A massive new electrical changer now stands on La Celestina Street in the heart of Tres Mil Viviendas, one of Seville’s most troubled districts for power fraud and blackouts. Endesa installed it under a €4.6 million agreement with the city council. It is the first of 23 planned centers intended to reinforce the city’s grid in areas where illegal connections and marijuana plantations have pushed the system to its limits.
Endesa’s choice of Polígono Sur is deliberate. The company says the area has some of Spain’s highest rates of electricity theft, with fraud levels reaching 73%. Much of it is linked to clandestine cannabis grows inside residential buildings, which drain the network and leave law-abiding residents facing frequent outages and voltage drops. In a separate Seville neighborhood, Endesa has been cited as estimating that electricity fraud affects about 60% of properties in Torreblanca, information from ABC Sevilla. That figure refers to Torreblanca, not Polígono Sur.
The new changer station houses two 630 kVA machines and weighs over 25 tons, so specialized cranes were needed to install it. In the coming weeks, technicians will lay more than 300 meters of medium-voltage cable to connect the facility to the wider grid. Endesa says it has invested over €3.5 million in Polígono Sur since 2020. It doubled capacity at nine changer centers and installed more than 30 kilometers of new lines. Another center opened last year.
Targeting High-Fraud Zones
The broader plan, agreed with the Seville city council, calls for 23 new changer centers by 2026. Ten will go in neighborhoods with the most severe fraud: three in Palmete and three in Torreblanca. Padre Pío will get two, with two more in Polígono Sur. The remaining centers will reinforce supply elsewhere in the city, including Polígono Carretera Amarilla and Polígono Store, as well as Nervión and San Laureano. El Juncal and Santa Teresa are also included, along with the historic center. The project also includes over 12.6 kilometers of new medium-voltage cable and 67.2 kilometers of low-voltage lines.
Once completed, the new infrastructure will provide a total capacity of 26,640 kVA, enough, according to city officials, to supply around 13,200 new customers or the equivalent of nine hospitals the size of Virgen Macarena.
Marijuana Grows Strain the Grid
Endesa and the city council identify illegal marijuana cultivation as a basic factor behind the chronic strain on Seville’s electrical network. A single grow operation can consume as much electricity as 80 homes running nonstop year-round. Similar demand from indoor cultivation has surfaced in other Spanish investigations. In Huércal de Almería, the Guardia Civil and Endesa identified a facility with more than 1,100 cannabis plants connected through an irregular electrical installation. The reported equipment included 72 heat lamps and nine air-conditioning units. It also included 11 fans and four extraction devices.
Courts have also treated electricity theft as a distinct financial loss in cases involving cannabis cultivation. In a separate case in Cuarte de Huerva, a defendant received a three-year prison sentence and a €20,000 fine. The court also ordered the defendant to reimburse Endesa €9,319.70 for electricity allegedly defrauded. New changer centers can temporarily relieve pressure, but Endesa warns that adding capacity alone risks attracting more illegal connections unless enforcement also improves.
To address the problem, Endesa is working with national police and security forces to dismantle illegal grows and pursue fraud cases. In the first five months of 2026 alone, the company opened an average of one new fraud investigation per week in Seville linked to marijuana plantations.
Persistent Challenges Ahead
The new infrastructure offers hope for more stable power in affected neighborhoods, but Endesa and local authorities acknowledge that technical upgrades alone cannot solve the underlying problem. Without sustained action against illegal connections and energy theft, the risk of recurring outages remains high. Tres Mil Viviendas and similar districts show how social pressures and criminal activity can collide around impressive services in Spain’s urban field.
