Cracking Open the Power Bill Black Box for Angry Ratepayers
Let’s face it—no one has ever liked paying their power bill. That said, for decades it felt like a relatively stable and, dare I say, fair expense. Recently, though, we’ve seen utility rates increase and rank among the top economic concerns for the average American.
With power prices reaching new heights, people are understandably looking for something (or someone) to blame: fat checks paid to utility CEOs, the data center boom, or even whichever politician one might consider most culpable.
A crucial thread in this narrative: The average consumer has long seen their power bill as a black box. They see their power consumption converted to a total cost they must pay, but to them it remains unclear how and why that translates into a given monthly bill. It’s especially perplexing if their consumption habits haven’t changed but their bill has.
In a world where we feel mired in shrinkflation (and even ensh*ttification), paying more for energy when those electrons are identical to what they used to be feels unfair (and we’re not even seeing a reduction in power outages). People feel like they’re being taken advantage of.
The reality is more complicated: Our simple power bills are the end result of a very complex economic (and engineering) machine. To shine a light on all those moving parts, I decided to employ some nifty AI tools.
What I did
I figured if people could see what their dollars are going toward, it might help inform the conversations around rising rates. Inspired by the types of tools that pop up every April to show where your taxes are going, I realized I had never seen such tools for electricity.
I have, however, seen plenty of hype around vibe coding, though I’d never tried it out myself—this felt like the perfect excuse! Thanks to the free-to-use Lovable vibe coding tool, I explained in plain language what I wanted to do:
I want to create a web app that allows someone to select what their power utility is, what their bill total is, and have the app estimate (based on public filings) how much of their money in dollars and cents is going towards each line item on the utility-wide expenses (executive pay, fuel for power plants, etc.)
After a little back-and-forth on which utilities I wanted to include (I landed on ConEd, PG&E, Xcel, Dominion, and ComEd), where to source data (publicly available SEC filings), and some visualization suggestions, we were off to the races.
I also wanted to include a nod to those top sources of customer frustrations we’ve been hearing about in 2026: CEO pay and data centers. I instructed the tool thusly:
I would love to add sections to highlight two hot button topics: 1) Executive Pay and 2) data center related costs. Can you please find a way to incorporate those and calculate relative numbers for them?
With that, Lovable incorporated public resources to estimate these figures, and I was ready to hit publish. The resultant, fully functional app can be found here:
Where does your power bill actually go?
To demonstrate, I grabbed the ConEd bill from an Energy Central colleague. Here’s their bill: