Iberdrola offer electronic bills - notified via email and online services and also paper copies mailed to you.

Call them up and they will oblige (some of them speak a form of English)

Thanks.
I did try to register on-line, but some of the mandatory fields would not complete.
I shall ring. With their English and my Spanish I shall probably be disconnected!

Has the village only recently been connected to the national grid? Sounds like it from what you say.
As far as I am aware under Spanish consumer law you are legally entitled to demand a bill regardless of payment method.

Having applied to Iberdrola two weeks ago to go on to their two part tarrif I have just received the contract now waiting for me to sign.

Reading thro the contract to the best of my ability I reckon that the charge for my contracted capacity of 9.2kw has gone up from 1.389917 €/kw month to 1.97 €/kw month

The charge will now be for the off peak period (2300hrs - 1200hrs I think) 6.7595 cents €/kwh. and for the peak period it will be 18.7305 cents €/kwh.

The rental of metering equipment was €1.14 not sure whether that will remain the same.

It remains to be seen whether I will make any savings : unsure: if I do go for the off peak system. I now need to look for a water heater that has an on switch for just ordinary daily use and a switch for bath or shower use.

The only ones I'v seen so far are at Leroy Merlin Gandia. If any one has knowledge of any other suppliers in the Gandia, Oliva, Denia area would be much appreciated.

I think the winter hrs are 22.00hrs until 12 noon and summer hrs are 23.00hrs until 13.00hrs means you don't have to change timers. Thats what Endesa give us.

Have you noticed a decent saving on your bill?

Yes but we went for it from the off. The builder did not believe that the tariff existed so he contracted a single tariff and we had to pay €10 to switch back to what we wanted.

We have 13.4kw potencia and use lots of heavy current devices including a large pool pump. Each two month bill has shown more than twice the night units to the day units. We do try to use all heavy power at night rates such as pool pump, dishwasher, immersion heater etc.

I switched about 2 years ago. Our potencia is 9.2kw. Iberdrola's timings are the same as John mentions (and they change when the clocks change). We just make sure that we use heavy duty stuff in the cheap times. I turned our water heater down to low and put it on a timer so that it comes on about 6am, and goes off about 12pm. The water is always hot and we have plenty for two of us, although I might turn it on late afternoon in the summer if we have guests). We were on the standard tariff for two years before we switched, and I would say we save 25%. Our general average usuage split is 35% high tariff and 65% low tariff. This is fairly consistent.

I do all my Iberdrola stuff online, their site's not too difficult to follow. When you call their helpline, if you say "hablo ingles" when they answer they will transfer you to an english speaker, unless there isn't one in, in which case they will normally tell you they'll be there in the afternoon, or next morning. (I think I picked this info up from their site.)

I'd like to increase my potencia from Iberdrola.

i) Is this straightforward?

ii) I'm not permanently in Spain but can arrange to be there if I know an agreed appointment date is reliable. Does anyone have any experience of Iberdrolas likelyhood of turning up on the agreed date?

iii) How much does it cost to upgrade (not the rate, but call out charge etc.)?

Thanks

It is quite straightforward but you will need;

1) A bolletin from a qualified electrician (to check that the wiring can take the extra potencia) - i think

2) Iberdrola will need to check the cables outside your house (samereason as above)

3) Money - it's not that cheap because of the above.

We went from 4.5 to 9.2kw about 6 years ago when we first came to Spain and were charged €150 by an English electrician although we were in a new build with no wiring etc to be checked. He said that was the charge for the bolliton for Iberdrola. Methinks being a bit green then we were maybe ripped off - apologies to him long gone if that was not the case.

Interesting to see the savings made by going on the two part tariff. Have sent off the contract to Iberdrola so will wait now for the meter to be changed. Won't hold my breath tho as a friend has been waiting four weeks after sending his contract in.

Not sure, we used to get our electricity supplied by a company in the next village that is surrounded by huge solar collectors. Then we assume it was taken over by HC Energia about 15 months ago, since that date we have never received any bill whatsover. Up to then like I said, it gave the potencia and how much we had used on our bank statement, now nothing.

Just something else to investigate in March.

thats about right for now, so i would of assumed that it would of been cheaper back then - but it was done and it worked, so its all good

Maybe the Bank has decided not to print these on your statement as a cost cut.
Banks here do virtually nothing for free, just an idea, maybe ask them.

Hello All,

I'm new here to this forum, but you all seem to have a lot of experience with Gesa/Endesa, and maybe you can offer some advice.

I have been living in Mallorca over 4 years now, and my experience with Gesa has been nothing but a nightmare: Constant overcharging, and all the usual stuff.

Not one month goes by that Gesa (endesa) does not attempt to overcharge (often by several hundred euros) for our electricty usage. It is a monthly ritual to read the meter, and then go the the Gesa office, and wait in a queue for over an hour (sometimes up to 3.5 hours) to straighten out about their bill. Gesa has on too many occasions taken as much €500 out of my account for a bill that the meter proves is less than €50. We haven't yet been able to get any of that money back as a refund, so I have advised my bank to block all direct deposits coming from Gesa. We need electricity, though, so I never advised Gesa that we blocked them, and so far it seems to work. I now only pay bills that I have a legitimate, corrected factura for.

ICP
We have a finca, and until the ICP mandate came into effect, we had 50-amp 3 phase service feeding the property. Ther are 3 houses on the property, each being fed by one phase, and of course various water pumps which provide the property with water from a 170-metter deep well, which use 3 phase power, 16 amps, I believe (but we only need to use them once per month).

When we were required to install the ICP, we were offered the installation for free, and 6c per day rental. Fine, I said, yes, please do it.

After months of receiveing threatening letters proclaiming we need to install the ICP immediately or face serious fines, I finally convinced Gesa to install the ICP. They showed up on several occasions, carrying a tiny 15A single-phase circuit breaker, and rapidly giving up trying to install it.

The we were advised that our service would need to be upgraded to 10800 watts (15A 3 phase, which they didn't really explain - I thought it was 10K per phase, but's that's irrelevant now), but there would be a €45 charge for this. I said again, yes, please do it.

Long story short, after the installation, which cut our capacity to a fraction of we previously had, we were charged €291 for the various taxes, permissions, down payments, etc. for the "upgrade", in addition to €40 for the free installation.

I should point out that it's now impossible to run our water pump without tripping the ICP, so I had no choice to wire around it so that we can pump water.

Now we are being charged roughly €20 per month as a baseline for having the "upgraded" potencia, before one cent is charged for usage, which is still monthly charged at astronomical numbers having nothing to do with our meter reading, and which I dispute regularly each month forcing them to send a new factura before I pay it.

We have begun using the online system to enter our actual meter readings, but they are entirely ignored.

Any idea what I should do here? I am really, really tired of this nonsense.

Many thanks for your advice,

Ami