As I sit here amidst another day of rolling blackouts in San Francisco, CA, question:

What is the average price for electric usage in a typical apartment in Madrid?

Also - what do most people use as a means of heat?

And - how prevalent is air conditioning? Here in San Francisco, 80% of us don't have air conditioning and rely upon the fog (nature's air conditioning) to get us through.

Thanks!

Tomas

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"Salud, amor y pesetas - y tiempo para gozarlos" http://home.att.net/~t.macentee

My experiences living in various cities in Spain have shown me that AC is not that big of a deal in Spain, and that heating is more of a priority (at least in the north). You'll find AC in many three-star and up hotels, but residences don't normally have AC, opting for, as you mentioned, "natural air". The concept of which was used by the Romans. The typical moorish-inspired home has a courtyard in the middle, which was uncovered at night so as to let the cool night air in, and covered in the morning to trap that cool, naturally-refrigerated air in. It's my understanding that in many places in Toledo, for example, that this centuries-old practice is still employed.

As far as the power crunch: I usually only had to worry about drought. In all but one case, the apartments I let were furnished with gas appliances, which are supplied by orange "bombonas" or propane tanks. You always had enough hot water as long as you had gas in the bombona. I can't recall the prices though! I do recall them being quite reasonable though.

To give you an idea on rent + utilities: The cheapest piso I rented was in Barakaldo (Vizcaya) where I paid about 6700 ptas./month in 1990 money, plus about 1000 ptas./month in utilities. The most expensive piso, which was also the nicest and in a historic district, was in Segovia, where I paid 14.500 ptas./month in 1990 money, plus utilities, which, since it had electric appliances, totaled about 4000-5000 ptas./month (1990). Adjust for inflation, and hopefully have some idea what the cost is today. Remember that in both cases, the rent was split four ways.

Hi Tomas. Don't know how different Madrid's charges are to the Costa del Sol, but down here I pay about 16.000 Pts for a two monthly electricity bill usually. (July / August comes to near double that with the air-con, which we don't normally use the rest of the year) My hot water is run on gas (yes, the dreaded bombona, which has gone up in price recently to about 1.350 Pts now)

We have an open fireplace and between November and up to round about now, we chuck about 1.000 Pts worth of logs on it every week during the bleak midwinter!

Air conditioning is in most public buildings, stores, but only some restaurants, as most people eat on terraces from Easter to September / October.

My 1 bedroom apartment in Madrid is "fully electrical" that is heating/air conditioning (advisable in summer) hot water, and kitchen are electrical. Nevetheless this is not the normal situation for apartments here, most of then in Madrid would have water and rooms heated with propane or fuel, so you can consider my quotation as a kind of "maximum" expense in electricity for a 1 person apartment. I am spending from 30.000ptas/2months in winter to 12.000ptas/2months in may/june.