Cutting your electricity bill on the Costa Blanca

The Spanish electricity bill is an unpleasant surprise for a lot of northern Europeans, and usually not because they use a lot. It is built differently from the one at home: there is a fixed part that keeps running while the house stands empty, the price per kilowatt hour changes by the hour of the day, and the taxes have already changed three times this year. Below is what genuinely makes a difference, in order of how much it saves, and what to make of those adverts promising seventy per cent off.

Why the bill works differently here

A Spanish bill has two very different halves, and people who do not know that end up saving on the wrong one.

The variable part is what you consume, in kilowatt hours. Everybody understands that one.

The fixed part is the potencia contratada: the power you have contracted, in kilowatts. You pay for it per day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, whether you are there or not. This part has nothing to do with your consumption and everything to do with a number in your contract.

On top of both come an electricity tax, meter rental and VAT. All three scale with the rest, so cutting consumption and contracted power cuts the tax automatically.

VAT is the moving part. It has been at 21 per cent since 1 June 2026, after sitting temporarily at 10 per cent from 22 March to 31 May. A clause existed that would have put the lower rate back automatically in August or September if electricity prices rose far enough. In short: read the percentage off your own bill and do not trust any article, this one included, for a rate that can change quarterly.

The fixed part: where most people overpay

This is the largest and dullest saving available, and almost nobody acts on it.

Plenty of coastal homes are contracted at a power level chosen years ago by a builder or a previous owner, usually generously on the high side. You pay for that every single day. Bring it down from, say, 5.75 kW to 4.6 or 3.45 kW and the fixed part of every future bill drops, permanently.

The rules, and they are favourable:

You may change the contracted power once every twelve months.
Lowering it costs only the derechos de enganche, a regulated charge of about 9 euros, roughly eleven with VAT.
It is done with a phone call or online with your supplier.

A one-off eleven euros against a lower fixed charge on every bill you will ever receive after it. There is little in this article that pays for itself that fast.

How do you know how much you need? Add up what can be running at the same time. The rule of thumb installers use here: an average flat without electric heating often manages on 3.45 kW, while a house with air conditioning, an induction hob and a water heater tends to need 4.6 kW. Set it too low and the breaker trips when everything runs at once. That is annoying rather than dangerous, and it tells you exactly where your limit is.

Note that on PVPC, the regulated tariff, you have two power periods, one for punta and one for valle. You are allowed to set them differently.

The three tariff periods, and what they really save

Since June 2021 every Spanish household pays a different price per kilowatt hour depending on the hour. These are the blocks:

Valle, the cheapest: 00:00 to 08:00 on weekdays, plus the whole weekend and national holidays, around the clock.
Punta, the dearest: 10:00 to 14:00 and 18:00 to 22:00 on weekdays.
Llano, in between: 08:00 to 10:00, 14:00 to 18:00 and 22:00 to 24:00 on weekdays.

The gap is not small. On the regulated tariff valle sits indicatively between 0.04 and 0.08 euros per kilowatt hour, while punta can run three to four times above that.

What that means in practice, and it costs you nothing:

Washing machine, dryer and dishwasher on a delayed start after midnight. Almost every appliance can do it.
Run the pool pump overnight. For anyone with a villa and a pool this is one of the biggest line items of the year.
Let the water heater heat during valle hours.
At weekends the timing does not matter: Saturday and Sunday are valle all day.

A household that shifts only the laundry and the dishwasher will see it on the annual bill. Without buying anything.

Air conditioning: the biggest load, and the cheapest heater you own

On this coast the air conditioner is the single biggest consumer in most homes, in both seasons.

In summer. Every degree lower costs more. The guideline Spain applies to public buildings is 27 degrees for cooling; at home 25 or 26 is comfortable for most people and saves a great deal against 22. Beyond that: let the unit hold a steady temperature instead of switching it on and off, keep windows and doors shut while it runs, and close the shutters on the sunny side during the day. That last one is not a detail in a Spanish house. The persianas are there for a reason.

In winter, and this is the one most often missed here. An air conditioner is a heat pump. In heating mode it delivers several kilowatt hours of heat for every kilowatt hour of electricity, because it moves heat rather than creating it. An electric heater or an oil radiator turns one kilowatt hour into exactly one kilowatt hour of heat.

Put plainly: anyone switching on plug-in heaters in January while an air conditioner hangs on the wall is heating more expensively than they need to. In a Spanish house with poor insulation, and almost all of them have poor insulation, that difference is worth real money every winter.

Maintenance is part of it: clogged filters make a unit work harder for less. Cleaning them twice a year takes fifteen minutes.

The second home that stands empty for ten months

If you do not live here permanently the bill looks very different, and so does the biggest mistake.

At zero consumption you still pay the fixed part, the meter rental and the taxes on top. That ticks along while the house is shut. For an averagely contracted power it adds up over a year to a figure that surprises people the first time they total it.

