CC0 · no sign-up · snapshot 2026-08-27

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Name: US residential electricity rate plans, parsed and priced
Creator: plainrates
License: https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

Everything behind this site as one CSV: 594 residential rate plans from 137 utilities in 45 states, with the rate range, time-of-use structure, fixed charge, and a modelled annual bill for three households. Free to use for anything, including commercially, with no attribution required.

Rate plans

594 rows · 22 columns · CSV

Household definitions

What the three modelled bills assume · CSV

What is in it

Column	What it holds
urdb_label	The source record ID. Resolves at apps.openei.org/USURDB/rate/view/{label}
utility, eiaid, state	Who files the tariff and where
rate_name, zone	The plan, and the rate zone it applies to if the utility has them
rate_kind	time-of-use, standard, or demand-based
is_tiered, is_seasonal, has_demand_charge	Structure flags
service_class	typical, not-a-home, needs-solar, restricted, or unusual-fixed — see below
min_cents_kwh, max_cents_kwh	Range across all periods and tiers, adjustments included
peak_offpeak_ratio	Highest ÷ lowest, for plans that price by hour
fixed_charge_annual_usd	Standing charge, converted to a year from daily or monthly
billing_scope, effective_date	What the tariff covers, and when it took effect
annual_usd_apartment / _house / _house_with_ev	Modelled annual bill — see below
tariff_url, page_url	The filed document, and our page for the plan

The three modelled bills

The last three columns are the part that is not in the source data. Each is the result of running a defined household through that tariff hour by hour for a full year — including the way air conditioning loads summer afternoons, electric heating loads winter mornings, and weekend schedules differ from weekdays.

Profile	Assumes	Uses about
Apartment	One or two people, no central air, no electric heat	4,900 kWh/yr
Family home	Three or four people with central air conditioning	9,500 kWh/yr
Home with an EV	Same house, plus an electric car charging overnight	13,100 kWh/yr

Full definitions, including the load shapes, are in the households CSV.

These are estimates for comparing plans against each other, not predictions of a specific bill. Because the same household goes through every tariff, most of the modelling error cancels and what remains is the difference in rate structure — which is the thing worth measuring. They exclude taxes, local surcharges, demand charges, and net metering.

What was removed, and why

The source database contains a great deal more than this. A plan is here only if it is currently effective, open to new enrollment, and covers a whole bill rather than the delivery half. Roughly half of the residential records in the source fail one of those tests — mostly because they expired.

Expired and closed plans are dropped. A grandfathered rate nobody can join is not an option, and mixing them in makes any “cheapest plan” answer wrong.
Delivery-only tariffs are dropped. Their per-kWh prices look spectacularly cheap because they are half a bill. Why that matters.
Non-household services are kept but flagged. Irrigation pumping, street lighting, master-metered buildings, large farm service and single-appliance tariffs such as dedicated water-heater rates are filed under the residential sector but do not describe a home. The service_class column marks them not-a-home; we exclude them from our own comparisons and you probably should too.
Income-qualified and assistance tariffs are kept but flagged. A plan billed as a share of another plan, or named for the households allowed onto it, is real but not open to everyone. Marked restricted and left out of comparisons.
Solar tariffs are kept but flagged. Net-metering, net-billing and customer-generation plans are real and open, but they only make sense with panels on the roof. Our modelled households have none, so the annual figures for these rows earn no export credits and read far too high. They are marked needs-solar and left out of comparisons.

A caution on fixed charges. A handful of tariffs carry a standing charge that looks implausible — a monthly amount that appears to be tagged as daily in the source, which multiplies it by thirty. We have not corrected these, because we cannot tell an error from a genuinely expensive rural connection without reading the tariff document. Anything over $50 a month is marked unusual-fixed in service_class. Treat those rows as needing a look at tariff_url before use.

License and reuse

The underlying tariffs are public domain via the NREL Utility Rate Database. Our parsing, filtering, classification and modelling are released under CC0 — use it for anything, commercially or not, with no attribution required. A link back is appreciated but not asked for.

If you build something with it we would like to hear about it: hello@plainrates.com.

Rates move on regulatory timelines measured in months, and this file is a snapshot taken 2026-08-27. Every row carries its own effective_date; cite that rather than the download date if you publish anything derived from it.