A PRESSURE POINTS reader tool
See what changed. Test what a promise actually saves. Separate the electricity you used from the price you paid, then put the promise through the arithmetic.
Illustrative example — replace with your numbers
"Use my numbers" empties the example values and leaves them empty — it never substitutes a value for something you typed. Your entries survive moving between the three steps. "Reset" clears everything.
Copies the tool address with the current step. Never your entries.
Step 01
Use current service charges, not a prior balance or the total amount due. Match the same service and rate plan. Don't type an account number, address or name — this tool has no field for them and no way to send them.
Blended cost, including charges; not your tariff rate.
Blended cost, including charges; not your tariff rate.
Two separate scales are drawn as two separate rows on purpose. Putting dollars and kilowatt-hours on one pair of axes would suggest one caused the other.
| Measure | Earlier bill | Later bill | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Billing days | 30 | 31 | +1 days |
| Electricity used (kWh) | 900 | 1,100 | 200 |
| Current service charges | $150.00 | $180.00 | $30.00 |
| Use per day (kWh) | 30.0000 | 35.4839 | +18.3% |
| Charges per billing day | $5.00 | $5.81 | +16.1% |
| Blended billed cost (¢/kWh) | 16.667 | 16.364 | — |
| Reading type | Actual | Actual | — |
Between these two bills the quantity of electricity moved from 30.00 kWh a day to 35.48 kWh a day, the period length changed by 1 day, and the blended billed cost per kilowatt-hour went from 16.667¢ per kWh to 16.364¢ per kWh. Those are three separate things. This arithmetic separates them; it does not say which one caused the change in your charges.
The two periods are different lengths, so the totals are not directly comparable. Compare the per-day figures.
Weather, occupancy, equipment, plan changes and adjustments can also matter. Nothing on this page shows that your utility made a mistake; it shows what the numbers on two bills do and don't explain.
Step 02
A percentage is only as big as the thing it applies to. Put the promise next to the part of the bill it actually covers.
S = E × r ÷ 100 = $120.00 × 10.0% = $12.00
Modeled total = B − S = $200.00 − $12.00 = $188.00
Whole-bill reduction = 100 × S ÷ B = 6.0%
| Part of the bill | Dollars | Share of whole |
|---|---|---|
| Covered by the claim (E) | $120.00 | 60.0% |
| Modeled reduction (S) | $12.00 | 6.0% |
| Not covered (B − E) | $80.00 | 40.0% |
| Whole current-service amount (B) | $200.00 | 100.0% |
This is an illustrative model at unchanged usage. You have to identify which charge the promised reduction actually covers — a claim about one rate is not automatically a cut to every charge on the bill. Taxes, riders and billing treatment can change. This is not a utility quote and not a prediction about any pending case.
A lower rate applied to more kilowatt-hours can still be a bigger bill. This is the arithmetic of that sentence.
Above this much extra use, the modeled total is higher than where it started.
Modeled total = F + V × (1 − r ÷ 100) × (1 + u ÷ 100)
= $40.00 + $160.00 × (1 − 0.1000) × (1 + 0.1500) = $205.60
The line is clipped to −50% through +100% for legibility only; you can still type anything from −100% to 300%.
| Change in use | Modeled total | Against starting total |
|---|---|---|
| -50% | $112.00 | -$88.00 |
| -25% | $148.00 | -$52.00 |
| 0% | $184.00 | -$16.00 |
| +25% | $220.00 | $20.00 |
| +50% | $256.00 | $56.00 |
| +75% | $292.00 | $92.00 |
| +100% | $328.00 | $128.00 |
Assumptions, and they matter: all usage-linked charges are treated as scaling evenly with use and with the reduction; charges held constant stay constant; there is no recalculation of tiers, riders, taxes or effective dates. This is a model of one sentence of arithmetic, not your actual future bill.
This tool holds no utility's tariffs or rates. Every number above comes from the boxes you filled in.
Step 03
The arithmetic above narrows things down; it doesn't settle them. These are the questions that a bill and a press release can't answer on their own. Keep the ones you want, add your own note, and take them to the utility, the regulator, or your own records. Nothing here is sent anywhere.
Dates, meter numbers on your own copy, who you spoke with. Stays in this page unless you print or download.
Your numbers stay in this page. We don't upload your bill.
What you type is held in the page's memory only. It is not written to the address bar, to browser storage, to analytics, or to any request over the network. Switching between the three steps keeps your values; Reset clears them. Printing or downloading makes a copy on your own device, and only when you ask for it. That is a statement about this tool's own behaviour — it isn't a claim about the ordinary request logs any web host keeps.
Uses your browser's own print dialog, where you can choose "Save as PDF". The printed sheet is plain black and white and includes all three steps, your entries, the formulas and the assumptions.
A UTF-8 .txt file built in this page: tool version 1.0.0 (2026-09-25), whether the numbers are the illustrative example or yours, any valid results, the formulas and assumptions, and the reading links.
3 questions selected. They appear in the printout and the text summary in the order shown.
Currently showing step Compare two bills.
The reporting behind the tool
This tool came out of reading ordinary household bills line by line and then reading the announcements that claim to change them. Two habits did most of the work. First, separate the electricity used from the price paid, and put both on a per-day basis, because billing periods are not the same length. Second, before believing a percentage, find out how many dollars it applies to — a reduction on one charge is not a reduction on the bill. The tool is nothing more than those two habits written as arithmetic you can run on your own numbers. It holds no utility's tariff, takes no position on any pending case, and reaches no conclusion your own entries don't support.
Sources & method
Every calculation runs at full double precision on the exact values you type. Rounding happens only when a number is shown: dollars to cents, percents to one decimal, per-day use to four decimals, blended cost to three decimals. A displayed total and a displayed difference can therefore each be correct while differing by a fraction of a cent from each other.
When a denominator is zero — no prior charge, no metered use — the answer is printed as Not available. The tool never shows Infinity, never shows NaN, and never substitutes a plausible 0%. Invalid entries are never clamped into range: a blank, negative, non-numeric or out-of-bounds value produces a specific message and the dependent results stay hidden until you fix it.
This is arithmetic on numbers you supply. It is not a bill audit, not a utility quote, and not a forecast. It does not contain any utility's current tariffs or rates, and it makes no assertion about any pending rate case or any tariff now in effect. It cannot show that a bill is wrong, that a rate is unjustified, or that a promised reduction was approved. Savings figures are models under stated assumptions, not guarantees.
Follow the Bill 1.0.0, published 2026-09-25. Questions, corrections and disagreements are welcome: pressurepointsmedia.com/contact.
Open Follow the Bill on its own page — from PRESSURE POINTS Media, reporting by Justin Jenkins.