Public calculator inputs
Values entered into public calculators are processed in your browser and are not intentionally saved by Electric Cost Lab unless you explicitly choose to add information to My Energy.
My Energy account
Cloud saving uses an independent Electric Cost Lab account. We store your email address, display name, password verifier, sign-in methods, security sessions, and timestamps needed to operate and protect the account. Plaintext passwords are not stored. If you choose Google sign-in, Google provides a stable account identifier, verified email, and basic profile name. We do not request Google Drive, contacts, utility, or advertising data.
Home, bill, and usage records
My Energy can store information you submit about a home, utility, electricity bills, billing periods, usage, rates, monthly goals, notes, and energy-saving actions. We use these records to calculate trends, forecasts, comparisons, and a private Monthly Energy Brief. A full street address and utility password are not required. Records are kept in account-scoped structured storage so they can be viewed from another signed-in device.
Uploaded files
You may upload supported bill and home-energy documents such as PDF, CSV, XML, or text files. File metadata is stored with your account and file contents are kept in account-scoped object storage. Files are served as downloads, are not public, and are not used to personalize advertising. Do not upload documents you do not have the right to store.
Your controls
You can remove individual bills and files. Account data export and full deletion controls will be provided within My Energy as the service develops. We retain data only while needed to provide the service, meet security obligations, or resolve abuse and legal requirements.
Approximate location and state preference
To suggest relevant U.S. electricity rates and tools, the site may ask ipwho.is to estimate a visitor’s country and state from their IP address. We use only the returned country and state, do not request precise device location, and do not intentionally store the IP address ourselves. The selected state is saved in the visitor’s browser so it can be changed or reused later.
Analytics choice
On public pages, Google Analytics starts with analytics storage denied. This permits limited, cookieless measurement so we can confirm that pages are being reached without setting analytics cookies. If you select “Allow analytics,” analytics storage is enabled and Microsoft Clarity may provide heatmaps and session recordings with sensitive content masked. Clarity does not load before that choice.
Neither analytics service is loaded or sent events in My Energy, sign-in, or registration. We do not send calculator values, bill amounts, kWh, rates, filenames, file contents, home profile values, goals, action notes, names, or email addresses to analytics. Advertising storage, ad user data, and ad personalization remain disabled. You can reopen Analytics choices from the footer at any time.
Security and technical data
We use server-validated, expiring sessions, rate limits, account-level ownership checks, and private storage controls. Session tokens are kept in secure, HTTP-only cookies and only token hashes are retained in the account database. No internet service can guarantee absolute security. Our hosting provider may process basic technical logs needed for security and delivery, such as IP address, browser type, requested page, and time of access.
Advertising and sharing
We do not sell My Energy records or provide bill, home, file, or account values to advertising systems. If advertising is enabled on public pages, it will use separate consent controls and will not receive My Energy inputs.
Outbound links
Links to government agencies and other third-party sites are governed by the privacy policies of those services.
Contact
Privacy questions and deletion requests can be sent to privacy@electriccostlab.com.