None of this happened quietly. Electric Ireland's increase made the RTÉ news bulletin. ESB ecars' new tariffs were covered by motoring press within a day. But the two stories rarely get told together, even though for anyone driving an EV in Ireland without a driveway to plug into overnight, they add up to the same squeeze from two different directions.
What actually happened to home electricity prices
Electric Ireland, the country's largest residential supplier with 1.1 million customers, increased electricity prices by 8% and gas by 7.7% from 1 July 2026. For the average household on the CRU's standard tariff, that works out at roughly €11.52 extra a month for electricity and €9.73 a month for gas, or around €138 and €117 a year respectively. Electric Ireland pointed to sustained wholesale volatility linked to the conflict in the Middle East, and noted this was its first price increase since October 2022. It had held rates through the winter while other suppliers moved.
"Other suppliers" is doing some work in that sentence. SSE Airtricity raised electricity prices twice in the previous twelve months: 10.5% in April 2025, then a further 9.5% in October 2025, adding around €151 a year to a typical bill on top of the earlier rise. Energia, Bord Gáis Energy, Pinergy and Flogas all announced comparable increases through the second half of 2025, each citing the same combination: wholesale gas costs and rising network charges. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities has confirmed regulated network charges, the fixed cost of running the grid applied to every supplier equally, are adding an average of €101 a year per household in 2026, regardless of who you're with.
💡 The bit that catches people out: wholesale is falling, bills aren't
Wholesale electricity prices have actually trended down by roughly 12% year-on-year. That sounds like it should mean cheaper bills. It hasn't, because network charges are rising at the same time and suppliers hedge their wholesale buying months in advance, so today's retail price reflects contracts signed when wholesale costs were higher. The 9% reduced VAT rate on electricity and gas has been extended to December 2030, which softens the blow slightly, but it doesn't reverse it.
If you haven't switched supplier in a couple of years, this is the point to check. Around 20–25% of Irish households switch annually, often saving hundreds of euro in the process, but a meaningful share haven't switched in years and are quietly overpaying on a standard variable tariff that new-customer discounts never applied to.
So charging away from home got more expensive too
ESB ecars operates Ireland's largest public charging network, and it raised its pay-as-you-go tariffs for the second time in a year. From July 2026, AC charging up to 50kW costs €0.60/kWh, up from €0.59/kWh. The bigger change is on DC: every rapid and high-power charger above 50kW is now billed at a single €0.72/kWh rate, replacing what used to be two separate tiers: €0.64/kWh for chargers up to 150kW and €0.66/kWh above that. ESB's €4.79-a-month membership, which requires a 12-month commitment, still gets a discount, €0.55/kWh AC and €0.67/kWh DC, but the gap it closes has grown too.
ESB said the increase reflects continued rises in energy and operational costs, and that rates had been unchanged since the last increase in July 2025. Put in real terms: topping up a 77kWh battery from 10% to 80% at the new high-power DC rate now costs somewhere in the region of €38–€39, close enough to a tank of petrol for the same distance that the headline "EVs are cheaper to run" argument starts to depend heavily on where you're actually charging.
ESB ecars isn't the only network that moved. IONITY, the ultra-rapid network installed at Circle K forecourts, raised its pay-as-you-go rate from 81.5c to 85c/kWh from 1 July 2026, a 4% increase applied across large parts of its European network as part of the same wholesale-cost pressure. It's a smaller slice of the public charging market than ESB, but it sits at the very top of the price range, and industry figures have placed Ireland as the third most expensive country in Europe for public EV charging. The increase prompted a call from Social Democrats TD Jennifer Whitmore for greater scrutiny of pricing practices across the charging sector. An IONITY Motion subscription (€5.99/month) cuts that rate substantially, but it only pays for itself with regular use. It's not something worth signing up for on the strength of one road trip.
Home charging remains the cheapest way to run an EV in Ireland, but it isn't shielded from the same cost pressure everyone else is feeling. It's just further from the sharp end of it.
