RALS is a machine-readable standard for renewable energy asset listings, enabling AI-driven discovery and evaluation while preserving deal confidentiality.
It defines a vendor-neutral YAML format that sellers and M&A advisors host on their own domains, so that buyer agents — including LLM-based systems acting for institutional investors — can discover, parse, and pre-qualify utility-scale renewable assets without proprietary data rooms or bespoke spreadsheet templates.
A public Teaser Profile is what any agent can read without authentication. Sensitive fields are filtered out server-side:
rals_version: "0.1"
identity:
asset_name: "Iberian Solar Opportunity" # anonymized
asset_type: solar_pv
lifecycle_stage: operating
country: ES
region: "Castilla-La Mancha"
total_capacity_mw_ac: 87.5
total_capacity_mw_dc: 105.0
transaction_type: full_acquisition
technical:
commissioning_date: "2023-09-15"
production_estimates:
methodology: "PVsyst v7.4, third-party yield assessment"
grid_offtake:
offtake_structure: hybrid
process:
process_type: limited_auction
process_timeline:
non_binding_offers_due: "2026-07-15"
access_endpoint: "https://advisor.example.com/.well-known/rals/auth"The corresponding Full Profile — production numbers, financials, debt structure, permits — is reachable only after NDA, via the authentication flow in Section 12 of the spec. Every field carries a confidentiality tier: public, nda_required, or final_shortlist.
v0.1 — Working Draft. This is an early public draft published for comment. Breaking changes are expected between v0.1 and v1.0. Implementations of v0.1 should declare rals_version: "0.1" and be prepared to migrate.
The roadmap toward v0.2 is consolidated in RFC-0002.
- Discovery. A RALS document lives at a well-known URL (
/.well-known/rals.yaml), is referenced from an HTML<link>tag, or is submitted to the optional public registry. - Two-tier confidentiality. Renewable-asset transactions are confidential by default. The well-known URL serves only the Teaser Profile; the Full Profile sits behind an OAuth 2.0–style access endpoint that releases data after NDA.
- Bring-your-own-data-room. RALS does not replace Drooms, Datasite, or Intralinks. It is the structured index that points into them.
- Seven sections.
identity,technical,grid_offtake,financials,compliance,operating_history,process.
RALS Jurisdiction Packages extend the base standard with country-specific interpretation, evidence requirements, readiness rules, and risk taxonomies. A validator equipped with a Jurisdiction Package can assess not just whether a RALS document is structurally valid, but whether it meets the evidence standards required for a specific readiness level in a specific country.
Initial packages are available for Austria, Italy, Romania, Ukraine, Germany, Vietnam, Namibia, Georgia, and Chile.
- →
jurisdictions/README.md— Package overview, validator workflow, and supported countries - →
docs/rfcs/RFC-0003-jurisdiction-packages.md— Design rationale and formal specification
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
SPEC.md |
The normative specification (v0.1). |
schema/ |
JSON Schema for validation. |
examples/ |
Six complete reference documents plus invalid cases. |
jurisdictions/ |
Jurisdiction Packages (AT, IT, RO, UA, DE, VN, NA, GE, CL). |
reference/ |
Reference validator, parsers, and auth-server. |
discovery/ |
Discovery and authentication mechanism specs. |
docs/ |
Quickstarts, glossary, compliance mappings, and RFCs. |
rfcs/ |
Design RFCs, including the v0.2 roadmap. |
tests/ |
Conformance test suite. |
- Sellers: translate an existing Information Memorandum into a RALS file —
docs/quickstart-seller.md. - Buyer-agent implementers: crawl, authenticate, and audit-log —
docs/quickstart-buyer-agent.md. - M&A advisors: fit RALS into a process letter —
docs/quickstart-advisor.md. - New to renewable-asset M&A? Start with
docs/industry-context.md.
To validate a document locally:
cd reference/validator
npm install
node src/cli.js ../../examples/project-helios-pv-spain.rals.yaml --level=3RALS is developed in the open. Anyone may file an issue, propose an RFC, contribute an example, or submit a compliance mapping for a new jurisdiction. See CONTRIBUTING.md.
Governance is documented honestly in GOVERNANCE.md: RALS currently operates under a single-editor (BDFL) model with an explicit, pre-committed path to a Steering Committee once the standard has independent adopters.
- Specification and documentation: CC BY 4.0 — see
LICENSE. - Reference implementations and code: MIT — see
LICENSE-CODE.
Misconfigured tier filtering — a server leaking nda_required or final_shortlist data into a Teaser — is treated as a high-severity vulnerability. Disclosure process: SECURITY.md.