Spanish consumers' organisation helps main energy companies' customers demand compensation for 2025 blackout

Spanish consumers' organisation Facua has filed a complaint with the CNMC competition authority against Spain's five main electricity distributors for failing to compensate their customers after the nationwide blackout on 28 April.

At the same time, Facua has launched a campaign to enable consumers to claim the discount themselves, "given the companies' inaction".

The companies that appear in the complaint are Viesgo Distribución, e-Distribución (an Endesa subsidiary), E-redes, UFD Naturgy, and i-DE Iberdrola. According to Facua, none of them have responded to the complaints the association previously submitted.

Electricity regulations stipulate that, when a power outage exceeds established quality thresholds, distributors must provide financial compensation to customers without requiring a request.

Facua states that companies should have automatically applied this discount to the bill and that their failure to do so does not exempt them from this obligation. In addition, if they do not respond to an individual complaint within five business days, the user is entitled to an additional 30 euros in compensation.

The amount of compensation varies depending on the contracted electricity capacity, the length of the outage and the geographical area. Under the formula set out in ECO/797/2002, suppliers multiply the contracted kilowatts by five times the average annual price per kilowatt hour and then apply a factor linked to the number of hours without supply.

Using the example of an urban customer with a contracted capacity of 4.4 kilowatts and a 12-hour outage, Facua estimates compensation at just over 25 euros including tax.