The journey of opening a coliving space in Tenerife continues—slowly.
Previously, I let AI write a post about how to get electricity to a building in Tenerife. It gave a very good overview of the process, making it sound relatively easy. In hindsight, though, while it covered all the right steps, it lacked depth in the individual elements—it was very top-line. That said, one win is that edistribución’s private portal has now been translated pretty nicely into English.
Getting access to the private portal was a pain in the butt without a Spanish phone number.
In the end, I did something a little dodgy: I used a website offering shared access to temporary Spanish phone numbers. It worked, but I really can’t obviously recommend this to anyone as there are obvious data risks, but each to their own in terms of your own risk assessment, but I’d definitely advise against using it for anything connected to financial accounts or ID verification (I felt my own risk was limited given the purpose / system I was trying to circumnavigate). Once I was in, I updated the account to my actual number, but frustratingly, that didn’t cascade through the system. Some of the auto-generated forms and messages still showed the temporary number, so I had to follow up with them via email to correct it.
My initial request for a “new/modification supply point” got cancelled twice—both times for location errors, which were system-related and not my fault. This sort of thing is common here and tends to drag the process out.
I applied for 3-phase power.
It’s probably overkill for a 4–5 bedroom unit, but I was anxious about hitting the 7.2 kW cap of single-phase, especially if I want to include an EV charging point in the future. The cost was €204—about the same as it would’ve been for single-phase—and I believe the standing charge is a bit higher (maybe an extra €20+/month), but the price per kWh stays the same. My very rough estimate is that our electric bill will run around €80–€100/month, though I honestly won’t know until we’re fully open.
A few things to note: The boletín eléctrico (official electrical certificate) is not needed at this stage, but will be required before they can install the meter and actually supply power.So things to note, I had to submit a floor and distribution plan, but not the Boletin (that needs to be done, before they complete the process of actually installing the meter and supplying power, but isn’t required to start this bit of the process).
I had to submit a floor plan and distribution diagram as part of the application.
I also had to supply photos of the meter room etc