That last point matters more than it sounds. Named home boost tariffs still range from 8.45c to 12.13c/kWh even after the last eighteen months of supplier increases, a fraction of ESB's new €0.72/kWh DC rate. For a driver doing 15,000km a year, the gap between charging mostly at home overnight versus relying on public DC charging is worth well over €1,000 annually. That gap hasn't narrowed. If anything, because home boost rates and public rapid rates haven't risen at the same pace, it's widened.
Night rates for EV and solar charging moved too, and not always for the better
The overnight boost rate has always been the quiet workhorse of home EV and solar charging in Ireland, the thing you set once and stop thinking about. That's changed. Pinergy raised its EV Drive Time boost rate by more than 80% this July, taking a plan that had been priced around 5.49c/kWh between 2am and 5am up to 9.99c/kWh from 1 August, affecting a few thousand customers on that specific tariff. It drew comment from the Tánaiste and from opposition TDs, who both pointed to the same thing: this particular rate band is the one households were actively encouraged to use for exactly this purpose. Flogas raised its own boost rate to 9.96c/kWh from 20 July, landing close to Electric Ireland's long-standing 9.94c Night Boost rate.
⚠️ Two different "Boost"s, worth keeping straight
Electric Ireland's cheap home tariff is called Night Boost. Further down this article, De Energy Hub's Boost Energy rate on a hosted public charger means the opposite: full grid power at maximum kW output, priced at the full rate, not a discount. Same word, unrelated meaning; worth not mixing the two up.
None of this makes home charging a bad deal. Across the named boost tariffs currently on the market, Bord Gáis Energy's EV Smart Electricity is the cheapest at 8.45c/kWh, with Ecopower (9.20c), Pinergy (9.99c), Electric Ireland's Night Boost (9.94c), Flogas (9.96c), Go Energy (10.50c) and Yuno Energy (10.79c) spread through the middle, up to SSE Airtricity's Smart EV Max at 12.13c/kWh. Even at the top of that range, it's a fraction of the 30c-plus daytime rate, and a fraction of ESB's new 72c/kWh public DC rate. But the spread across suppliers has widened, from Bord Gáis Energy's 8.45c down toward the low single digits some nights on a dynamic tariff (more on that below), up to SSE Airtricity's 12.13c. A rate that used to be worth checking once, at sign-up, is now worth checking annually, the same way you'd review a standard tariff.
There's a fourth home-charging option worth naming alongside the boost tariffs: solar self-consumption. For anyone with panels, charging directly from your own generation avoids the import cost for the electricity used that way, though it isn't the same as free charging outright. An EV-owning household typically self-consumes around 32% of what its panels generate without a battery, rising to about 50% with one; the rest gets exported at the Clean Export Guarantee rate covered below rather than used for charging. See our EV solar charging guide for the full numbers.
Solar owners: export rates and dynamic tariffs are both moving
Microgeneration export rates are moving too, just not always in the same direction
If you have solar panels, the other side of your bill just got more interesting. Under the Clean Export Guarantee (CEG), every licensed supplier has to pay you for surplus electricity your panels export to the grid, and rates vary more than most homeowners realise:
| Supplier | Standard export rate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| SSE Airtricity | 19.5c/kWh | Up to 32c/kWh Year 1 via restricted installer-partner tier |
| Electric Ireland | 19.5c/kWh | Highest unrestricted rate alongside SSE Airtricity |
| Bord Gáis, Energia, Flogas | 18.5c/kWh | Mid-market cluster |
| Yuno Energy, PrePayPower | ~15.9c/kWh | Lower end of the market |
| Ecopower | 15.2c/kWh | Lowest published standard rate |
That table isn't static either. The same supplier behind July's night-rate increase also cut its export rate, from a market-leading 25c/kWh down to 18.5c/kWh, effective the same date, 1 August. Whatever the reasoning on either side, the practical lesson for solar households is the same: your import rate and your export rate are reviewed and changed independently, on different timelines, by the same supplier. A supplier that looks generous on one number can quietly move the other. If you have solar, it's worth checking both once a year, not just the one that shows up as a bigger line on your bill.
