Portugal has the dumbest electricity system on earth
In most civilised countries your home has two things:
The maximum (safe) physical capability of your electricity circuit.
A bill for the quantity of electricity that you’ve used.
Simple, right?
Portugal has decided to add a third factor, called ‘potencia’ — an arbitary ‘soft’ limit.
Your home might happily supply 20kVA safely.
But if your potencia is set at 3.45kVA then your entire home will be plunged into darkness if you dare to dry your hair while using the dishwasher.
Now you have to stumble around unplugging devices and turn the mains electricity board back on.
But wait! You have home automation devices like smart light bulbs.
If you turn the power back on before you remove the ‘too many devices’ then the power will flicker on/off and reset (or break) all your home automation devices.
And this is all POINTLESS: there is NO BENEFIT to a ‘potencia’.
You’ve saved 10 cents on your electricity bill — but lost $500 of productivity because you’ve spent two hours rebuilding your home automation system.
Potencia has made your POORER.
Portugal is a scarcity-based culture.
Everyone is obsessed with trying to save money.
No one ever tries to MAKE MONEY
No one tries to build anything.
They cut corners, pinch pennies and take pride in reducing their bills.
Meanwhile, the rest of the modern world generates more energy and focuses on building wealth. And that’s why the poorest country in Western Europe is now being overtaken by Eastern Europe.
Portugal is purpose-designed to make everyone poor.
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Comments7
Rose Exoplanet
May 3
It can be worse than that, my home is maxed out at 10 kva, but it can take much more, but no, e-redes decided that’s a hard limit, unless i pay a lot to move my counter outside my property and upgrade the power lines (although an electric engineer told me that its really not needed). Basically they want to improve the system, not having counters inside the homes, but they blackmail people creating “limits” to upgrade something they should do themselves but on the consumer expense.
Rose Exoplanet
May 26, 2025
Yeah, it's bad. But it’s not a Portugal-only thing. Spain, Italy, France also have similar systems.
Teal Storm
May 26, 2025
“No one ever tries to MAKE MONEY”
I have to disagree with you on this one. You see, the higher the “potência”, the more you pay in “potência” fee charged every month even if you don't consume any electricity. So, the power company is making plenty of money and whoever came up with this a century ago probably invented the OG subscription service.