Utility Tariffs
Your Real Tariff, Read Into the Model.
Savings, paybacks and equipment choices all depend on the utility tariff. CogenS™ bills every hour of the year against it. Start with built-in rates for 340 cities, pull a US electricity tariff from OpenEI at no cost, or pull the current US or Canadian electric or gas tariff from RateAcuity. CogenS turns the tariff into model inputs for you.
Why It Matters
Same Equipment, Different Tariff, Different Answer.
A battery saves money mostly by cutting demand charges. A CHP plant pays off on the gap between electricity and gas prices. Thermal storage pays off on the gap between peak and off-peak rates. Model any of them on a flat average price and you miss most of what drives the result.
CogenS™ models time-of-use periods, seasons, usage tiers, demand charges, fixed charges, riders and taxes, and bills each hour of the simulated year. Getting the real tariff in quickly is what makes that detail useful.
Three Ways In
Where Your Tariff Comes From
Use whichever fits the stage of the project. You can always edit the result by hand.
Built-in Rates for 340 Cities
87 countries, in local currency
- ✓Commercial and industrial time-of-use electricity, with energy and demand charges by season
- ✓Residential electricity, and natural gas for commercial, industrial and residential sites
- ✓Tiered water rates, and the grid CO₂ factor for each city
- ✓Loaded with your site, so a first study runs before you have a tariff
These are representative planning rates. Swap in the real tariff before a study goes to a client.
OpenEI Utility Rate Database
US electricity tariffs, no extra cost
- ✓Finds the utilities within 50 miles of your site
- ✓Lists each utility's tariffs with sector, size range and dates
- ✓Reads time-of-use energy rates with separate weekday and weekend schedules
- ✓Reads energy tiers, time-of-use and seasonal demand charges, and fixed charges
The OpenEI Utility Rate Database is a free public database from NREL. It covers US electricity tariffs.
RateAcuity Live Tariffs
Current US and Canadian tariffs, electric and gas
- ✓Every state and province, from current utility rate schedules
- ✓Electricity and natural gas, including riders, fees and taxes
- ✓A preview of every parsed rate before it touches your model
- ✓Saved to your tariff library for reuse on any project
$50 per month with 10 pulls included, $10 per extra pull. Pulling the same schedule again the same day is free. Needs a paid plan.
RateAcuity Integration
Current US and Canadian Tariffs, Kept Up to Date
RateAcuity keeps a database of electric and natural gas rate schedules for utilities across the United States and Canada, and keeps it current as utilities file changes. Energy managers, consulting firms, EV charging companies, energy software companies and utilities use it through a web portal and an API, so they don’t have to dig through utility filings.
CogenS™ connects to the RateAcuity API directly. Pick your utility and rate schedule inside CogenS, and the full tariff arrives already parsed: periods, tiers, demand charges, riders, fees and taxes.
The RateAcuity add-on
- Coverage
- All US states, DC, Puerto Rico and every Canadian province and territory
- Fuels
- Electricity and natural gas
- Price
- $50 per month with 10 pulls included
- Extra pulls
- $10 each. The same schedule again the same day is free
- Requires
- Any paid CogenS™ plan. Billed monthly
Level of Detail
From Raw API Response to Model Inputs
A real example: the RateAcuity response for an Atlanta Gas Light commercial gas schedule, and the inputs CogenS™ builds from it with no typing.
1. What the RateAcuity API returns
{
"Schedule_Table": [{
"ScheduleName": "SGTS3",
"ScheduleDescription": "SMALL GENERAL TRANSPORATION SERVICE",
"UseType": "C",
"EffectiveDate": "12/30/2021 12:00:00 AM",
"UsageDeterminant": "therms per year"
}],
"Consumption_Table": [
{ "Rate": "0.2534000", "Description": "Base Gas", "RateDeterminant": "per therm" },
{ "Rate": "0.2201000", "Description": "Base Non-Gas", "RateDeterminant": "per therm" },
{ "Rate": "0.0008000", "Description": "Purchased Gas Adjustment", "RateDeterminant": "per therm" },
{ "Rate": "-0.0523000", "Description": "Actual Cost Adjustment", "RateDeterminant": "per therm" }
],
"ServiceCharge_Table": [
{ "Rate": "48.41000", "Description": "Customer Charge", "RateDeterminant": "per month" }
],
"OtherCharges_Table": [
{ "Rate": "32.0400000", "Description": "SAVE Rider", "RateDeterminant": "per month" }
],
"Demand_Table": [],
"IncrementalConsumption_Table": [],
"Percentages_Table": [],
"TaxLocation_Table": []
}Shortened: ID fields and some empty tables removed. Schedule effective December 2021, shown to illustrate the format, not current rates.
