The view from the back

Well the quiet time was shattered by the guy behind spending all day exercising his chain saw by cutting down 3 trees on our boundary using the chip n slice method of sitting atop the tree and cutting bits off small enough to go on the fire, the saw was running for hours . He achieved his goal of letting the sun in to his garden and the wind into ours :-( , he had a side effect of improving the view from our balcony into their sun loungers and bed rooms so probably needed more thought !  In an attempt to mitigate our €246 electric bill I investigated our usage with the lovely wife , unplugging every thing and unfortunately or fortunately depending on how you view it the meter stopped turning . Our largest use as we don't use the air con is the pool pump at 1HP or .75 KWh the cooking is mainly gas with occasional electric oven followed by the washer at .36 kWh . The 1274 kWh on 60 days was €160 before IVA and the power and rental charges that makes 1 kWh = €0.125 plus Iva or £0.106 plus Iva as this is an area I had some insight in the raw cost per unit kWh is the same in the UK as Andalusia the difference is the additional charges that change my raw €160 into a bill for €246, in the Uk the same usage would result in a final bill of £141.79 in vat at 5% ( €179.17 ). Our additional costs where mainly the power or capacity charge based on 5.5 kWh per day at €0.091 and tax at 21% not 5% . Even if we went solar with battery back up and only used grid as a last resort we would still have charges of €45 plus any usage due to the power charges and tax. So with a calmer mind if you combine the utility spend of gas , elec and water my personal experience is that a uk 4 bed is the same cost as a Spanish 4  bed at the moment but the tax is the killer, it's still a mystery where it all went though ? I've not seen any electric puddles anywhere.