Hosted by LF Energy Standards and Specifications (LFESS). Originated by Flux Tailor with NLR collaboration, URPX is developed through open collaboration under LFESS governance.
Every device that charges, heats, stores, or sells electricity makes better decisions when it knows what electricity actually costs. Yet the prices customers pay are still published the way they were decades ago: as PDF tariff books, statements, and supplements scattered across utility websites. Software that wants to answer one simple question (what does this customer pay for a kilowatt-hour right now?) has to re-read those documents by hand, utility by utility, month by month.
The Utility Rate Plan Exchange (URPX) standard closes that gap: an open source vocabulary for describing and exchanging rate plans in full, machine-readable detail. Today the URPX Working Group is making it public, released at version v0.5.1 at urpx.org and on GitHub.
What URPX describes
URPX is an OWL ontology with SHACL validation shapes and JSON-LD as its exchange format. It models the things utilities actually publish:
- Rate plans as durable identities. A rate plan like Consolidated Edison’s SC 1 Rate I persists for decades while its prices change. URPX separates the identity from the changing content, so references stay stable.
- Publications as sources of truth. Tariff books, monthly statements, supplements, and market price feeds each carry part of a rate plan’s pricing. URPX models each publication and the pricing content it carries, with citations back to the source document, down to individual prices.
- Resolved snapshots with honest coverage. An URPX rate plan version is a self-contained snapshot of everything that applies in a time window, assembled from those publications. Every snapshot carries an explicit coverage claim, what it includes, what it resolved, and with what confidence, so consumers can tell a complete answer from a partial one.
- The full structure of real pricing: time-of-use schedules, seasons, tiers and brackets, eligibility and applicability conditions, demand and energy charges, holiday calendars, and customer and service-point profiles.
Why this matters now
Electrification means software now has to get electricity pricing right. Electric vehicles, heat pumps, batteries, and rooftop solar all shift load, and their value to owners and to the grid depends on when and how usage is priced. Demand flexibility programs, home energy management, bill transparency tools, and utility rate plan analysis all start from the same missing primitive: a trustworthy, machine-readable description of the rate plan. URPX is that primitive, offered as an open standard rather than a proprietary dataset.
“Every connected device on the grid needs to know what electricity costs, and right now that information is locked in PDFs,” said Alex Thornton, Executive Director, LF Energy. “URPX gives the industry a common, machine-readable way to describe rate plans, so the software making decisions about EVs, batteries, and flexible load can get the pricing right. We’re inviting utilities, regulators, and implementers to help shape it.”
An open invitation
URPX is developed in the open under LFESS governance, with biweekly working-group meetings and decisions recorded publicly. The working group welcomes utilities, regulators, researchers, and implementers:
- Read the standard: urpx.org, overview, tutorial, data dictionary, and FAQ
- Explore the source: github.com/urpx-org/urpx, ontology, shapes, test cases, release https://github.com/urpx-org/urpx/releases/tag/v0.5.1
- Join the working group: lists.lfenergy.org/g/urpx-committee
- Subscribe to the mailing list: lists.lfenergy.org/g/urpx-wg
- Learn more: the LF Energy project page
After a year of work, we are ready for a broader group of innovators to test it and help make URPX fit the needs of the whole ecosystem. We invite DER hardware and software companies, energy service providers, utilities, policymakers, consumer advocates, regulators, and academics to join the working group and help build the open standard for what consumers pay for electricity, and why.
FAQ
What is the current release status of URPX? URPX is public at version v0.5.1, developed under LF Energy Standards and Specifications (LFESS) governance.
Where can I access the documentation and source code? The standard, data dictionary, and ontology explorer are at urpx.org; the ontology, SHACL shapes, and test cases are at github.com/urpx-org/urpx.
How do I contribute or join the working group? Submit a request at lists.lfenergy.org/g/urpx-committee, or subscribe to updates at lists.lfenergy.org/g/urpx-wg.
What does a typical implementation look like? The release includes worked test cases built from published Consolidated Edison and Pacific Gas & Electric rate plan filings. Flux Tailor is building the first commercial implementation of URPX, UtiliPub™, a platform for rate plan publication and cost model validation.
Who leads URPX and how is it governed? URPX was originated and is primarily maintained by Flux Tailor with formal NLR collaboration, hosted at LFESS, with working-group meetings and decisions recorded publicly.
About URPX:
URPX (Utility Rate Plan Exchange) is an open standard for machine-readable utility rate plan data, hosted at LF Energy Standards and Specifications (LFESS). Built on W3C semantic web technologies (RDF, OWL, SHACL), it defines a modular ontology and Common Service API for representing utility rate plan structures — from simple flat-rate plans to complex time-of-use and dynamic pricing — with executable cost modeling logic, eligibility rules, and applicability conditions. Initiated by Flux Tailor with collaboration from the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR).
About LF Energy:
LF Energy is the Linux Foundation’s neutral home to build the digital foundation for energy together. We host more than three dozen open source projects used to plan, operate, and modernize energy systems. The portfolio spans from transmission system modeling to substation virtualization, smart meter integration to EV charging. We provide the trust layer: neutral governance, legal frameworks, security practices, and community of practitioners that turn open source software, standards, and data into infrastructure the industry can depend on for decades. Members include utilities, energy companies, vendors, researchers, and technology providers, aligned to deliver affordable, reliable, safe, and clean energy. For more information, please visit lfenergy.org.