Tomorrow's PVPC for Monday, May 18, 2026 has not been published yet. Red Eléctrica de España (REE) collects the results of the OMIE daily auction around 20:15 Madrid time; once those clear, the price is locked until midnight rolls into the new day. If you landed here before then, this page will fill automatically with the hour-by-hour table as soon as the data is published. In the meantime, the sections below cover the typical playbook for getting the most out of Spain's cheap hours and explain the tariff context behind these prices.
How to make use of the cheap hours
Even before the hour-by-hour detail is published, the daily plan is already shaped by the typical PVPC curve. Spanish electricity prices usually have two daily valleys: the early hours (between 02:00 and 06:00) and the solar midday window (13:00 to 16:00), when photovoltaic farms dump power onto the grid. Peaks typically arrive between 20:00 and 22:00, when commuters get home, dinner runs and lights come on at the same time. Scheduling washing machines, dishwashers or electric water heaters into one of the two valleys saves money with no real effort. Electric showers and ovens are the appliances with the most headroom — every hour you can shift counts. In spring and summer the solar valley tends to deepen — surplus photovoltaic output can push prices close to zero — while in winter the early-morning dip is the safer bet. Weekends and public holidays usually have flatter curves because industrial demand falls, which narrows the gap between the cheapest and the priciest hour.
What is PVPC?
These prices follow the PVPC tariff (Precio Voluntario para el Pequeño Consumidor), Spain's regulated electricity rate. It applies to households with contracted power below 10 kW served by a reference supplier. About 30% of Spanish households are on PVPC; the rest are on free-market contracts where the supplier sets the price (fixed, indexed or discounted). Even on a free-market deal, PVPC is a useful benchmark: it reflects the hourly wholesale cost without commercial margins. If your free-market rate routinely sits above the monthly PVPC average, it is worth shopping around.
Looking back at today
Remember that tomorrow's price is set by the OMIE daily auction: once it locks at ~20:15 Madrid time, it does not change. That is the moment to schedule washing machines, dishwashers and EV charging against the next day's curve. To check what is happening today, see /today/.