Athens summer: air con, power bills and heat

An Athens July is drier than a Brisbane one, but your concrete flat soaks up heat all day and gives it back all night, so your air con and your power bill become the main event.

The short version

Athens apartments are concrete blocks with balconies and roller shutters. Almost everyone cools with wall-mounted split systems, room by room. Ducted air, common in newer Australian homes, is rare.
Greek electricity plans are colour-coded: blue is fixed price, green is variable and follows the wholesale market, and there are newer flexible and subscription-style options [3][4].
Power got dearer in 2026. The average retail price was about €0.25 per kWh in September 2026, up roughly 47% on a year earlier [1].
Winter is the hidden cost. Many older buildings run a shared heating-oil boiler, paid through the monthly koinochrista, and heating oil opened the 2026–27 season at about €1.56 a litre even after a subsidy [2].
In a heatwave, the City of Athens opens free air-conditioned spaces and runs a heatwave medical advice line [5][6].

How Athens flats handle heat (and how that differs from home)

The typical Athens building is the polykatoikia: a five-to-eight-storey concrete apartment block, often from the 1960s to 1980s, with deep balconies and external roller shutters (rolá). It's a sensible design for a hot city, and the old-school routine still works:

Shutters down by mid-morning on any sun-facing side. Close the windows too.
Open everything at night once the outside air drops below the inside temperature, ideally with a cross-breeze.
Use the balcony awning (tenta) if you have one. It keeps the sun off the glass, which is where most of the heat gets in.

Compared with Australia, there are a few differences:

Insulation is often poor in older blocks. Concrete holds heat, so your flat may stay warm well after sunset.
Top floors run hot. The retiré flat with the rooftop terrace is lovely in May and brutal in August.
Ground floors stay cooler but are darker, and you'll want to keep windows shut at night for security.
The energy certificate tells you something. Every rental listing should show one, and an A or B building with double glazing will cost far less to cool than a G-rated flat with single panes.

When you inspect a flat, count the split systems and check their age. A flat with one unit in the living room and nothing in the bedrooms will make for long nights in July.

Buying and running air conditioners

Most rentals come with at least one split system. If you need more, or yours is ancient, here's how it works locally.

Sizing

Greek shops sell units by BTU, not kilowatts. As a rough guide, 9,000 BTU suits a bedroom, and 12,000 BTU suits a typical living room. Bigger open-plan spaces or top floors need more. A proper installer will look at orientation and glass before quoting.

What to look for

Inverter technology. Standard on most current models, and it uses far less power than old on-off units.
Energy label. Aim for A++ or better for cooling. Look at the seasonal efficiency figures on the EU label.
Heating mode. A modern split system is a heat pump, and in a building without central heating it'll be your winter heater too.
Installation. The outdoor unit usually goes on the balcony. Check with the landlord and the building manager (diachiristis) before you drill. Some buildings have rules about where units can sit.

Prices vary a lot by brand, capacity and season, and installation is usually extra. Shop in spring: in a July heatwave, installers are booked out and nobody discounts.

Running costs: a rough illustration

Here's a back-of-envelope sum. Say a living-room unit draws around 1 kWh an hour while it's working hard, and runs 8 hours a day for a month. That's about 240 kWh. At September 2026's average retail price of about €0.25/kWh [1], it comes to roughly €60 a month for that one unit, before fixed charges. Add the bedroom units and the fridge working overtime, and Athens households commonly see their highest bills of the year in July and August. Your real figure depends on your unit, your building and your plan.

To keep it down:

Set it to 26–27°C, not 20°C. The gap with outdoors is what costs money.
Clean the filters every few weeks in summer. Athens dust clogs them fast.
Cool the room you're in, not the whole flat.
Use a ceiling or pedestal fan alongside the air con. It makes 27°C feel much cooler.

Electricity tariffs and suppliers

Greece's retail electricity market is open. The former state utility PPC (DEI) is still the biggest supplier, alongside companies such as Protergia, Elpedison and Heron [3]. You can switch, and many renters do once they've seen a summer bill.

