Upgrade Electricity Capacity

You don’t need to appoach Iberdrola, they won’t fix anymore on the consumer side of the smart meter.
You aren’t exceeding your contracted potentia, as the smart meter isn’t tripping.

Your main fuse should be rated at around 25 amps (5750 watts / 230 volts = 25 amps). If that is the rating on your main breaker then it’s a faulty breaker and just needs replacing (cheap and simple).
If the breaker is a lower current rating then your potentia has probably been increased at some point in the past and the breaker wasn’t replaced.

From what you’ve described, it is not an earth leakage fault, so nothing to do with the RCD.

Pete.

Pete's correct . . I should have said ICP . .

We are having the exact same problems at our house and it is driving us crazy as sometimes it is happening up to 3 or 4 times at night (never during the day).

Currently waiting on an electrician to come to house and check things over before contacting Iberdrola.

Hi
We had similar problem ... turned out the problem was simply loose connections in the consumer unit (fuse box) which became apparant when the breaker switch burnt out!!!! Got Steve Birkett out on recommendation from this site and fixed it with replacement breaker and checked all other connections.

Thanks again for the further comments. Re NIKTAM comments we do use a timer on the water heater but still have problems. I agree we could avoid the tripping if we draw up a schedule of what can be on at what time and ration the use of electricity in some rooms while you use it in others. But hey - we are on holiday and not in a 3rd world country so I will get it all checked by an electrician especially the internal fuse ratings and see if anything needs replacing before I approach Iberdrola to increase the capacity. Thanks again everyone - I hope it has helped others with a similar problem.

We are going through the process of upgrading our electricity, our fuse box has been checked and we can upgrade from 3.3 to 5.75 or the next one up which is 9.2 so you could also increase.

Laura

Pete Knight's advice is invaluable. Don't go rushing off to Iberdrola until you've had an electrician check your consumer unit. We had a similar problem shortly after we bought our house (we're on 5.75 kw) and having checked the things Pete suggested, I called an electrician who identified and replaced a faulty main breaker. I'm so glad we went this route first - it cost Eu 70 - but new neighbours who've inherited a 9.5kw potencia have just received their first electricity bill, covering 6 weeks - Eu 250! My bill for 4 weeks of the same period was only Eu 95. You need to think carefully before increasing your potencia: based on what you've said, it's almost certainly unnecessary and will be expensive.

Thank you Laura. I am starting to wonder if even though our invoice shows capacity 5.75Kwh it maybe our fuse box which I think was installed when the villa was built in 2001 may still have 3.3Kwh rated main fuse. We bought the villa 2 years ago so this is our second winter of annoying tripping. We are back in the UK this week so enjoying the warm central heating at night but unfortunately not the glorious sunny days we had last week. We will be back in March when I guess it may not be as chilly at night so maybe tripping won’t be a problem but I want it sorted so we can enjoy our winter evenings in Spain. Hope your upgrade goes ok.

Thanks Paulr a good point. I will deffo get the box checked on our next visit. Thanks for taking the time to explain.

I would get hold of a sparky with a clamp meter to check the current being taken at various points in your main consumer unit. Could be genuine overloads or faulty breaker(s). Might not need an unneccessary upgrade.