Are you living in Italy and your electricity keeps shutting itself off? You might need an electrician, but you might also have hit your electricity limit.
In Italy, your electricity contract comes with a maximum power limit.
It’s typically 3 kilowatts at the same time, and that’s not a lot. If you run your dishwasher, your washing machine, and your air conditioning at the same time, your house might shut off.
But it’s not a blackout. Your neighbors have power. It’s just your Italian electric utility telling you that you’ve exceeded your limit. It’s not subtle!
The fix is to upgrade your contract to a higher kilowatt limit.
That often comes with a change fee and higher monthly charges, and you’ll still need to be mindful of what you’re running simultaneously. It’s not like America, where you can run everything at once and you just pay for it.
When I first moved here, we couldn’t cook lunch while running the clothes washing machine. The house would shut itself down. We later upgraded our house to 6 kilowatts, but we can’t run all the air conditioners AND the dishwasher AND the clothes washing machine AND turn on the air fryer.
Once you know, you adapt.
You learn not to run the washing machine while the dishwasher is on. You start thinking about electricity differently. It’s one of dozens of small things that are just different here, and worth understanding early.
Who is the energy company?
It’s called Enel, but there are many companies reselling electricity and gas around Italy. They include (#NotSponsored) Sorgenia, A2A, Iren, Acea, Edison Energia, Eni Plenitude, Octopus, and many more. You can shop offers. The one you choose would be who would offer you a potential upgrade.
Solar and batteries
This is definitely worth shopping around. My husband’s aunt got a system from a local seller. It’s expensive and huge, and if her power goes off, it keeps things going for 30-60 minutes.
A few years ago, we invested in a system from Ecoflow (#NotSponsored). We started with just batteries so that if the power goes out, the relay triggers, and the house is powered off our batteries. We avoid using appliances so we don’t burn the battery down. But at least our computers and internet aren’t rebooting every time the current drops or the power goes out. If we keep the appliances off, we should have nearly a day’s worth of power.
Our next step is to add solar panels so that we’re charging the batteries from the sun and not from the grid. So for now, we’re not saving money on energy yet (as of August 2026), but at least when the power goes out for everybody else, the fridge is on, the computers are running, we can work, and the internet didn’t reboot.
Contact me if there’s anything I can do to help. The first call is always free. Ci vediamo!