Can AI read my electricity bill accurately enough for a carbon report?
Yes for the figure that matters, the kWh billed, provided the reading is checked rather than trusted. A carbon report needs units consumed and the billing period. Good systems read these into fixed fields, leave a field empty when it is unclear, and flag it, so a person checks the few doubtful bills instead of all of them.
What a carbon report needs from the bill
- Units consumed in kWh. This is the activity data in the GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance.
- The billing period, so units land in the right month and year.
- Tariff category and sanctioned load, useful context for checks but not part of the calculation.
- Nothing personal. Consumer name, address, phone, and consumer, account or meter numbers are not needed for emissions.
Where reading goes wrong on Indian bills
- kVAh billing. Many HT and some LT bills charge in kVAh. kVAh is not kWh, so a grid factor in kg CO2 per kWh cannot be applied to it.
- Multiplying factor. On CT-operated meters, units = (current reading minus previous reading) x the multiplying factor. Reading the meter difference without it understates use.
- Net metering. Export and import columns sit side by side; only imported units are grid consumption.
- Arrears and revised bills. An adjustment for past months can be read as this month's use.
- Poor scans and handwritten bills, where digits are genuinely unreadable.
How to check the reading yourself
- Recompute units from the meter readings and multiplying factor, and compare with units billed.
- Compare with the same month last year. A jump of several times usually means a misread decimal or a kVAh line.
- Check that the billing period does not overlap the previous bill.
- Keep the bill file with the figure so an auditor can repeat your check.
Why there is no single accuracy percentage
Accuracy depends on the bill format, scan quality and discom. A published percentage from one test set says little about your bills. What an auditor relies on is that each figure traces to the page it came from, that unclear fields are marked rather than guessed, and that the arithmetic can be recomputed.
Worked check: one HT bill
- Previous reading 45,210, current reading 48,390, multiplying factor 10
- (48,390 minus 45,210) x 10 = 3,180 x 10 = 31,800 kWh, matching units billed
- 31,800 x 0.710 kg CO2 per kWh = 22,578 kg CO2, about 22.6 t for the month
Had the multiplying factor been missed, the figure would read 3,180 kWh and the emissions would be ten times too low.
What Senseible does here
Senseible reads the billing period, tariff category, sanctioned load and units at temperature 0 into a fixed schema; an unclear field is left empty and a low-confidence read is penalised in the rule checks. It does not extract personal details, does not apply a grid factor to kVAh lines and does not count net-metered exports as consumption. It publishes no accuracy percentage.
Sources: GHG Protocol Scope 2 Guidance
Last reviewed 2026-10-15.