Electricity price in Spain today: the PVPC with taxes, hour by hour

Today’s price in five numbers

The table above lists all 24 hours of 17 October. Five figures are enough to decide quickly, all with taxes, mainland prices:

The gap between the dearest and the cheapest hour matters. An appliance that draws one kilowatt hour costs €0.31 at the worst time today and €0.02 at the best. For a washing machine, a dishwasher or an electric car, choosing the hour is the one saving that needs no change of contract.

Why we show the price with taxes

Red Eléctrica publishes the energy term before tax. It is the right number, but it is not what you pay. Every kilowatt hour first carries Spain’s special electricity tax (impuesto especial sobre la electricidad), and then VAT, which on a household bill is charged on top of that tax as well. Using today’s average:

A pre-tax price looks about 27% lower than the real one. Put it next to a retailer’s fixed price, which is usually advertised with tax, and the comparison is skewed. Here the “Taxes: included / excluded” switch shows both figures, and every calculator works with the full one.

Rates have not been constant this year. Royal Decree-law 7/2026 cut VAT to 10% for contracts under 10 kW and the electricity tax to 0.5% from 22 March to 31 May 2026; since June the standard 21% and 5.11269632% apply again. Royal Decree-law 25/2026 brings the cut back in November or December if the INE’s electricity consumer price index rises more than 15% year on year in September or October. The calculator applies each day’s own rate, and the monthly history uses each month’s taxes.

Why the official file changes everything

Plenty of price pages copy a table by hand, stamp it with today’s date and leave it. In Google we found pages dated today showing figures from eleven months earlier, a “tomorrow” table still empty a week later, and a daily average that did not match the page’s own table. This site writes no price itself. A script downloads the public PVPC file from e·sios, Red Eléctrica’s information system every evening, checks the file’s date is the one expected and rebuilds every page. If the file fails to arrive, nothing is made up: the page shows an estimated average built from previous days of the same kind and says so in a box.

The same file includes, hour by hour, the tolls-and-charges component and the standard consumption profile Red Eléctrica applies to meters. That lets us check two things no other site checks: that each hour sits in the period (peak, standard or off-peak) set by CNMC Circular 3/2020, and that the tolls and charges inside Red Eléctrica’s price match the 2026 figures in the BOE, Spain’s official gazette, to a thousandth of a cent. The site’s automated tests verify it on every hour of the year before each release.

Quarter hours: what changed in 2025 and what did not

Since 1 October 2025 Spain’s day-ahead market has set a price for each quarter hour, 96 a day. That has not reached PVPC households: the official file still has 24 rows and home meters record by the hour, so a regulated-tariff customer pays the price of each hour. If you are on an indexed market deal, or just want to see how much the wholesale price moves within an hour, the quarter-hour price page shows the day’s 96 prices next to the hourly PVPC.

Where each cent comes from

Each hourly price has three parts. First, energy: from 2026, 55% of it is bought through forward products (monthly, quarterly and yearly) and the remaining 45% on the day-ahead and intraday markets, under the Royal Decree 446/2023 method described by the Ministry for the Ecological Transition. Second, transmission and distribution tolls, set by the CNMC. Third, system charges, set by the government in Order TED/1524/2025, which pay for subsidised renewables, past tariff deficits and the extra cost of island grids.

Those regulated amounts explain why nights and weekends are usually cheaper even when the market is expensive: off-peak, the regulated part is almost nothing. They also explain why a sunny midday can beat the night: when solar output pushes the energy price down, what is left is the standard-period tolls and charges. The time-of-use periods guide goes through it.

Values and parameters for 2026

Besides the hourly price, a PVPC bill has a fixed part that does not depend on when you use power. These are the amounts the calculator uses, all from the BOE:

With 4.6 kW contracted, power alone costs €145 a year before tax. That is why checking your contracted power often saves more than chasing the cheap hour.

Worked examples with today’s prices

One use of each appliance at the best and at the worst start time on 17 October, with taxes. Energy use follows the EU energy label method, at the top of the class shown:

Per use the sums are small; the saving shows up over a year. Four washes a week for 52 weeks is over two hundred cycles, and the gap between the best and worst hour is multiplied by that. Each appliance has its own page: washing machine, dishwasher, electric oven and electric car.

Paying less on the PVPC

1. Check the table before switching on anything power-hungry: oven, dryer, dishwasher, water heater or car. A green hour often costs less than half a red one.
2. Use the delay-start button. Most washing machines and dishwashers can hold off for several hours, and the calculator tells you when to aim for.
3. Use the weekend. On Saturdays and Sundays every hour pays off-peak tolls and charges; the weekend guide works out what you gain by moving laundry to Saturday.
4. Match your contracted power to real use. Every spare kW is paid every day of the year.
5. Check whether you qualify for the social discount (bono social): in 2026 it takes off 42.5% or 57.5%, and it only exists on the PVPC.
6. Before moving to a fixed price, run the numbers for your own use in the PVPC versus fixed price comparison, with tax on both sides.

Tomorrow, the weekend and past months

Tomorrow’s price arrives every evening and the second card on this page sums it up. If what you want is the cheapest hours, the dedicated page lets you choose how many hours in a row you need. For the trend, the month-by-month history sets each month against the same month a year earlier: October 2026 is averaging 0.246 €/kWh, against 0.186 €/kWh in October 2025. And if you are new to Spain’s regulated tariff, start with the PVPC guide.