Spain's obsession with saving electricity: power meters and solar showers

The obsession with saving electricity: power meters, solar showers and switching off even the standby

Saving on the electricity bill can become an obsession that pushes people to extremes that are hard to justify. With interest rates rising and power prices through the roof, some people decide to tackle the problem in a drastic way: cutting consumption at all costs. And there is no shortage of ideas, from cutting off the building's shared supply cable to showering in cold water every other day.

But others prefer to do their homework with data. A consumption monitor costing less than 20 euros tells you exactly what each appliance uses. The surprise can be huge: an electric water heater in standby mode uses barely 0.5 watts, but its heating peak reaches 1,152.3 watts. A low-end computer with screen and router runs between 60 and 90 watts, while a more powerful machine can exceed 200.

The alternative to the electric water heater is the solar shower. In winter, with sun, it delivers "almost hot" water; in summer, it can actually burn you. And for the most radical, nothing beats switching off the breaker when leaving home and leaving only the fridge and the boiler running. Whether this approach pays off depends on each household, but the fact is that more and more people are sharing their measurements and tricks.

Electrical extreme frugality is here to stay as long as prices remain high. But not everything sold as saving really is. The night tariff, for example, seems more of a headache than a solution when you have appliances like the fridge plugged in 24 hours a day.

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