How your electricity bill is now calculated in Spain
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By h.b. - Feb 11, 2009 - 6:15 PM
A new monthly billing procedure has seen many people faced with a far higher bill than normal at the start of 2009

Following literally thousands of complaints from across the country with the introduction of new monthly billing, the power companies have been found to be generally correct in their charges, and it was a series of new circumstances that led many consumers to receive a very low first monthly bill followed by a very high second bill.

Here is how the bills are now calculated as of February 2009, correct for Sevillana-Endesa, but followed in the same way by the other companies across the country.

The new law 1578/2008 allows for monthly bills but two monthly reading of meters, so the first reading is an estimated one, in many cases estimated far lower than expected, followed by the correction introduced with the real reading for the second bill. In the case where the estimated bill was for December, this means that part of many people’s power was charged for at the higher rate in January, although the difference in most cases was only a few cents.

Many consumers are now noticing a new charge for excess use. In fact this was introduced in 2006 by royal decree 809/2006 to penalize those who use what was deemed to be an excessive amount. That is considered to be more than 1300KWh in a two monthly period, with each excessive KWh seeing 0,013 € added, plus IVA.

However, a new regulation published in the Official State Bulletin on June 30 2007 reduced the usage after which the charge would be added to 1100KWh.

Then on December 31 2008 the Official State Bulletin published a new limit from which the surcharge for excess use would be added – cut right back to just 500KWh per month, (when it was 550KWh before) and in addition the charge per extra KWh has been increased from 0.013 € to 0.02839 €, plus IVA, an increase of more than double.

So the lower limit without a surcharge, and the higher surcharge itself have together resulted in many consumers seeing much larger bills at the start of this year.
This is due in part to the way the Ministry of Industry has made these changes which they justify by saying that we should all save power. The measure is also criticised by many for taking no account of the number of people living in the property, in other words a large family and a single person are both given the same amount of power before the excess surcharge kicks in.
Our thanks to the OMIC Consumers Office in Torremolinos for help in the preparation of this information.

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