Madrid (EFE).- The Spanish courts are narrowing the vigilance of the electricity companies and analyzing with a magnifying glass the arguments that they use to review the electricity bills after noticing alleged manipulations of the meters, rejecting the lack of rigor of the inspections.
In Spain, during 2022 the price of electricity in the wholesale market shot up more than 88%, above 200 euros/MWh, compared to just over 110 the previous year; So far this year, electricity has been paid on average at 100 euros/MWh, less than half the price registered in the same period of the previous year.
Despite this decrease, caused by the gas cap -so far in March it has not yet been activated-, the “price of electricity” has been one of the majority queries on Google in the last year.
Spanish consumers analyze each item to try to scrape a few cents off bills that, due to inflation and the Russian invasion of the Ukraine, have reached historical records.
And many of them have found themselves with re-invoicing and receipts of thousands of euros that the electricity companies justify with manipulations of the meters that the Spanish courts do not stop rejecting.
The most recent case is that of the Court of First Instance No. 1 of Tarrasa, which in a ruling dated March 8, to which EFE has had access, acquitted a client of paying an invoice that was close to 12,500 euros and to which his company accused of having tampered with the meter.
After examining the evidence provided by the company, the magistrate found that they were insufficient “to prove the existence of manipulation, as well as the re-invoiced amounts.”
The inspector’s statement and the inspection report per se, the judgment indicates, “lack probative value to prove the existence of tampering”, among other things because “the inspector is an employee of the electric company”, although he denied it during the view.
This implies that the technician “is not biased”, and his report by itself lacks probative value since, in addition, “it was prepared without informing the defendant of the inspection, nor of the existence of the manipulation of the meter at the time of its discovery by the inspector”.
Another of the arguments put forward by the judges is that the client must be present at the time of the inspection, as stated in a sentence of the court of first instance No. 2 of Navalcarnero (Madrid) also consulted by EFE.
It says that the report submitted by the company to pass a receipt of 725 is insufficient because “it was made without the presence or knowledge” of the client or other witnesses, which deprived him of being able to make the appropriate allegations.
The user, whose supply was cut off due to non-payment, was not provided with the inspection report, adds the ruling.