Coordinate `priceComponents`, dynamic price and feed-in tariff schemas in CDR Energy with the CSIP-AUS v1.3 price-communication module

[purcell-lab]

Description

The DSB and the DEIP Interoperability Steering Committee are concurrently designing the two schemas through which a price will reach an Australian household:

• CDR Energy carries the retail offer — the contractual shape of the plan a consumer has chosen, published unauthenticated via GET /energy/plans and per-customer via GET /energy/accounts/{accountId}.
• CSIP-AUS v1.3 is being developed by the DER Integration API Technical Working Group (DERIAPITWG) under ARENA's DEIP, and is expected to include a price-communication module alongside the existing Dynamic Operating Envelope (About CSIP-AUS).

A HEMS, a comparator, or an AI agent acting on the consumer's behalf has to read both. If the two schemas decompose price differently — or use different units, different cadences, different sign conventions, or different field names for the same component — every implementer downstream pays a translation cost, and the same offer will be expressed in two divergent shapes. This is the same alignment principle being raised in adjacent forums for CDR Energy and the AEMC's Real-Time Data Access (RTDA) workstream.

This issue asks the DSB to engage formally with the DERIAPITWG so that the CDR Energy plan schema and the CSIP-AUS v1.3 pricing payload converge on:

• a shared decomposition of price into components (wholesale, network, retail, environmental/certs, incentive)
• a shared cadence and sign convention for time-varying and signed prices
• a shared reference shape for dynamic / wholesale-indexed prices

Intention and Value of Change

The audience for both schemas overlaps almost entirely: DNSPs, retailers, inverter/storage OEMs, aggregators, HEMS vendors, comparator sites, ADRs, researchers, and AI agents. Divergence forces every one of them to maintain two mappings of the same retail offer.

Aligning the two schemas now — while CSIP-AUS v1.3 is still in development and the CDR Energy proposals in #722 / #723 / #724 are open — costs little. Aligning them retrospectively after both ship is materially harder.

The public-reference-data framing also matters here: the /energy/plans endpoints are unauthenticated public APIs, and CSIP-AUS is the operational protocol the same household's inverter reads. Both surfaces serve broadly the same data to broadly the same audience, and would benefit from a shared design vocabulary.

Area Affected

• EnergyPlanContract and EnergyPlanContractFull (priceComponents[], see Add priceComponents[] decomposition and dynamicPricing reference to EnergyPlanContract #723)
• EnergyPlanSolarFeedInTariff / proposed timeOfUseFeedInTariff[] (see Add timeOfUseFeedInTariff[] to support time-varying, signed, and BEL-exempt feed-in tariffs (Energex Two-Way Trial use case) #722)
• Any future dynamicPricing reference field (see Add priceComponents[] decomposition and dynamicPricing reference to EnergyPlanContract #723)
• Coordination touch-point: CSIP-AUS v1.3 price-communication module (under development by DERIAPITWG)

Change Proposed

1. Establish a coordination touch-point between the DSB and the DERIAPITWG for the duration of CSIP-AUS v1.3 development, scoped to the design of the price-communication module and its alignment with CDR Energy plan representation.

2. Adopt a shared price-component vocabulary across both schemas. A minimum set that covers known retail constructions in the Australian market would be:

   • WHOLESALE (a wholesale-indexed contribution, e.g. AEMO regional reference price passthrough)
   • NETWORK (DNSP use-of-system charges, including time-of-use and signed export network components — see Energex Two-Way Trial, Ausgrid Project EDITH dynamic network tariffs)
   • RETAIL (retailer margin, environmental certificate costs, hedging, subscription)
   • INCENTIVE (feeder-stress payments, community-battery firming, BEL-exempt rewards)

   With each component carrying value, unit (default c/kWh), sign (import positive, export negative or explicit field), period reference, and an optional methodology or reference URL.

3. Align cadence and sign conventions so that a CSIP-AUS v1.3 price payload and a CDR Energy plan record describe the same retail offer in the same shape. In particular:

   • c/kWh as the canonical unit on both sides
   • Explicit signed values for import and export (no implicit positive-only fields)
   • A common reference for "dynamic" or "wholesale-indexed" — where CDR Energy carries a pointer (see proposed dynamicPricing in Add priceComponents[] decomposition and dynamicPricing reference to EnergyPlanContract #723) and CSIP-AUS carries the live values

4. Document the mapping between the two schemas in DSB guidance so that an implementer of one can verify the equivalent representation in the other.

Related issues

• Add timeOfUseFeedInTariff[] to support time-varying, signed, and BEL-exempt feed-in tariffs (Energex Two-Way Trial use case) #722 — timeOfUseFeedInTariff[] (time-varying, signed, BEL-exempt feed-in)
• Add priceComponents[] decomposition and dynamicPricing reference to EnergyPlanContract #723 — priceComponents[] and dynamicPricing reference
• Guidance for representing wholesale-passthrough retailer plans in CDR Energy (Amber Electric case study) #724 — Guidance for wholesale-passthrough retailer plans (Amber case study)
• Change solarFeedInTariff.startDate/endDate from DateString to MM-DD format to support seasonal tariffs #718 — Seasonal solarFeedInTariff MM-DD format

Public reference points (CSIP-AUS side)

• CSIP-AUS About page — confirms v1.3 scope includes "battery communications and pricing notifications" and that DERIAPITWG sits under the DEIP Interoperability Steering Committee
• SA TS 5573:2025 — current published CSIP-AUS standard (v1.2)
• CSIP-AUS consultation page — where draft v1.3 material is expected to be released for public feedback
• DERIAPITWG contact: csipaus@csipaus.org
• ARENA's CERI Gaps Report (Feb 2026), MI-7 (p. 17): "CSIP-AUS v1.3 proposes a tariff-communication module, but its coverage is partial and pathways for industry uptake remain unclear."