Electricity suppliers for Tormos

We don’t live in Tormos but the principle will be the same.

Iberdrola is the main electricity company; there are other smaller players, but from what I read, the saving isn’t necessarily huge when compared with some of the Iberdrola contracts.

All houses in Spain have a capped supply, unlike UK where you can connect whatever you want to your domestic supply - within reason!!! The main supply alternatives are usually 3.5 kw or 5.75 kw. Depending on the supply rating will be the daily standing charge for supply, plus usage charges. Most people seem to opt for Iberdrola’s night tariff which operates different cheaper prices between roughly 11 pm to midday and then almost double for the rest of the day. So do your laundry overnight!!!! Many smaller houses only have 3.5 rating, this can be increased but Iberdrola will want a certificate from a qualified electrician to say that the wiring can take it.

Iberdrola have several different choices of contract - you can look at it all on their website, which offers several different language alternatives.

Solar power: like UK, this was made very attractive up until recently by govt subsidies. However, some friends of ours who have just moved after 20 years in the campo with solar installations, investigated the possibility of using solar again, which would’ve required a complete installation of everything required to make it function. They said the current cost was ludicrous and any possible savings would have had a very long payback period which they could not possibly have justified in capital expenditure, as the subsidy has ceased.

Our house, due to being way out in the campo, is totally electric, we have underfloor heating - the water kind, not electric mats! We also have a wood burning stove. We also have electric water heating. Both the underfloor and the water heating have separate external heat exchangers running the systems. To be honest, yes, it costs money; however, we used the underfloor heating - which is miraculous! -  last winter as our house is very cold and the cost wasn’t ruinous. We also have the advantage of not having to have any messing about with gas bottles and so forth. We also cook by electricity, run dishwasher, washing machine, computer and iPads, which seem to be permanently on charge! - mobile phones/TV, all satellite, we have no landline here - and all the usual things of modern life. We are probably a little careless with usage, but try not to run aircon for example and remember to switch off lights etc, and our last bill was around 75 eu. That’s it, no gas on top of that.

Water costs seem to be equivalent to UK - round about 35 eu every couple of months or so, excluding anything like filling swimming pools! Or leaks, which we have had!!!

Hope this helps a little.

Thank you so much for great info!

Found it extremely helpful, solar power out of the equation ! Too onerous to take up all floors for under floor heating, guess it’s the open fire 🔥 and cardies on in winter 😳 and look at electric heating installation, what set up did you go for, assuming on only at night for cheap rate ?

Like the idea of electric cooking too, those gas bottles are a pain & heavy too! 😘

This type of underfloor heating is installed at construction stage, not retrospectively due to immense hassle!!!!

We only have the u/f downstairs and the bedroom is freezing so we invested in one of those thermostatically controlled Norwegian electric wall heaters, which effectively one programs to throw out heat at required times and which remain at very low level at other times. It made a huge difference to comfort and I would recommend them over the ‘standard’ type of electric wall rads. They do several versions I believe . I also understand that if one has the heat exchanger type of heating units indoors (much smaller than our huge outdoor machinery!) they are also quite economical to run.

I also have an induction electric hob, which yes, is dearer to buy, but very efficient and reacts very much like gas to control. 

RE gas _ you can of course have what my mother has, which is an external installation of industrial size bottles for water heating and so on - the bottles are changed over easily by a control mechanism and the delivery guy ‘changes’ and moves them. Or other people here have huge gas’tanks’ for heating/hot water/ cooking etc. They are supplied ‘free’, but every few years have to be cleaned out and recertification as safe for use.

We have Iberdrola’s nighttime plan - this doesn’t mean that we only use it at night - we use it normally, but I just try to run w/machine, d/washer and that kind of thing during the cheap period. It doesn\t help at all with cooking as we mainly eat in the evng, but one has to balance ‘living’ against ‘economy’!