We have three electricity connections here, and twenty-five solar panels. Installed years ago, it seemed a nice offer from the EDP – you pay off the installation in five years, and in the meantime, you can immediately start using the solar power.
Electricity is expensive here, so it seemed worth it
The EDP is the former state-owned company; it started the first round of privatization back in 1997, which was completed in 2011. As a result, it has become a commercial company that now faces competition from about twenty electricity enterprises. The infrastructure is currently in the hands of E-redes, which is also a major change.
We have already had experiences with some of the others, of which the one with Endesa is the worst. It seems as if all companies send bills that are as confusing as possible, but Endesa really won the first prize.
It happened that no bill arrived for months, and then suddenly an Enormously High one.
Because you usually authorize a “débito direto” – an automatic payment – years ago, during the high season, I didn’t notice right away that nothing was being debited. It wasn’t until September, with a bill that easily reached two thousand euros, that I got a real shock.
Those days are over now, and the competition has played a significant role in that. Over the years, I’ve learned that you have to be careful – because I conveniently assumed that those companies know what they’re doing, and will send you a bill every month, plus automatically debit it from your account.
The bills are worth studying!
I just received my electricity bill and I believe I paid for the sunlight, the moonlight, the streetlights, the light of my life, the speed of light, the light of the Holy Spirit, and the light at the end of the tunnel.
Daily rate per peculiar cluster, unnamed discounts of a few cents, kilowatt-hour rate (nice Scrabble word, by the way!) with a different VAT percentage … it’s quite a study, but by now I know what to look out for. The daily rate isn’t very important; that is what they call fixed costs over there, I believe.
The kilowatt-hour rate is. That really adds up
Plus, of course, the payments for the solar panels. Do those things actually do anything? They need an inverter and internet. Now that is a bit of a problem, because if the power goes out – which still happens regularly, even if only for a minute or so – and quite often and for long during the previous stormy month, the internet is down too naturally.
We do have a UPS, but that is for emergency backup; that battery can only run for half an hour at most. After the blackout, you have to start pressing tiny buttons in your electrical panel to get things communicating again. It is all very tedious.
The solar power isn’t listed on the bill. And you get absolutely nothing for it – so what you were all so worked up about, that net metering scheme – it doesn’t even exist here at all. I did ask a call center person about it once. She audibly shrugged and said: “You can try … “
(They aren’t allowed to say anything negative at those call centers, you know? That’s not in the script.)
Anyway, we have power again, and despite the outage and the solar panels, I’m still blown away. How is it possible?
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(Disclaimer: I’m a bit tired of the keyword stuff and Google’s dictatorship. So here they are, and I’m also hoping for the cleverness of AI in this matter that it will still be found and read, but that I don’t have to force myself to use the right terms in the title and headings.#electricity #Portugal #solarpannels )
We moved here in 2000 from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to the Termas-da-Azenha, Portugal. We started to rebuild one of portugals cultural heirlooms: Termas-da-Azenha, an old spa.You’ll find mosaics and paintings everywhere.Since Covid we rent the houses for a longer period of time, not as holiday houses anymore.
Each week a little blog about what is happening around us. An easy read. A few minutes in another world. A little about what it going on in Portugal. If you plan your holiday to Portugal, it might be a nice preparation.
In the weekend we publish it on Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.