What you can do about it:

Lower the contracted power to what you genuinely need in the weeks you are here. This is exactly the change from the second section, and for a second home it counts double, because the fixed part is a far bigger share of your annual bill.

Think twice about disconnecting. A baja looks logical, but you lose your supply point and reconnecting costs more than you save, certainly if you want it back in a few years. If you also rent the place out, disconnecting is not an option at all; we covered that separately in the guide to the tourist rental licence.

Unplug the idle loads when you leave. A standby strip, the television, the router, a second fridge sitting half empty. That last one is often the biggest: a fridge keeping a few bottles cold for ten months is pure waste.

Do not leave the water heater running. An electric tank holding two hundred litres at temperature all year for nobody is one of the most expensive habits going.

If you are still working out what a house here costs to own, the broader sum is in our piece on the cost of living on the Costa Blanca.

Solar: what to expect and what not to

Sun is the argument that sells itself here, and yet the pitfalls are in the detail.

What is in its favour: the yield per panel on this coast is higher than in northern Europe, and the moment panels produce most falls right in the hours your air conditioning runs. That is a better match than in a northern climate, where the generation peak and the consumption peak sit far apart.

What you should know alongside it:

Since 2018 there is no levy on self-generation in Spain. That story still circulates and it is no longer true.
Surplus can be offset against your supplier, the compensación de excedéntes. That is not export at the same rate; it settles at a lower price and it cannot take your bill below zero.
Municipalities sometimes discount IBI or the building tax on installation. That varies by town and by year, so ask your own ayuntamiento and do not go on what an installer tells you.
A home battery changes the arithmetic, but it also lengthens the payback.

And the honest caveat: for a second home standing empty ten months a year, solar is considerably less attractive financially, simply because you are not using the power at the moment it is generated. Offsetting the surplus does not close that gap.

If you are still buying, factor the roof into the decision; our buying guide covers what else to look at in a property.

The small stuff: what counts and what does not

This is where a lot of advice goes wrong, because everything that draws power gets lumped together. The difference is how long something runs and how much it pulls while running.

What genuinely counts:

Anything that makes or moves heat: air conditioning, water heater, electric heater, dryer, oven, induction hob.
Anything that runs for hours on end: pool pump, fridge, freezer, underfloor heating.
An old fridge or freezer in the garage. It runs continuously and is often twice as hungry as a new one.

What barely counts:

Switching to LED is sensible, but lighting has become a small item in a modern household. Do it, but do not expect your bill to halve.
Your phone on the charger overnight. Negligible.
Standby on individual gadgets. Not zero, but nothing next to the list above.

The rule of thumb: spend your attention on what heats or cools, and on what never switches off. The rest is noise.

About that seventy per cent

Which brings us to the promise that prompted this article: savings of up to seventy per cent.

We could not verify that figure, which is why it is not in the headline. What a percentage like that usually is: a comparison between the worst imaginable starting point and the best imaginable end point. An all-electric house with a wildly over-contracted power level, an expensive contract, everything running in punta hours and heating done with plug-in radiators, against that same house with lowered power, shifted consumption, the air conditioner used as a heat pump and a roof full of panels.

Can a bill fall by seventy per cent? In that one case, perhaps. But then the largest slice comes from the solar panels, and those cost money first.

What we will say: the measures in this article that cost nothing, meaning lowering the contracted power for eleven euros, shifting consumption into valle hours, using the air conditioner for heating in winter and unplugging idle loads in an empty house, add up to a noticeably lower bill. We are not attaching an exact percentage to that, because it depends entirely on where you are starting from.

Anyone promising you a fixed saving percentage without having seen your bill is selling something.

Frequently asked questions

What is potencia contratada? The power in kilowatts you have contracted. You pay for it daily, even at zero consumption.

How often can I change it? Once every twelve months.

What does lowering it cost? Only the derechos de enganche, about 9 euros, roughly eleven with VAT.

When is electricity cheapest? In valle hours: weekdays from 00:00 to 08:00, and all weekend and on national holidays around the clock.

When is it dearest? In punta hours: 10:00 to 14:00 and 18:00 to 22:00 on weekdays.

How big is the difference? Valle sits indicatively between 0.04 and 0.08 euros per kilowatt hour on the regulated tariff; punta can be three to four times higher.

How much VAT is on electricity? 21 per cent again since 1 June 2026, after a temporary 10 per cent from 22 March to 31 May. Check it on your own bill, because it has changed more than once this year.

Is an air conditioner cheaper than an electric heater? Yes, considerably. It moves heat and delivers more heat than the electricity it uses; a heater does not.

Should I disconnect when away for months? Usually not. You lose your supply point and reconnecting costs more. Lower the contracted power instead.

Does the sun tax still exist? No, it was abolished in 2018.

Can I really save seventy per cent? We could not verify that number. The free measures together save noticeably; percentages like that usually assume solar panels as well.

About the authorLeonie

Leonie lives on the Costa Blanca. She writes about daily life on the coast: the markets, the walks and everything you only discover once you actually live here.