Broker Selected By U.S. Government Agency To Create Searchable Database Of "All" Electricity Rates In The U.S.

CEO: "Consumers In Deregulated Markets Overpay For Electricity Up To 30% Per Year", Or $10 Billion

March 1q, 2020

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Copyright 2010-20 EnergyChoiceMatters.com
Reporting by Paul Ring • ring@energychoicematters.com

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WattBuy, which among other things operates an electricity shopping website (background here), and the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) announced a new project to automatically collect and make public a searchable database of all electricity rates in the U.S.

"This collaboration builds on a successful project last year to catalog electricity utility rates in the 13 states that have deregulated their electricity markets, allowing consumers to choose their electricity providers," the company said

"Consumers in deregulated markets overpay for electricity up to 30% per year per household – that’s nearly $10 billion overall," said Naman Trivedi, CEO of WattBuy. "The absence of a comprehensive data set of electricity price and plan information prevents easy comparisons between providers. We want everyone to have access to the data they need to make informed choices."

The initiative is funded through a grant from Schmidt Futures, which is described as, "a philanthropic initiative co-founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt."

NREL already maintains the Utility Rate Database (URDB), which focuses on the largest 150 electric utilities, constituting approximately 70 percent of the U.S. electricity load. However, this accounts for less than 10 percent of all electricity providers.

WattBuy will create automated processes to collect and maintain all transmission and distribution utility rates nationally. This project has four key components, including creating new APIs, working directly with Public Utility Commissions, applying artificial intelligence to data extraction, and crowdsourcing rates.

NREL will publicly share the utility rate data collected through the URDB (https://openei.org/wiki/Utility_Rate_Database), which is part of the Open Energy Information website (OpenEI).

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