Spain's gas bills soar: €380 for 15 hours of heating

Gas bills soar: €380 to keep a flat at 23 degrees

Paying €380 every two months for natural gas is not a scam. With the numbers laid out, it is the price of keeping the heating on 15 hours a day at 22 or 23 degrees in a 90-square-metre flat. The case, raised by a user who had been paying around €220 in winter, has triggered a cascade of responses ranging from pure arithmetic to settling scores with the State. And the majority diagnosis is uncomfortable: the consumption is what it is.

The affected person's anger is not aimed only at the utility company. Much of his fury is directed at the tax authorities: he claims that of those €380, more than €200 goes to the State to fund, he says, "useless motorways" and airports with two passengers a month. The most common reply in the exchange is a variation of the classic: if you have been in short sleeves all winter, now it's time to pay for it.

What it really costs to heat a 90-square-metre flat

The most painful comparison comes from another case: a poorly insulated single-family home with a boiler over 15 years old went from €500 to €880 in the same period. The pattern repeats. Someone living in a 100-square-metre attic flat in an inland village, with the thermostat between 16 and 18.5 degrees, pays €165. Someone with a 105-square-metre flat who is cold, with the bedroom at 12 degrees, gets a €210 bill. The conclusion is clear: comfort has a perfectly measurable price.

The calculation most often repeated by those in the know is simple: every extra degree and every extra hour shows up on the bill. Lowering the boiler from 70 to 60 degrees cuts consumption by around 5% for every five degrees less. A programmable thermostat that switches the heating off at night and turns it on only when someone is home is, according to several accounts, the measure that saves the most without touching the installation.

The tariff mistake: paying the 3.1 rate while consuming like a 3.2

Here comes the juiciest piece of information in the exchange. One user breaks down the gas tariffs and points out that anyone consuming more than 5,000 kWh a year should not be on the 3.1 tariff, but on the 3.2 or even the 3.3. The price difference per kilowatt-hour is significant: €0.058 on the 3.1 versus €0.050 on the 3.2. For an annual consumption of 11,752 kWh, that means going from €681 to €587, more than €100 in savings before taxes.

The problem, according to the same analysis, is that many companies keep customers on the old tariff out of inertia. Requesting the change is free and can be done over the phone, although the experience of those who have tried it is hardly encouraging: "They kept telling me a study of my situation had been peine," says one affected customer who ended up asking for an incident reference number. A retroactive claim, he adds, is practically impossible.

Insulating the home: from the garage door to the window seal

The other major block of responses points to the building envelope. Replacing the front door and sealing the garage door can gain three or four degrees throughout the house, according to one account. The author of the original post admits he felt cold air through the gap in his door and has a sliding glass door with worn brushes. The cheapest solution mentioned: sealing tape and checking the seals.

Double-glazed windows cost between €150 and €200 at a DIY store, according to one of the replies. The investment pays off if the home is poorly insulated, but there is an uncomfortable consensus: there is no point spending on insulation if you then air out the flat for four hours in the middle of winter. Ten minutes is enough. The author himself admits the mistake and announces he is cutting ventilation to one hour at most.

Butane, firewood and the return of the cold house

The most frequently repeated alternative is to abandon natural gas. A butane heater running from 8 p.m. to midnight costs about €20 a month. Another user says that after receiving a €2,500 bill, she paid up, cancelled her contract and bought a heater: "A godsend." Firewood, for those with a fireplace, is another way out.

Behind the exchange lies a broader debate about Spain's energy model. Some argue the problem is not individual consumption but prices that do not match wages. Others point out that the neighbours' heating warms for free: a student in Valladolid who went an entire winter without switching his on still received a €500 bill, probably due to badly calculated estimated readings.

Estimated readings are precisely another of the usual suspects. In the €880 case, the previous bill had been €60 and estimated, which spreads the blow over several months. A meter check, if requested, may incur a call-out fee if no anomaly is found.

With all this, the forecast is that bills will remain under pressure as long as the insulation of Spanish housing is left untouched. The individual solution —lowering the temperature, closing radiators, reviewing tariffs— works. The collective one, upgrading the housing stock, remains pending.