The $1.8M power bill
Three sets of numbers that should have matched, and another customer’s charges on our power bill.
Power is the biggest cost in bitcoin mining. At MARA I oversaw financial operations for 18 sites drawing 1.8 GW, with $516 million a year in energy exposure. Disbursements, power bills included, came to me for first approval before the VP and the CFO, and no payment was missed or duplicated.
A power bill is hard to argue with. The utility works out the total on its side, from meter reads, rates and charges, and what arrives is a number that looks a lot like last month’s. If one of the inputs is wrong, nothing on the page tells you.
The three-way match
I was asked to look into a question about our power bills. To answer it, I built a check no one had run before, putting three records side by side:
- Interval meter data, which records what each site actually drew
- Our internal reporting in DOMO
- The utility’s invoices
Where they disagreed, I traced the difference back to where it started. It turned out to be charges that belonged to an unaffiliated industrial customer, attributed to MARA’s power supply. I documented it until the case held up: $1.8 million in cumulative billing errors, with proof of where they came from. I handed the case off when I left MARA in April 2026.
I also rebuilt the energy-audit procedures for all 18 sites and wrote them down. Each site’s invoices were reviewed and approved the same way after that.
What a gap looks like
| Month | Meter (MWh) | Internal report (MWh) | Invoice (MWh) | Invoice vs. meter |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| March | 41,000 | 41,000 | 41,100 | +0.2% |
| April | 39,400 | 39,400 | 39,500 | +0.3% |
| May | 40,600 | 40,600 | 43,200 | +6.4% |
| June | 38,100 | 38,100 | 40,700 | +6.8% |
| July | 37,200 | 37,200 | 39,800 | +7.0% |
Illustrative numbers; the real figures are MARA’s and stay confidential. A billing error rarely announces itself. It shows up as a steady gap that is easy to read as normal month-to-month noise. When the meter and the internal report agree and the invoice doesn’t, the invoice is the place to start digging.
Questions about this work? Email me at jlraney99@gmail.com.