Since we've moved from Portland, Oregon, USA to Salgueiro, Leiria, Portugal, we have discovered many differences, in culture and ease (or lack there of) in which things get accomplished, or don't. What's been my number one frustration in the 18 months we have been living here? Our lack of electricity.
OK, it's not like we don't have electricity, we do. But Portugal is famous for supplying the bare minimum electrical kilowatts, aka potencia. We have two houses (ours and the resident house), and a total of 6.9 kw of electricity for both. If you're not savvy on kw and electricity, lets just say my medium sized kiln requires 11.5 kw to fire. See the trouble here?
Without getting into the details of potencia, single phase and three phase electricity (it's all a little over my head too), we were told we needed to increase the potencia and apply for three phase to fire the kiln. It's the very first project we started when we got here in September 2024. The realtor was sure it would be no problem when we were looking at the house, but boy was he wrong! We have now been through FIVE electricians in 18 months and we have made zero progress.
If you don't want to read the whole recap- here's a video summary and then you can skip down to the bottom so learn how you can help.
Here's the recap:
- September 2024 We spoke to the electric company when we first arrived and they said it was not possible to upgrade, without speaking with an electrical engineer and submitting a project to E Redes, the main operator for electricity distribution in Portugal. So we needed to find a credible electrician with contacts at E Redes. Our friend, knew a guy and reached out to him in mid September, but his daughter was getting married so he said he’d get back to us later. A month passed and nothing, so I sent him a text message in Portuguese, and no response. I asked our friend to follow up a week later, and the week after that I got a message saying he was on vacation but could come look the following week. So the second week of November, he arrived to look at the kiln and electricity situation, and after 10 minutes, basically reiterated what we already knew. Followed by “I need to get a technician from the power company to come look at this with me, and I will schedule a time to come back.” Only... he never came back, or responded to us ever again.
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November 2024 After I gave up on tracking down the first electrician. Our neighbors- a field, an orchard, another field and two houses away- seemed to have three phase electricity. He’s a mechanic so we had been sort of stalking their house trying to figure out how to chat with them. The guy we bought the house from is actually his brother (everyone in our village is related). So I spent some time lingering outside of their place until I “ran into her” and was able to start a conversation. She speaks no english, but was very chatty in Portuguese, and I managed to muster “Eu tenho uma pergunta para sua electricidade”. ( I have a question about your electricity)
That was it! After lots of texting in Portuguese (thank you translator app), and an appearance/convo with the guy we bought the house from, they were convinced we should have no problem getting the electrical upgrade we needed! After more back and forth over a few days, Jaime (husband) came by with an “American friend that speaks good english” to look at the situation. This adorable Portuguese guy with a brand new NY Yankees cap appears on my doorstep, with his minimal english after living in Newark, NJ for 2 years, 15 years ago… anyhow they went back and forth in Portuguese, we made awkward conversation with our limited language skills and then they said they would return tomorrow with THE electrician. But then they sort of lingered, and I wasn’t sure what the etiquette was. (In Portuguese) Me: do you need to see the electrical box? Them: Não (no). Me: Querem um pouco cafe ou vinho? (Would you like coffee or wine?) Them: Não, obrigada. And yet they continued to stand there in our cold garage looking at us. Ha ha. It was sort of awkward, but eventually we said good bye and they were off.
Next day, they returned with an even smaller, older Portuguese man, who worked for the electric company for 28 years. Long story short he said, he’d have no problem to get the permits. It would take two months, and he would be in touch. Oh, his name: O Camarão, which is The Shrimp in english. Ha! So I’m cautiously optimistic that this guy will do the thing and by spring we’ll have the electricity we need to use the bigger kiln!
- February 2025. Only my confidence was so very misguided. At the end of February our Portuguese teacher reached out to the electrician for us (much faster with someone who speaks the language fluently), who’d told us 2 months for permits in increasing our electricity back in November. Wouldn’t you know he sent the wrong paper work in to the electrical oversight company? When we asked him about this, he got angry and defensive, then said he would look into it and respond in two days. Several weeks passed, and we never heard from him again. So after almost 7 months, and we were back to square one. In December we did purchase a small 60 liter kiln, and it is great, but it would be really helpful to have enough electricity to fire the bigger kiln when we have retreats running or residents staying with us. It’s not an impossible thing, but after three electricians ghosting us, it sure feels that way.
