Sticker shock at the grocery store, insurance bumps, streaming platforms upping their fees — stop us when you've had enough. Right now, many things feel expensive and out of our hands, including our power bills.
In fact, a new national study conducted by the energy services startup Arbor shows that a majority of Americans say they can't rein in their bills because utility rates are outside their control.
Even just understanding what's included in your energy bill every month can feel impossible.
"If you've actually tried to read your power bill — which I don't recommend as bedtime reading — it's hard to read because the words don't really make any sense," said Owen Quinlan, Head of Data at Arbor.
"If you're paying your phone bill, you can at least understand, 'I use this many gigabytes of data, and my plan says I should pay this per gigabyte.' It makes sense. It's intuitive," he said. But understanding your power bill? "This is not intuitive whatsoever."
In an exclusive conversation with The Cool Down, Quinlan contextualizes the new survey and walks us through how we can take back control of our energy bills.
👀 More surprising results from the national survey
The Arbor survey was conducted in early 2025 among 500 adults across the U.S. who are responsible for paying or contributing to their household's electricity bill. Do any of the following results resonate with your experience?
In addition to a majority of Americans saying they're worried about being able to afford their power bills this year, 41% of respondents say they've actually lost sleep over high electricity costs — with 12% frequently losing sleep because of this. So if you're counting sheep more often these days, you're not alone.
Why are power bills getting higher and higher?
Quinlan and Arbor's Chief Commercial Officer Zac Lowder explained it's because of a variety of factors all coming together at once — including aging grid infrastructure, increased demand because of data centers and changing demographics, as well as extreme weather events that strain the grid. All of these factors trickle down to higher electricity bills for everyday consumers.
The good news is that "regardless of the underlying market environment," Lowder told us, "Arbor is focused on helping consumers navigate these complex markets by finding them better energy rates." More on that below.
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Every day 😥 💪 Recs on how to take back control of your energy bills
Step 1: Tackle energy efficiencies in your home. The cheapest energy is the energy you don't use, so try quick fixes like installing LED lightbulbs, washing clothes on cold, and unplugging energy "vampires". Plus, weatherizing your home could save you nearly $300 a year on energy costs.
Step 2: Stay up to date and share the info. A lot of the time a sky-high bill feels like it comes out of the blue, but Quinlan explained that "the price that you pay for electricity is decided at your state level … and it's decided well in advance … potentially 12, 24 months in advance of when they're actually going to hit."
Following along with your local energy news can help you stay ahead of any major surges. And because this info isn't usually front page material, sharing it with friends and family is always a good idea too.
Step 3: Make sure you're not on a scammy rate. If you live in a state with a competitive energy market (like Ohio, New York, New Jersey, or Maryland), you technically have the option to choose a third-party provider instead of the default utility service. Quinlan told us that while this optionality can sometimes be great, there's more often than not a lot of fine print that sucks users into sky-high rates.
"We've switched people off of rates that were in the 50, 60 cents [per kilowatt hour range] to the ballpark 10-cent range," Quinlan said. "That's a 40-cent delta. If an average home is in the range of 1,000 kilowatt hours a month, that's $400 in one month just from getting off of that awful, awful rate."
💸 How Arbor is helping people slash their energy bills
Arbor's free service launched a few years ago to counter all the fine print around energy pricing and electrical bills — the team's goal is to simplify the process to help people automatically lower their energy bill on an ongoing basis. Arbor reports saving many customers nearly $600 every year, without any interruptions in power or even change of utility provider.
Users in 12 states and Washington, D.C., can currently take advantage of this free energy rate service (see the full state list here).
"We do the math to help you," Quinlan explained. "If you think about your bill, there's three main components … the supply of the electricity that you consume (where it came from and somebody had to make it), the delivery of it going from the place where it was made to your house, and then taxes and fees."
Arbor doesn't mess with electrical delivery, and it can't do anything about taxes. But its secret sauce is figuring out how to find the best ongoing rates on the supply side.
"We find [plans] that are at a lower rate than what you have been paying historically, or what the default utility service is, or what you might have already signed up for from a different third-party supplier," Quinlan said. "We compare that against the ones that we have available from our network of suppliers, and we pick the one that's going to save you the most money."
So while understanding energy markets or even your own power bill might feel impossible these days, startups like Arbor are helping simplify the process and save users hundreds of dollars off their energy bills — all without losing any sleep over it.
"We try to help make that clear to people by simplifying what we actually talk about," Quinlan said.
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