates to companies listed by EIA.

Electric Utility Rates

7788 rates have been contributed to date.

Looking for a list of all U.S. utilities by zip code? Click here to download the data as a csv. Note: This file includes average rates for each utility, but not the detailed rate structure data found in the database above.
Trying to get this data by web service? Check out the utility rate API

How does your electric utility compare with others on access to your energy data?

Dive into the maps and info pages to see what data your utility provides you!

Utility company representatives, please fill out the questionnaire to have your electric utility represented on the map.

Utility Rate Database Visualization

This visualization shows OpenEI utility rate coverage as of March 13th, 2012. This utility rate data is unrelated to the utility data access map.

Utility Rate Database Description

The Utility Rate Database (URDB) is a free storehouse of rate structure information from utilities in the United States. Here, you can search for your utilities and rates to find out exactly how you are charged for your electric energy usage. Understanding this information can help reduce your bill, for example, by running your appliances during off-peak hours (times during the day when electricity prices are less expensive) and help you make more informed decisions regarding your energy usage.

Rates are also extremely important to the energy analysis community for accurately determining the value and economics of distributed generation such as solar and wind power. In the past, collecting rates has been an effort duplicated across many institutions. Rate collection can be tedious and slow, however, with the introduction of the URDB, OpenEI aims to change how analysis of rates is performed. The URDB allows anyone to access these rates in a computer-readable format for use in their tools and models. OpenEI provides an API for software to automatically download the appropriate rates, thereby allowing detailed economic analysis to be done without ever having to directly handle complex rate structures. Essentially, rate collection and processing that used to take weeks or months can now be done in seconds!

NREL’s System Advisor Model (formerly Solar Advisor Model or SAM), currently has the ability to communicate with the OpenEI URDB over the internet. SAM can download any rate from the URDB directly into the program, thereby enabling users to conduct detailed studies on various power systems ranging in size from a small residential rooftop solar system to large utility scale installations. Other applications available at NREL, such as OpenPV and IMBY, will also utilize the URDB data.

Upcoming features include better support for entering net metering parameters, maps to summarize the data, geolocation capabilities, and hundreds of additional rates!

Featured Utility Rates

• NSTAR Electric Company rate T-1 - complex commercial time of use rate structure
• Public Service Company of Colorado rate R - simple residential tiered rate structure

Utility Companies

3906 EIA-recognized utility companies are on OpenEI.