Openei Urdb MCP Server

@pipeworx/openei-urdb

NREL's Utility Rate Database (URDB) — US electricity tariffs: residential, commercial and industrial rate schedules with their energy charges by tier and time-of-use period, demand charges, fixed monthly charges, net-metering treatment and effective dates, keyed to the utility's EIA id.

Part of Pipeworx — an MCP gateway connecting AI agents to 1683+ live data sources.

Tools

• urdb_search_rates(address? | latitude+longitude | utility | eia_id, sector?, detail?, approved_only?, limit?, offset?, _apiKey?) — search tariffs.
• urdb_rate_detail(label, _apiKey?) — the full structure of one tariff, including the 12x24 month-by-hour period schedules a bill calculation needs.
• urdb_utilities_for_location(address? | latitude+longitude | filter, _apiKey?) — which utilities serve a location, with tariff counts and how many are current.

Auth

The OpenEI API takes an api_key. NREL's public DEMO_KEY is accepted and returns real rows (verified 2026-09-17), so this pack works with no configuration at a low rate limit — it is not a gated pack.

Callers who exceed the DEMO_KEY limit pass their own free NREL key as _apiKey. Free key: https://developer.nrel.gov/signup/

A platform key would be read from the injected _platformKey argument (PLATFORM_NREL_KEY). It is not declared as platformKeyEnv in the pack manifest and must not be until the secret actually exists: the gateway is at Cloudflare's 250-text-binding cap, and declaring the flag without the secret would route rate questions to a tool that could only refuse.

Data sources

• https://api.openei.org/utility_rates?version=latest — rate search and detail.
• https://api.openei.org/utility_companies?version=latest — utility name directory.

developer.nrel.gov/api/utility_rates/v3.json was not reachable from our egress on 2026-09-17 (connection failure, not an HTTP error) and is not used.

Traps

Every one of these returns HTTP 200.

• radius silently zeroes a lat/lon search. lat=37.5202&lon=-122.2758 alone returns PG&E rates; the identical call plus &radius=25 returns nothing. This pack never sends it.
• Geographic lookup has real coverage holes. Houston returns zero rates by lat/lon and by ZIP 77002 — Texas retail-choice tariffs are largely absent from URDB. That is a coverage gap, not an error, and the tools say so instead of handing back a bare empty array.
• address is geocoded upstream and works for some ZIPs and not others. When it returns nothing, lat/lon or utility usually works.
• sector combined with address narrowed several queries to zero.
• startdate/enddate are UNIX seconds, and URDB keeps superseded tariffs. A rate whose end date has passed is historical; is_active says so, and the tools warn when every result is superseded.

Quick Start

Add to your MCP client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, etc.):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openei-urdb": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openei-urdb/mcp"
    }
  }
}

What this endpoint actually serves

tools/list at https://gateway.pipeworx.io/openei-urdb/mcp returns the tools in the table above plus the shared Pipeworx meta-tools — ask_pipeworx, discover_tools, search_within, remember/recall and the rest of the gateway-wide set. So the tool count you see is larger than this table: a single-pack endpoint currently lists roughly 30 shared tools alongside the pack's own. The connection's initialize response states its exact scope, and is the authoritative answer for a given day.

This is deliberate, not multiplexing by accident. The meta-tools are what let a scoped connection answer a question this pack does not cover — via ask_pipeworx, which routes across the whole catalog — without you adding a second MCP server. There is currently no way to mount a pack endpoint without them; if the extra schemas cost you more context than the routing is worth, connect to the full gateway once rather than to several pack endpoints.

Or connect to the full Pipeworx gateway to get every pack's tools listed directly, instead of just this one's:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "pipeworx": {
      "url": "https://gateway.pipeworx.io/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Both URLs reach the same gateway and the same 1683+ data sources. The only difference is which pack's tools are listed directly; ask_pipeworx reaches all of them from either one.

No MCP client? Call it over HTTP

curl -X POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/urdb_search_rates \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -d '{"utility":"Pacific Gas & Electric Co","sector":"Residential","limit":5}'

No account needed for the first calls. Inspect any tool: GET https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/urdb_search_rates. Find one: POST https://gateway.pipeworx.io/v1/tools/search_packs with {"query":"..."}.

Standalone (no gateway account)

This package also runs as a local stdio MCP server — no Pipeworx account, no gateway round-trip:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openei-urdb": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@pipeworx/mcp-openei-urdb"]
    }
  }
}

Or run it directly to confirm it starts:

npx -y @pipeworx/mcp-openei-urdb

It speaks MCP over stdin/stdout and answers initialize/tools/list/tools/call for only this pack's tools — none of the shared meta-tools the gateway connection above adds. Same source, same tools, no ask_pipeworx routing.

Using with ask_pipeworx

Instead of calling tools directly, you can ask questions in plain English — this works on the pack endpoint above as well as on the full gateway:

ask_pipeworx({ question: "your question about Openei Urdb data" })

The gateway picks the right tool and fills the arguments automatically.

More

• Docs and guides
• pipeworx.io

License

MIT