How the electricity and water bills are actually built

One supplier, one tariff, nothing to shop for

EEM is the electricity supplier for the island, acting as supplier of last resort. There is no liberalised retail market on Madeira in the sense that mainland households know it, so comparison sites and switching offers do not apply. ERSE, the national energy regulator, sets the tariff by directive and EEM publishes the resulting sheet for the year.

Articles that name EDP are describing the mainland. The regional body is EEM, and the tariff document to look for is the one for the Região Autónoma da Madeira.

The bill has two halves and only one is about usage

The first half is energy: units used, multiplied by the rate for the tariff band. On the standard simple domestic tariff that rate is €0.1659/kWh*, source: EEM, 2026, read August 26, 2026.

The second half is the standing charge, billed per day, and it is set by contracted power in kVA. Consumption does not touch it. At the bottom of the ordinary domestic ladder it is €0.1919/day*, source: EEM, 2026, read August 26, 2026, at a common household level it is €0.3648/day*, source: EEM, 2026, read August 26, 2026, and at the top of the low-voltage domestic range it reaches €1.0559/day*, source: EEM, 2026, read August 26, 2026.

The ladder is close to linear, which is why it is worth checking

Each step up the ladder adds roughly the same amount again per day, so the difference between a contract sized for the house and one sized for whatever the last owner did in the garage compounds over a year with nothing to show for it. Contracted power is on the bill and changing it is an administrative act, not a rewiring job.

An empty holiday property still pays the standing charge for every day of the year, which is the number that surprises owners of a place used a few weeks in the summer.

Time-of-day options, and when they are worth it

Beyond the simple tariff there are two-period and three-period options on the same supply. On the two-period tariff the off-peak rate is €0.1075/kWh*, source: EEM, 2026, read August 26, 2026 and the on-peak rate is €0.1980/kWh*, source: EEM, 2026, read August 26, 2026, so the cheap rate is genuinely cheap and the expensive rate is meaningfully above the simple one.

That trade only pays for a household that can actually shift load into the off-peak window: water heating, laundry, an electric car. A household that cannot is choosing to pay more for the hours it already uses. The three-period tariff splits the day further, adding a distinct peak rate above the two-period on-peak figure while leaving the off-peak rate where it is.

The social tariff, and who it is for

There is a reduced electricity tariff for households in proven economic need. The regional government states the discount as 33.8%*, source: Governo Regional da Madeira, 2026, read August 26, 2026 off the electricity bill. Eligibility runs on contracted power at or below 6.9 kVA*, source: Governo Regional da Madeira, 2026, read August 26, 2026, exclusively domestic use, and a permanent dwelling.

It is not an expatriate route. It is a means-tested regional measure, and it appears here because a reader comparing quoted Madeira electricity figures may be looking at a social tariff table without realising it.

IVA, which is added to every figure on this page

Madeira applies its own IVA rates, lower than the mainland ones. The reduced rate is 5%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 28, 2026, the intermediate rate is 12%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 28, 2026 and the standard rate is 22%*, source: Autoridade Tributária e Aduaneira, 2026, read August 28, 2026. All three are set by article 18 of the IVA code for operations treated as carried out in the Region, and the standard rate is corroborated arithmetically by the regional vehicle inspection fee, which is published both before and after tax.

An earlier version of this page said the reduced rate could not be pinned down, because the tax authority page it reached served a table of clearly pre-2020 rates and two secondary sources disagreed. The rate is on the tax authority’s own regional page for that article, and this page now cites it there.

What matters more than the rates is which side of them a figure sits on. Every electricity and every water figure on this page is before IVA. For water that is not an inference: the ARM tariff sheet closes with the line that IVA at the legal rate is added to all the prices it establishes. For electricity the tariff sheet states no treatment on its face, and regulated tariffs are conventionally published that way.

So a bill arriving in the post is higher than the arithmetic on this page, by whichever rate applies to that supply. This page does not decide which rate that is for any given bill — that is settled by Lista I to the IVA code and by what the supplier is actually billing for, and getting it wrong in either direction would be worse than saying so.

Water: the split that is easy to get wrong

ARM operates the island's bulk water system, and that is the part that misleads. Operating the system is not the same as sending the bill. ARM bills households directly only in the municipalities that joined its retail arrangement: Câmara de Lobos, Machico, Ribeira Brava, Santana and Porto Santo.

Every other municipality bills its own water under its own table of municipal charges, approved by its own assembly. That includes Funchal, the most populous municipality on the island. The Funchal table for 2026 exists and is listed on the council's own document site, but the links could not be resolved to a file, so this site does not carry a Funchal water figure and will not borrow one.

Which municipality a house stands in therefore decides which utility sends the water bill and on what structure, which is one more reason the choice of town is not only about the view and the drive to Funchal.

A quoted Madeira water price with no municipality attached to it is describing at most five of eleven municipalities, and the reader has no way of knowing which.

How the ARM blocks actually work

Where ARM does bill, the domestic tariff is a rising block structure with a standing charge under it. Water supply starts at €0.3765/m³*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026 for the first block and reaches €0.8540/m³*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026 in the second, and the top block is €6.9477/m³*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026. The standing charge for an ordinary domestic meter is €5.3894/month*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026 a month.

Three services on one volume

Wastewater and waste are billed alongside water, each with its own standing charge and its own per-unit blocks. Wastewater adds €2.6282/month*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026 a month and waste adds €3.2911/month*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026, before either is charged by volume. Waste is billed on metered water volume rather than on anything measured about waste, so a household that waters a garden pays more for refuse collection.

Summer costs more, above the second block

Higher water rates apply in July, August and September for consumption above the second block. In the third block the summer rate is €1.8856/m³*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026 against a winter rate of €1.6580/m³*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026. A pool or a dry-season garden meets that on the bill.

The blocks are defined over a thirty-day reference period and scaled proportionally when the reading period differs, so a long gap between readings does not push a household into the expensive blocks by accident.

Two variations worth knowing about

The family tariff is not a discount on the rate. It widens the consumption blocks by household size, so a large household stays in the cheap blocks longer. The first block runs to 9 m³ against 5 m³ standard*, source: ARM, Portaria n.º 9/2026, de 13 de janeiro, read August 26, 2026 for a five-person household. Households above nine members get the same blocks as a nine-member one. Eligibility runs on exclusively domestic use in a permanent primary residence at a single consumption point.

The other variation matters to anyone letting a property: a dwelling used as alojamento local is billed on the non-domestic tariff, not the domestic one. The rising blocks a resident household sits in do not apply. Anyone modelling the running costs of a rental should read what the island's published rates actually total with that substitution in mind, and note that property tax runs on the rateable value rather than on anything the letting earns.

A separate reduced domestic water tariff exists for households in need. Only its first three blocks were legible in the published table, so this site does not carry the full schedule.