La Joconde

Does anyone know what is the strongest domestic voltage available to support electric heaters and normal other domestic appliances, bearing in mind that I dont understand much about electricity matters. Advice very welcome.

EsuriJohn

Hi La Jaconde,

Yes it is clear that you don't understand much about electricity. Domestic electricity in Spain comes at just one "strength" 220 volts. It is regulated by European Law to be between 210 and 250 volts and is allowed to fluctuate within this band. By contrast UK electricity is provided at 240 volts but does fluctuate within the 210-250 volt parameters.

You may be really asking what is the maximum domestic power supply and I cannot answer that but I do know that the charging regime is based on the power demand that you place on the supply.

Power (watts) = Potential (volts) x Current (amps)

Heating, Cooking,Washing (Dishes & Clothes) are the big power users, Lighting and Hi Fi are low power users with TV somewhere in the middle. For commercial applications with high demand you may have to go to a three phase supply but that will be much more expensive.

Regards,

John.

coralsoft

It's also usual for specific properties to be set with an upper limit associated with the pricing band of their supplier. Get a higher limit (to run more equipment at the same time) and you pay slightly more for electricity. The limits set are sealed into the unit where the supply goes into the fusebox and electricians are not supposed to set it higher without officially doing it, so that the supplier can put you on the higher tariff. Oh, no, sirree.

cindyp

Sound to me like we are talking 'potencia'. We have a house which is rented as a holiday house - originally we had a potencia of 4.4 but we found that if you had the cooker, washing machine, lighting and other appliances on, a further one (ie microwave) sometimes made the circuit pop and everything was plunged into darkness. We were concerned that if we had a winter let, that with the heaters as well it would be really annoying as it would be likely to happen more often. So my husband worked out that an 8.8 potentia ought to be sufficient. You can have a potential of up to 15 I think for the first band of tariffs. The potentia affects the standing charge, the higher the potentia the higher your standing charge, but it's not enough difference to really worry about. The charging rate for consumption remains the same up to 15, not sure if it increases after that.

You do have to get Endessa to agree it because as coralsoft says, there is a limiter built into the fuses box for the potentia agreed. Once Endessa agree it an electrician can come and put in a bigger limiter for your new potentia. We have just increased the potentia on our supply - can't remember how much it cost to do it and we had to get our lawyers office to deal with it as they are in touch with Endessa all the time, and we needed a spanish speaker to arrange it for us as we could never get through to an english speaker on Endessa's international line.

hope this helps.

EsuriJohn

Hi Cindyp,

I think you have just answered the first question. It looks as though La Jaconda needs to set the "Potencia" to match the demand that she thinks she will place on the supply. From what you say "the Builders" left to their own devices set a low limit perhaps to reduce costs. Experience shows that with all the labour saving devices we have these days and the cool winter evenings you do need to have more.

One other factor will come into play at this stage and that is the rating of the cables that the house was originally wired up with. If it is modern built to EU electric regs there should be no problem for domestic use but older properties may be limited by the capacity of the house wiring.

Regards,

John.