Iberdrola

Yes, you will still pay service charges (standing charges/potencia contratada) if you install solar panels in Spain. While solar energy allows you to cover most, or all, of your energy usage, you remain connected to the grid, resulting in mandatory monthly standing charges, taxes, and potential costs for extra energy. 

• Standing Charges (Potencia): Even if your energy usage is zero, you cannot completely eliminate the fixed monthly fees for being connected to the grid.
• Residual Costs: Expect a residual monthly fee of roughly €20-60 per month, even with a high-performing system.
• Grid Usage Costs: If your panels do not produce enough energy (e.g., at night), you will pay for that electricity.
• Surplus Compensation: You can sell excess energy back to the grid to reduce the total bill, but you cannot eliminate the fixed connection fees.

Some companies have smaller monthly fees than Iberdrola. There are also different power schemes available: fixed, market price etc. The have different fixed fees. See which makes most sense for you.

Consider a battery pack (needs a slightly more expensive inverter) if you want to optimize. Or heat your water during sunny hours only.

Sebastian

At the moment I pay about 50ish a month of  which 5 is for service charge

If you can be 100% confident that you can produce enough power, I can't see any reason that you can't get disconnected from the grid completely.

You need to work out your usage and what you need at worst case.

For info, I have four 450W panels and at best, they've output a maximum of 1400W and 8Kwh in a day. That was on a really sunny day in June in Torre.

On a dull day, it can be way less.

When it was nice and sunny a couple of days back, I was able to output 500W to the house and charge a 2.5Kw Battery. In the summer, I reckon I could charge a 5Kw Battery.

Just to give you an inkling of what you can get.

I'm guessing you'll need about 20 panels and probably 10Kw of storage so you could cope even on a really dull day, but that's pure guesswork on my part.

A quick check of some of my historic data shows the highest daily ever usage (data from Iberdrola goes back to 2021) I've seen is 52kWh in a day. (3 bed house) of which 16kWh were between 10pm and 6am.

I can't envisage going off grid is cost effective to try and accomodate that extreme although you could cut your cloth differently if you were trying to ration usage - in reality, if you went off grid, I'd want some diesel generator as back up so as to be able to cope with a period of prolonged overcast weather.

I doubt most of the properties in and around Torrevieja/Orihuela Costa located in the various urbanisations have sufficient roof space / private garden space to put enough panels in place for sufficient generation.

One of the benefits one might get in the UK if one went "total electric" was that you can remove the gas meter and avoid that standing charge but in Spain where bottled gas is prevalent that's not going to be a benefit.

In the UK, one of my properties has 15 panels and a 10kW battery and the highest generation that has had was around 40kWh in July. Mind you, due to air con not being required for cooling the usage was generally only 1/4 of that with the rest exported at 15p/kWh. It also has gas for hot water/central heating and for the cooker hob whereas in Spain, my place is 100% electric. 

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52 Kwh in a day? Wow. That's mega George.

A water heater runs around 3-3.5 Kw, so I don't know what you were running there? 

I'm intrigued by that.

My immediate guess is that all 4 air con units were running which would rapidly ramp up if on for prolonged periods - a quick google suggests a low end estimate that they use 0.5kw/hour so with 4 on for 16 hours that would be 0.5 x 4 x 16 = 32 kwH. 

(Will have been children/teenagers in the house who don't give a toss about electric usage).

I generally don't use the aircon much at all so at worst case it'd probably be in the teens of usage normally in any 24 hour period and that would likely involve having cooked something in the oven for a prolonged period - although that is now used much less often since procuring an air fryer. 

Ha, tell me about it.

I can imagine all 4 aircons running with the windows open when they're all in the same room, showering every 5 minutes in the hot weather so the boiler's burning it's proverbials off, not knowing how to shut a door or turn a light off and as you say, basically not giving a toss.

All while complaining about our use of the planet's resources (I'm a massive believer in green energy).

Kids eh? Who'd have em? lol.

All I’ll have is 2 panels 1 battery and inverter and that and that will give me enough power to run my house.