2. What CogenS™ puts in your model
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
Gas energy rate Base Gas $0.2534 + Base Non-Gas $0.2201 + Purchased Gas Adjustment $0.0008 − Actual Cost Adjustment $0.0523 | $0.4220 per therm |
Fixed monthly charge Customer Charge $48.41 + SAVE Rider $32.04 | $80.45 per month |
Months and hours No seasons or time-of-use periods in this schedule, so one period covers the whole year | All year, all hours |
Gas demand charge The schedule has no demand charge. The preview says so, so you know it wasn't dropped | $0 |
These values are what the CogenS™ parser produces from the response on the left.
How every RateAcuity table is used
Electric and gas schedules come back as a set of tables. Each one lands in a specific CogenS™ input.
| RateAcuity table | Becomes in CogenS™ |
|---|---|
| EnergyTime_Table | Time-of-use energy periods: season, months, weekday and weekend hours |
| IncrementalEnergy_Table / IncrementalConsumption_Table | Usage tiers within each period |
| DemandTime_Table, IncrementalDemand_Table, Demand_Table | Time-of-use, tiered and flat demand charges, with kVA and hp converted to kW |
| Consumption_Table | Gas energy rate, converted to $/therm from ccf, Mcf, Dth, MMBtu, GJ or MJ |
| ServiceCharge_Table | Fixed monthly charge |
| Energy_Table, OtherCharges_Table | Riders, as per-unit adders or fixed monthly charges |
| Percentages_Table, tax tables | Percentage adders, franchise tax and state tax applied to the right charges |
Check Before You Apply
Every Pull Is Something You Can Audit
A preview before anything changes
Each pull opens a preview: utility and schedule, fixed charge, and the energy and demand periods with their months, weekday and weekend hours, rates and tiers. You apply it only when it looks right.
How each rate was built
A breakdown shows every period's base rate and the final rate after riders, percentage adders and taxes, so you can check the number against the tariff sheet.
Warnings, not silent gaps
If a tariff has something the model does not bill, such as a demand ratchet or a coincident-peak charge, the preview warns you instead of quietly leaving it out.
The raw tables, in Excel
Download the pull as Excel, with one sheet per RateAcuity table plus a summary, the final rates and the warnings. It is a clean audit trail for a client file.
Saved Tariff Library
Set Up a Tariff Once. Use It on Every Project.
Most firms model the same few utilities again and again. Save a tariff to your own library and load it into any project you start later, with one click.
- ✓Save any tariff on the page, whether it came from the built-in rates, OpenEI, RateAcuity or your own typing
- ✓Electricity, natural gas and water tariffs, each saved under a name you choose
- ✓RateAcuity pulls save themselves, labelled with the utility, schedule and effective date
- ✓Loading a saved RateAcuity tariff on another project does not use another pull
- ✓Rename or delete entries at any time. Your library is private to your account
Saved Tariffs
Example library- RAGasApply
Atlanta Gas Light SGTS3
Atlanta Gas Light · SGTS3 · eff. 2021-12-30 · fixed $80.45/mo
- CustomElectricityApply
Campus TOU from 2025 tariff sheet
3 energy / 2 demand period(s) · fixed $45.00/mo
- CustomWaterApply
City water, commercial
3 tier(s) · fixed $16.06
Edit Anything
Or Type In Your Own Tariff
- ✓Separate editors for electricity energy, electricity demand, natural gas energy, gas demand and water
- ✓Weekday and weekend rates, hours and active months for each period
- ✓Up to 20 periods per section, each with up to 20 usage tiers
- ✓Fixed monthly charges, and demand billed per month, day, hour or 15 minutes
Validated
Billing Checked Against NREL’s SAM
We checked the CogenS™ tariff and metering engine against the NREL System Advisor Model in 174 test scenarios, and all 174 match. The tests cover flat, time-of-use, tiered and demand charges, multi-year escalation, and net metering from NEM 1.0 to NEM 3.0.
Read the validation reportNeed an API integration for your tariff database partner?
If your team already uses a tariff database, we can connect it to CogenS™ the same way we connected RateAcuity: pull, parse, preview, apply. Get in touch to explore a custom API integration.
Run Your Next Study on the Real Tariff
Built-in rates and OpenEI come with every plan, including the free tier. Model your first two projects free, with no time limit and no credit card.