Know what electricity actually costs.

Every rate here was transcribed from the utility's own filed schedule and carries its P.U.C. sheet number and effective date. Solar exports are settled at NEM 3 hourly avoided-cost values, not netted at retail.

Traceable

Every calculation returns the filed document behind it — sheet number, docket, effective date, and what the figure was reconciled against. Where a rate could not be reconciled against anything the utility published, it says so instead of implying otherwise.

Current

Every source document is fetched daily and archived. Register a webhook and source.changed arrives when one moves, signed, naming the plans that cite it. It reports that a document changed — not that a rate did, because most changes are re-renders and notices, and an alert that cries wolf is one you learn to ignore.

Get a free API key Browse current rates →

56% of US households covered

100% of the 50 largest utilities

328Sources watched daily

100%Carry a source citation

79,866,676 of 143,144,185 US residential customers, counted from EIA Form 861. The second figure is the same catalogue against the 50 largest utilities — where the work has deliberately gone. Both are on the status page, with their denominators.

Calculated

Price a household

Monthly usage — 750 kWh

Solar array — 7.0 kW

Battery — 13.5 kWh

Household

Rate plan (PG&E)

Calculating…

Why it matters

Why the numbers moved

NEM 3 broke the old assumption

Under NEM 2, an exported kWh offset an imported one at the retail rate, so a solar model could net annual kWh and ignore timing. Under the Net Billing Tariff, exports are credited at hourly avoided-cost values while imports are still billed at retail. For PG&E in 2026 those export values run from $0.00018/kWh in April at 3pm to $1.15441/kWh in August at 7pm.

A quoting tool still netting at retail overstates annual savings on the default household above by 168% — $3,929 predicted against $1,463 actual. That error lands directly on the payback period a homeowner is shown.

Which makes dispatch the whole game

Solar exports hardest at midday in spring, when a kWh is worth almost nothing. A battery moves those kWh into the expensive hours. Same hardware, same sunlight — default self-consumption earns about $0.057 per exported kWh, well-timed dispatch earns about $0.120.

Best-case dispatch is reported as an explicit upper bound computed by linear program with perfect foresight, never as an achievable schedule. Quoting it as attainable is the easiest way to overstate a payback period.

And the underlying rates go stale fast

NREL's free rate database refreshes ~150 utilities annually. As of August 2026 the newest PG&E residential rates it presents as current date to 2019, and several are retired plans published with no end date. Its newest EV2 record expired in September 2024 — pricing a real EV household against it overstates the annual bill by 28%, partly because it cannot represent the Base Services Charge introduced in March 2026.

Queried

The API

curl https://rategrid.dev/tariffs/pge-eelec-2026-06-01 \
  -H "X-API-Key: rg_demo_key_public"

Runs as written, against the public demo key. Returns the charges, the sheet they were transcribed from and the date that sheet took effect.

Pricing a bill needs a year of hourly usage, because time-of-use rates depend on when power is used and a monthly total cannot say:

curl -X POST https://rategrid.dev/battery \
  -H "X-API-Key: rg_demo_key_public" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "tariff_label": "pge-eelec-2026-06-01",
    "load_kwh": [ ...8760 hourly values... ],
    "pv_kwh":   [ ...8760 hourly values... ],
    "capacity_kwh": 13.5
  }'

/compare ranks every eligible plan · /solar bills NEM 3 exports · /battery values dispatch strategies · /calculate prices one tariff · /changes reports when a source rate sheet moves. Full docs at /docs.

Verified, and monitored

How the numbers are kept honest

verifiedEvery rate transcribed from the filed sheetNot from a third-party database. The sheet number and effective date travel with the figure.
verifiedSource documents fetched daily, every version keptUtilities do not publish superseded rates, so the change history does not exist anywhere else once a rate moves.
verifiedTwo independent billing engines cross-checkedA reference implementation and NREL's PySAM, compared on the same calendar. A disagreement means neither number ships.
approximateEstimates, not billsExcludes taxes, franchise fees, medical baseline, FERA and annual true-up. Where a figure is uncertain, its plan page says so by name.

See what is current and what is not →

Get a free API key No card. 500 credits/month.

115 residential tariffs across 57 utilities