Definitive guide in case you don't have electricity at home

You try to turn on the light and nothing happens. The electrical switch now seems like a toy and all of your devices have stopped working. You can't turn on the washing machine and thinking about the refrigerator starting to thaw out makes you start to tremble.

You're gripped with panic. It is possible to bring the electricity back your home, but to do so, you must understand what is happening.

An outage: call the distributor

The first thing you should do is check which areas don't have electricity. It is essential to understand whether or not your neighbours have electricity or if you're the only one affected. Try leaving your home and see whether or not the stairway light works, or directly ask your neighbours.

If you're not the only one affected, it’s probably an outage due to a problem in the grid.

In these cases, you should report the breakdown to your distributor company. On our Customer Service page, you can find the telephone number of your distributor.

Remember that the electricity supplier and distributor are not the same. The supplier is the company that sends you bills, but the distributor is the one who maintains the grid that provides you with power.

You can choose your supplier, but you cannot select your distributor. It corresponds to the area in which you live.

Although there is overlap, especially in border areas, the electricity distribution companies cover the following areas:

• Endesa: : Catalonia, Aragón, Andalusia, Balearic Islands, Canary Islands and the province of Badajoz.
• Iberdrola: Basque Country, Navarre, La Rioja, Castile and León except the province of Segovia and the west of the province of León, Madrid except the south of the Autonomous Community, the province of Cáceres, west of the province of Toledo, north of the province of Guadalajara, the Valencian Community and Murcia.
• Unión Fenosa: Galicia, the west of the province of León, the province of Segovia, the south of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, the province of Ciudad Real, the province of Cuenca, most of the province of Toledo and the south of the province of Guadalajara.
• EDP/HC: Asturias.
• Viesgo: Cantabria and some parts of southern and western Asturias.

“If you're not the only one who has no electricity, you should call your distributor company.”

A breakdown in your installation: call a technician

Another possibility is that you're the only one without electricity. Everything works perfectly for your neighbours, and when you go out, you see that all of the street lights are on.

In these cases, the problem is likely in your electrical installation. You can do some quick checks by yourself, by going to your electrical panel and checking that all of your switches are up. A fuse may have blown, and in that case, you would turn it back on to recover the electricity. Before doing so, turn off the electrical devices that you're using (for example, the oven or the washing machine), because the general switch could shut off if you exceed the power.

If these small tricks don’t have any effect, it seems as though your electrical installation has some sort of defect. Only an authorised professional can take care of the matter. At this point, you're in one of two situations:

• 1. You don’t have maintenance insurance: you need to call an emergency specialist. It is going to be expensive. Without exaggerating, it will easily cost 20 euros for travel expenses and 40 euros per hour of labour. Making matters worse, prices are often even higher.
• 2. You have maintenance insurance: your electrical installation is covered against any type of breakdown, and so everything is paid for and you don’t need to worry. Especially if it is an insurance like 360 Plus Protection, which guarantees you assistance within 3 hours. Both the travel and the first 3 hours of labour will be free (and they rarely take over 3 hours to fix a breakdown).

If you want to live with peace of mind, it’s up to you to eliminate option 1 and guarantee yourself option 2: an insurance that will save you at any hour of the day, any day of the year.

“If you're the only one without electricity, it’s likely a breakdown in your installation and you have to call an electrician.”

The power has been cut: you need to set it up

If you don't have electricity, there may a good reason for it: because the power has been cut. This may occur when you first start living in a new building, , when you move to a home that has been unoccupied for a long time, or if you haven't paid the bills.

In any case, there is always a remedy. If the supply has been disconnected, the solution is to set it up.

In this section, we explain everything that you should do to set up the electricity.

This implies a series of costs (that will be charged on the first bill that you receive) and you’ll need some documents, (especially the Electrical Certificate, but it is a common process.