# ELEC Finance — US Electricity Price Feed & Historical Data API

> ELEC Finance operates two products for US wholesale electricity pricing, both accessed via the x402 protocol with USDC settlement — no accounts or API keys.
> $ELEC: a real-time, load-weighted composite price index (USD/MWh), billed by the hour.
> $ELEC Historical: a normalized historical price database across all 12 US ISOs, billed by data volume downloaded.

Last updated: 2026-08-26.

## Which product do you need?

- Need the current or streaming electricity price → use **$ELEC**.
- Need historical electricity price data for backtesting, model training, or research → use **$ELEC Historical**.
- Need both → the two products share the same x402 payment flow and wallet-based access model; you can use both independently.

---

## Product 1: $ELEC (real-time price feed)

$ELEC publishes a single, continuously updated composite index price for US wholesale electricity in USD/MWh. It is load-weighted across major US ISO hub prices, sourced directly from ISO grid-operator data (real-time and day-ahead locational marginal prices), not a proxy or third-party resale. $ELEC is currently live across 7 of 12 US ISO hubs (ERCOT, PJM, CAISO, MISO, NYISO, ISO-NE, SPP) and is expanding to all 12.

Use cases: algorithmic energy trading, real-time risk management, electricity derivatives pricing, energy cost hedging, automated portfolio rebalancing. $ELEC is designed to become a tradeable instrument on exchanges and prediction markets.

### How to access $ELEC (x402 payment flow)

Billed by the hour. Three steps:

1. POST /api/elec/stream/access with your EVM wallet address and desired session window ("1h", "4h", or "24h"). Server returns HTTP 402 with a USDC payment challenge.
2. Complete the on-chain payment using an x402 client library (npm: coinbase/x402 | Python: x402-python). The Coinbase x402 facilitator confirms settlement.
3. Server issues a signed JWT session token. Use it to call the price or stream endpoints for the paid duration.

No registration, no API keys, no invoicing.

### $ELEC endpoints

Base URL: https://api.elec.finance
Full OpenAPI 3.1 spec: https://elec.finance/openapi.json

- `POST /api/elec/stream/access` — initiate x402 payment to obtain a JWT session token (billed by session length: 1h / 4h / 24h).
- `GET /api/elec/price?token=<JWT>` — JSON snapshot of the current $ELEC index price. Best for agents that need a single value without a persistent connection.
- `GET /api/elec/stream?token=<JWT>` — Server-Sent Events (SSE) stream of live price ticks for the duration of the session.
- `GET /api/elec/status` — unauthenticated. Feed health: hubs contributing, is_provisional, last_tick_at.

### $ELEC response schema

```
{
  "feed": {
    "provider": "ELEC",
    "published_at": "2026-08-18T14:05:00.0000Z"
  },
  "elec_index": {
    "price": 44.3021,
    "unit": "USD/MWh",
    "currency": "USD",
    "hubs_included": 7,
    "hubs_total": 12,
    "is_provisional": false
  }
}
```

`is_provisional` is true when fewer than a threshold number of ISO hubs are contributing to the current tick.

---

## Product 2: $ELEC Historical (historical data warehouse)

$ELEC Historical is a normalized database of historical electricity prices spanning all 12 US ISOs. Every ISO publishes historical data in a different format — different fields, units, intervals, file structures. $ELEC Historical translates all of it into one consistent, queryable schema, so an agent can query one API instead of building 12 separate ISO-specific parsers.

Use cases: backtesting trading strategies, training price-forecasting models, academic and market research, building derivative datasets. This is the product built specifically for agents doing research — the historical equivalent of $ELEC's real-time feed.

Status: in active development. $ELEC (the real-time feed) is live today; $ELEC Historical is the current build priority. Check /api/elec/status or contact us for launch timing.

### How $ELEC Historical will be accessed (x402 payment flow)

Billed by data volume, not a flat subscription or session window. The intended flow:

1. POST a query describing the desired ISO(s), date range, and granularity, with your EVM wallet address. Server estimates the resulting data volume and returns HTTP 402 with a USDC payment challenge sized to that volume.
2. Complete the on-chain payment using an x402 client library.
3. Server returns the query result set (or a signed download link for larger pulls).

Small lookups cost little; large historical pulls cost more, in direct proportion to data volume — no subscription required either way.

---

## Agent Integration Notes

For AI agents: use $ELEC's snapshot endpoint (`/api/elec/price`) rather than the SSE stream when you only need a point-in-time value — no persistent connection required. For research tasks, use $ELEC Historical instead of scraping or re-deriving historical prices yourself; the normalization work is already done.

The x402 payment flow is fully automatable for both products. Use the `coinbase/x402` npm package or `x402-python` library — both handle the HTTP 402 challenge, on-chain signing, and token retrieval in a single function call.

## Links

- Website: https://elec.finance
- OpenAPI spec ($ELEC): https://elec.finance/openapi.json
- MCP server card: https://elec.finance/mcp/server-card.json
- Agent manifest: https://elec.finance/.well-known/agents.json
- AI catalog: https://elec.finance/.well-known/ai-catalog.json
- Status page: https://elec.finance/status
- x402 protocol: https://docs.cdp.coinbase.com/x402/
- x402 npm library: https://www.npmjs.com/package/x402
- Contact: sgl@conmodum.co