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April 2025
Nick has been talking with a new guy recommended by a Portuguese friend, and through an awkward conversation with some Portuguese neighbors (different neighbors than the ones that offered up O Camerão, the last electrician), they recommended their guy. They don’t speak english, but we’re understanding more Portuguese these days and I believe they said he was very professional. It also seemed important for them to tell us that both of his brothers were also professional; a doctor and pharmacist in the closest town. But if that weren't enough, they invited us into their garage to show us their electrical panel, and elevator!? It did in fact look like a pro installation, and I had so many questions, like why they had an elevator? Alas my vocabulary is not advanced enough yet for such conversations. Anyhow, we have another electricians name. And our German friend gave us his guy’s name too. My Portuguese teacher, and now friend, suggested we contact all of them and resort to a scattershot approach for getting this thing done. I'll confess by this point I was frustrated and didn't follow up with all of the names given to us. Nick went back and forth with the one guy for a few weeks, and last we heard they would make an appointment to come by next week. Spoiler alert: that never happened.
- May 2025 After carpooling to my first pilates class with our neighbor, she says, "I hear you’re having trouble with your electricity". Welcome to small village life- everyone knows about the weird Americans and their need to fire a giant oven now. Turns out her brother in law is also an electrician, but I explained our woes and experience thus far, stating that we needed an electrical engineer, and I was beginning to think what I wanted to do was not possible. She insisted I speak with him anyway, and later sent me his number. I’ll confess my frustrations with the inability to move things forward with electric and plumbing issues had me procrastinating on calling him, and we did have a new guy that “marked a visit to our house” but never actually gave a date or responded when we asked when that might be. So a few weeks later I reluctantly sent this new guy a text on my way into pilates class, and when I got out of class, there was a missed call and a text message from him!
- This immediate response time is unheard of here, and felt like a good sign. And you know what else? He offered to stop by THAT NIGHT, after he was done at work! He showed up close to 10 PM, and asked questions and made suggestions that nobody else has. He seemed to think because we have a well and “3 papers” (each house and the land we own are separate properties or articles as they call them here and each has legal paperwork stating the intended purpose of the property) which is apparently a great thing for our problem, that he could not just raise our potencia from 6.9 kw to 13 kw, but perhaps could get us to 20 kw! Enough to fire the kiln and not make our lights blink all the time. Ha!
- June 2025 "You build the wall, I break the wall." This is the new plan. We build a wall for the electrical boxes to go in front of our house, rather than inside (which would require all sorts of rewiring). The obvious question here was "why not just tell us the dimensions of the electrical boxes, so we can build the wall with spaces that they would fit into?" And the response was "no, no, you build the wall, I break the wall." Ok. So we built the wall.
- December 2025 There are a lot of dumb little things that happened in between building the wall, breaking the wall, and applying for the approval to proceed with the project, but the bottom line: The project was REJECTED.
So now we are back to considering other options:
- Build or buy a gas kiln
- Rewire both of our houses and apply for the electricity again
- Solar panels and batteries
- diesel generator
But the bigger problem now is we simply don't have the start up funds for any of these solutions, as each one has a minimum price tag of 10-15,000€. I need the bigger kiln to accommodate classes and retreats, which makes us money, but without the kiln it's hard to plan these things. In the meantime, I moved the bigger kiln to a friend's studio about 25 minutes away. Which is the most low fi and cost effective solution for the moment, but moving ceramics to fire has a high margin for error and possible damage in transit, so it's not ideal.
My brain is noodling how we can raise the money to make this all happen this year, preferable before the summer retreats start in July, and I'm back to thinking about fundraising like we did before we moved. I still have a few amazing collaborations from 2024 that were never shared, plus a few more in the works...
Of course, with everything happening in the world, crowdsourcing for a community studio kiln seems a little tone deaf. I care deeply about this project and the idea of creating this learning and community space for artists to gather and learn, but it's my project. Is it crazy to think that my community would care too?
If you answered yes, check out my pen pal subscription options or you can just "buy me a coffee" and all of the proceeds will go towards a kiln solution.