How Spanish electricity prices work — PVPC explained

If you moved to Spain and your electricity bill says "PVPC" somewhere on it, you're on Spain's regulated tariff — and your price changes every single hour. That's not a glitch. It's how the system is designed.

Here's what's actually going on.

PVPC in one sentence

PVPC = Precio Voluntario para el Pequeño Consumidor ("voluntary price for the small consumer"). It's the regulated tariff set by the Spanish government (via the CNMC, the energy regulator) for households with contracted power below 10 kW. It's only available through a small group of reference suppliers — Curenergía (Iberdrola group), Energía XXI (Endesa group), Comercializador de Referencia (Naturgy group), and a few others.

Roughly 3 in 10 Spanish households are on PVPC. The other 70% are on the free market ("mercado libre"), where each supplier sets its own pricing.

The defining feature of PVPC: the price changes every hour. Not by season, not by weekday — by hour.

What you actually pay

Every PVPC kWh you consume includes four layers, stacked in this order:

Energy cost (the variable, hourly part). Set by the wholesale day-ahead auction at OMIE — generators and suppliers bid for each of the 24 hours of tomorrow.
Tolls and charges ("peajes y cargos"). Cover grid transport, renewable subsidies, and compensations for the island/enclave systems. Set by regulators, change a few times a year.
Special electricity tax (5.11% on top of the first two).
VAT (10% reduced rate as of 2026, can move back to 21% if wholesale prices stay low).

Only the first layer moves hourly. That's why two consecutive hours can have wildly different prices.

Why does it change every hour?

Each day around 13:00 Spanish time, generators submit bids to OMIE for tomorrow's 24 hours. The market clears around 14:00; results are published shortly after. The CNMC adds the regulated tolls and publishes the final PVPC price for tomorrow at around 20:15.

What drives the price in any given hour:

Demand — how much electricity Spain needs that hour. More demand = higher price.
Generation mix — wind and solar are cheap; gas plants are expensive.
Weather — windy nights collapse prices to 02:00–06:00. Sunny noons collapse them at 13:00–15:00.
Natural gas price — sets the "ceiling" because gas plants typically set the marginal (clearing) price.

Is the price the same in Madrid, Barcelona, and Seville?

Yes. Since the 2024 reform, PVPC is uniform across mainland Spain (Peninsula). The cheapest hour in Madrid is the cheapest hour in Bilbao, in Seville, in Valencia — to the cent.

The only exceptions are the Canary Islands, Balearic Islands, Ceuta, and Melilla. Those have separate electricity systems with different prices.

A worked example

A typical hour in May 2026 might look like this:

Component	Price (€/kWh)
Energy (wholesale)	0.062
Tolls and charges	0.031
Subtotal	0.093
Electricity tax (5.11%)	0.005
VAT (10%)	0.010
Total PVPC	≈ 0.108 €/kWh

At 04:00 the same day, the "energy" portion can drop to 0.028 €/kWh. At 20:00, it can climb to 0.145. Same meter, same wires, 3× the price.

PVPC vs free market: which is better for you?

It depends on whether you can shift your consumption. If you can put the dishwasher on at 04:00 and the heating thermostat on a 13:00 boost, PVPC almost always wins. If you consume mostly during peak hours (18:00–22:00), a fixed-rate free-market plan often comes out cheaper.

A note for expats and short-term renters: most furnished rentals in Spain default to free-market plans (because reference suppliers don't take new customers as easily). You can switch to PVPC by calling Curenergía, Energía XXI, or another reference supplier — it takes about 21 days and there's no power outage during the switch.

See your live price

The actual PVPC price for the current hour (and the heatmap for all 24 hours of today and tomorrow) is on the homepage. Cheapest hour is highlighted green — that's your "go" signal for laundry, dishwasher, and water heater.