Product lookup
Manufacturers must register every energy-labelled product sold in the EU in a public database before it reaches a shop. That database is more reliable than any retailer listing, and almost nobody uses it. This section makes it usable.
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What this section is for
When you are furnishing a flat in Spain — or replacing an air conditioning unit that came with it — the information you get from retailers is inconsistent. One shop lists the annual consumption, another lists only the class letter, a third lists neither and shows you a photograph of the box. Meanwhile the manufacturer has already filed the complete technical data with the European Commission, because they are legally required to.
That filing lives in EPREL, the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling. It is public, it is searchable, and it holds both the energy label and the detailed product information sheet behind it. The purpose of this section is to put that data in front of you in a form you can actually compare, with the Spanish context that the raw register has no reason to provide.
Reading the label without being misled
The EU energy label was rescaled in 2021, and the change still causes confusion. The old A+, A++ and A+++ classes are gone. Everything now sits on a plain A to G scale, and the scale was deliberately set so that A would be almost empty at launch — leaving headroom for genuine improvement rather than stacking up plus signs again.
The practical consequence: a product has not got worse because its letter changed. A washing machine sold as A+++ in 2019 may be labelled C or D today with identical performance. Comparing an old review to a current label without knowing this leads people to reject perfectly good appliances.
Beyond the letter, the figure that matters most is usually the annual consumption in kWh, because that is what you can multiply by your own electricity price. The label also carries category-specific data — capacity, noise in decibels, water consumption, spin efficiency — and for a shared building in Spain, where flats sit close together and windows stay open through the summer, the noise figure deserves more attention than it usually gets.
The Spanish angle: most domestic electricity contracts here are billed on a time-of-day tariff, with distinctly cheaper hours overnight and at weekends. Efficiency reduces the total; timing shifts what you pay for it. Running the washing machine and dishwasher in the cheap band, on a delay timer, is the change that costs nothing to make.
What is being built here
Appliance energy labels
Search by model number and see the registered label and data sheet, with the annual running cost worked out against Spanish electricity prices rather than the EU average assumption. The categories worth doing first are the ones that run constantly or run hard: refrigeration, washing machines, dishwashers, and air conditioning.
E-bike comparison
E-bikes are not part of the EU energy label scheme, so this one is a different exercise: comparable specification data — motor position, torque, battery capacity in watt-hours, weight — collected consistently so that the numbers mean the same thing across brands. The Spanish relevance is topography: the specification that matters for a hilly city is not the one that matters for a flat coastal one, and manufacturers' claimed ranges assume neither.
Solar panels
Spain has among the best solar resource in Europe and a domestic self-consumption sector that has grown accordingly. What is hard to find is sober comparison of panel specifications — efficiency, temperature coefficient, degradation rate, warranty terms — separated from installer marketing. Temperature coefficient in particular is under-discussed and matters far more in Murcia than in Manchester: panels lose output as they get hot, and Spanish roofs get very hot.
How the data is handled
- Figures come from the register, not from retailers. Where a manufacturer's declared value and a shop listing disagree, the register is what gets shown.
- Every product page will link to its EPREL entry, so you can verify the figure at source rather than take this site's word for it.
- Nothing here is a ranking bought by a manufacturer. There are no sponsored placements in these comparisons, and if affiliate links are ever used they will be labelled on the page.
- Data is dated. Registered products change; entries are updated and occasionally withdrawn.
Frequently asked questions
What is EPREL?
EPREL is the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling: a public database that manufacturers are legally required to register products in before selling them in the EU. Every appliance carrying an EU energy label has an entry, and that entry holds the label itself plus the underlying technical data sheet. Because it is a regulatory register rather than a retailer database, the figures in it are the ones the manufacturer has formally declared — which makes it a considerably better source than a shop listing.
Why does the energy label matter more in Spain?
Because of air conditioning and because of electricity pricing. A large part of the Spanish housing stock cools as well as heats, so appliance efficiency is felt across a long summer rather than a short one. Spanish domestic electricity is also commonly billed on a time-of-day tariff, which means efficiency and when you run an appliance both affect the bill. A difference of one energy class on something that runs daily is a real number over a year, not a rounding error.
Why do so many products sit at class F or G?
The scale was rescaled in 2021. The old A+/A++/A+++ classes were abolished and everything was remapped onto a plain A to G scale, deliberately leaving the top classes almost empty so there was room for future improvement. A fridge that was A+++ under the old scale may be a C or D under the new one without having changed at all. If you are comparing an older review against a current label, this is usually the explanation.
Can I look up a product that was bought outside Spain?
If it was sold in the EU, yes — EPREL is an EU-wide register, not a national one, so a model sold in Germany or the Netherlands appears in the same database. What may differ is the model designation: manufacturers often use different suffixes per market for what is essentially the same appliance, so search by the full model number printed on the appliance rather than by the marketing name.