Electricity via DelSur

I would just like to inform everyone of the process for getting electricity connected in El Salvador.  If your house is new construction you will need to pay to have the actual posts installed that bring the lights.  Where I live is a private colonial among family which means there were no public lines installed.  Its not far from the road but none the less no line was here.  Luckily we got permission from others in the area to run it off one of their light posts so I only ended up having to pay $100 for the inspection + 70.00 to DelSur to get new service connected.  If you need to install posts you will have to do that yourself and the entire process can cost about 250-300 dollars.  Plus inspection and startup fee with DelSur.  It seems to be around 70.00 always, there is no credit for them to base it off here so that seems to be a flat fee.  Anyway, if you are buying land in a Lotification Project (by Lotiversa, etc) you already have rights to the light posts so you wont have to worry.  The same is true if you are renting/buying a pre-owned house or in the city, chances are electrical connection is already available so you wont need to pay that inspection fee, etc.  So you'd be looking at about 70 to get started.

DelSur is the electric company in El Salvador.  As far as I am aware they are the only electric company here in the entire country (correct me if I am wrong).


The electricity here is generally reliable.  In my entire time here its gone down 2 times.  The first time it went out for an hour, apparently a car took out a light pole.  The second time it went out for 7 minutes.  That time it was something to with DelSur & the government.  All in all, I had my lights go out a lot more in the USA.  Either way, it's not 100% reliable but I have experienced little problem.

According to DelSur the rates depend on your usage range.  Under 25KW is low residential.  25-50KW is medium and 50+ is heavy usage.  The prices vary very slightly and according to their webpage the current rate for the first 2 is about 0.13 cents a KW.  For 50+ its around 0.15 cents a KW.  In other words, its expensive.  In the USA the average price is around 0.09 to 0.10 cents a KW.

Most houses here don't have Central Air and there is never a need for heat though so it all works out.  My electric bill currently is decent.  I used 203 Kilowatts.

That includes:

(1) 8,000BTU AC (810 Watts an Hour) which I run 10 hours a day.
(1) 42 inch LCD TV which is on always.
(1) Computer w/ 19inch LCD which is always on.
(1) Refrigerator

Several clocks, lights, fans, etc.

and my bill was $43.00

The actual usage was around 32.00 and the service fee, etc brought it up to 43.00.  It doesnt match what the DelSur website says but either way, its not too bad.

Our neighbors have 3 lights connected and a small refrigerator and their light bill is 9.00 a month.  So if you dont use an AC and TV all the time, its very reasonable.