To help people compare, the energy regulator RAAEY made suppliers label their plans by colour:

Colour	How it's priced	Who it suits
Blue	Fixed price per kWh, typically for 12 to 24 months [3]	Anyone who wants predictable summer bills
Green	Variable, reset monthly from the wholesale market [3]	People prepared to ride price swings
Yellow	Flexible plans that also follow wholesale prices more closely [4]	Mostly people who check monthly
Orange	Dynamic, priced hourly; needs a smart meter [3]	Few households for now
Red	A newer category the regulator introduced from late 2025, designed to shield households from wholesale volatility [4]	Check current offers

In 2025, about six in ten households were on green plans, and fixed blue plans were growing fast [4]. Suppliers have also launched subscription-style plans: a flat monthly fee for a set number of kWh, like a mobile plan, with extra charges if you go over [3].

Reading the bill

A Greek power bill doesn't only cover electricity. It also carries regulated network charges, and it collects a municipal fee (for local services, based on your flat's size) and the ERT public broadcaster fee [3]. That's why a flat-rate plan's headline price never matches your total.

Switching, step by step

Find your supply number (arithmos parochis) on an existing bill.
Compare current offers in the same colour and a different one. Look at the price per kWh, the monthly fixed fee and any discount that depends on paying on time.
Check the contract length and any early-exit clause, especially on fixed plans [3].
Sign up with the new supplier, usually online with your ID, AFM and lease. They handle the switch.
Keep paying the old supplier until its final bill arrives.

If the power account stays in your landlord's name, agree in writing how you'll pay, and get a copy of every bill.

Winter: heating oil and the koinochrista

Australians are often ready for summer and surprised by winter. Athens gets properly cold from December to February, and older flats feel it.

Many older polykatoikies have central heating from a shared boiler, usually running on heating oil (petrelaio thermansis). The residents' general assembly decides on heating hours. The building manager orders oil and splits the cost through the monthly koinochrista, the shared building charges. Cost is usually split by each flat's share of the building, and some buildings meter hours per flat. Your lease may make you pay these charges even if you barely use the radiators.

Heating oil can only be sold for heating from mid-October. In 2026 it opened at an average of about €1.56 a litre. That was after a combined 40-cent cut from the state and the refineries, and it was still the highest opening price on record [2]. In Attica, natural gas worked out roughly 46–47% cheaper than oil for the same heat, and electricity was the dearest per kWh, though a modern heat pump makes far more heat per kWh than a radiator does [1].

What to do:

Ask for last winter's koinochrista statements before you sign a lease. A big flat on a low floor can carry a hefty heating share.
Ask whether the building is on natural gas, oil or no central heating at all.
If there's no central heating, your split systems become your heaters. Budget for higher winter power bills.
Look into the heating allowance (epidoma thermansis). It's paid to eligible lower-income households. It's income-tested through your Greek tax return, and it covers oil, gas, electricity, firewood and pellets [1][2].

Heatwave days

Heatwaves are becoming more frequent, and Smartraveller's advice applies to residents too: drink water, wear a hat and light clothing, and stay in air-conditioned or shaded places [7].

When temperatures spike, the City of Athens opens seven air-conditioned Friendship Clubs to the public from 9am to 9pm. They're in Kypseli, Ampelokipoi, Neos Kosmos, Votanikos and other neighbourhoods [5][6]. The city also runs:

the 24-hour citizen service line on 1595 (or +30 210 5287800)
a heatwave medical advice line on +30 210 3638049, from 8:30am to 7:30pm [5][6].

On those days, municipal crews pull back from outdoor work between 11am and 5pm, and residents are asked not to put rubbish out in those hours [5]. Do your shopping early, keep an eye on older neighbours, and don't let a power cut catch you without water in the fridge.

Want to know what people actually pay for power in August? Join Cooee Greece, our Facebook group for Australians in Greece, at /join/, and ask before you choose a flat or a plan.

Surviving an Athens summer: air con, power bills and the winter sting