Building electrical supply upgrade in Seville, Spain: main fuse box, rising main and individual risers

The rising main of your building: when it falls short

Electricity enters an apartment building by a route almost nobody sees: the distribution company’s service cable (acometida) reaches the main fuse box (caja general de protección, CGP), from there the rising main (línea general de alimentación, LGA) runs to the meters and, from each meter, an individual riser (derivación individual) goes up to the fuse box of each home. Together these are the supply installations, instalaciones de enlace in Spanish. In many Seville buildings they were sized for flats with a fridge, a washing machine and little else, and today they have to carry air conditioning, induction hobs, water heaters and, more and more, EV chargers.

We renew the rising main of the comunidad, the main fuse box and the individual risers so the building can safely take the power its residents need.

Signs the building needs a supply upgrade

• Neighbours who cannot increase their contracted power because the rising main or their riser will not allow it. More on this in increase contracted power.
• Main fuses that blow in summer, when every air conditioner runs at once.
• Hot or blackened cables in the meter room or the junction boxes on the stairs.
• Meters spread across the floors or in cabinets that do not meet current rules.
• Defects in the periodic inspection of the common installations, if the building has to pass one.
• EV charging projects in the garage that require checking whether the service cable and the rising main can take the new load. See EV chargers in communal garages.

Typical buildings in Seville

We see it above all in the 1960s and 1970s blocks of Nervión, La Macarena, Cerro-Amate, San Pablo or Triana, and in the old buildings of the historic centre and Los Remedios: main fuse boxes of discontinued models, rising mains with a small cross-section, individual risers sharing conduit with other cables and meters on every landing. In these buildings the work is usually combined with centralising the meters, leaving a compliant meter room or cabinet and giving each neighbour room to increase their power.

If the comunidad is studying EV charging, it is worth planning both together: the charging pre-installation depends on the capacity of the supply installation.

How we work

1. We inspect the building: main fuse box, rising main, meter room or cabinets and the route of the risers.
2. We calculate the power the building needs today and what it will need with the planned improvements.
3. We prepare the technical paperwork: a technical design report (memoria técnica de diseño) or a full design, depending on the building’s power, as ITC-BT-04 requires.
4. We give you a fixed quote, with separate items for the common parts and for each home’s riser, so the owners’ meeting can approve it clearly.
5. We coordinate with the distribution company and carry out the work with short, announced power cuts.
6. We legalise the installation with its certificate filed with the Junta de Andalucía.

Price

Renewing the supply installations is quoted per project: the number of homes, the expected power, the distance between the main fuse box, the meters and each flat, and whether the meters are centralised at the same time (100 to 650 euros per home as a reference) all count. We give you a fixed price, plus 21 % VAT, after the visit. Other references on the prices page.

Regulations

Supply installations are regulated by ITC-BT-12 to ITC-BT-16 of the Spanish Low Voltage Electrotechnical Regulation (Royal Decree 842/2002): layouts, main fuse box, rising main, individual risers and the location of the meters, together with the distribution company’s own rules. If the building exceeds 100 kW, the common installations must pass a periodic inspection every 10 years under ITC-BT-05.

If you manage buildings, see our service for property managers, our building maintenance and everything we do for homeowners’ associations.