Dynamic tariffs are now live, and they matter most for solar, EV and battery households
Since 1–2 June 2026, all five major suppliers (Electric Ireland, SSE Airtricity, Energia, Bord Gáis Energy and PrePay Power/Yuno) have been required by the CRU to offer at least one dynamic tariff: a plan where the unit rate changes every half hour, tracking the wholesale electricity price directly, with next-day prices published in advance. For most households this is a curiosity. For a home with solar, a battery, or an EV, it's a genuinely different way of paying for electricity.
⚡ What dynamic tariffs mean in practice
On a windy night with high wind generation and low demand, the wholesale-linked rate can fall to roughly 2–8c/kWh, cheaper than any fixed night rate on the market. On a cold, still evening at peak demand, the same tariff can spike to 50–70c/kWh, more expensive than public DC charging. The saving only materialises if charging (or battery cycling) actually happens in the cheap window. A smart charger or scheduling app that reads next-day prices does this automatically; a charger plugged into a standard socket with no schedule does not, and can end up paying peak rates by accident.
For solar-plus-battery households specifically, dynamic tariffs open up a genuine arbitrage: charge the battery from the grid during a cheap overnight window, then avoid buying expensive evening electricity by drawing on stored charge instead. It's not a fit for every household: low-usage homes can lose to a higher standing charge, and it depends on having the automation to act on next-day pricing rather than checking it manually. But for anyone already running solar, a battery, or an EV on a fixed night rate, it's now worth comparing against the dynamic option from your own supplier.
Why the price rises hit harder if you don't have a driveway
The 80–90% of Irish EV charging that happens at home, on a boost tariff or from solar, is largely insulated from the ESB ecars increase. The households and drivers who feel it directly are the ones without that option: apartment dwellers without a dedicated charger, renters, and anyone relying on public charging for a meaningful share of their driving. For that group, the "EV is cheaper to run" case gets noticeably weaker every time the dominant public network raises its rate, and it's the same group most likely to be charging at a hotel, a campsite, a workplace car park, or a service station on a longer trip.
It's also the exact same group a growing number of Irish businesses are trying to serve. Hotels, B&Bs, campsites and holiday lets increasingly have a charger or two in the car park, sometimes installed years ago with no real plan for managing who uses it or what it costs to run.
If you run a business with a charger, your guests feel this squeeze too
A hotel or campsite offering EV charging as a guest amenity is buying its own electricity from one of the same suppliers whose prices just went up. If that business is pricing charging as a straight pass-through of its own electricity bill, every increase from Electric Ireland, SSE Airtricity or Energia lands directly on what the guest pays, or on the host's margin, if they hold the price steady. Either way, the certainty guests used to have about what a hotel charger would cost has become genuinely harder to promise.
This is where what a charger is actually running on starts to matter, not just what it costs. On De Energy Hub, every charger a host manages is assigned one of three energy rates, and drivers see which one before they book:
☀️ Pure Energy: the specific fact worth knowing
Pure Energy means the host's chargers run on 100% renewable electricity from the host's own site, such as solar or wind, and the host chooses this label for those chargers. It is labelled clearly on the hub listing before a guest books. Smart Energy charges from renewables where they can cover the charge, balanced with the grid. Boost Energy is full grid power at maximum kW output, for hosts who need the fastest possible turnaround rather than a clean source.
For a host, the honest version of this is that Pure Energy only works if there's a genuine clean source behind it. A farmhouse B&B with solar panels can label its charger Pure with confidence; a city-centre hotel drawing entirely from the grid is better served being upfront with Smart, which doesn't overclaim. That distinction is the whole point. Instead of a guest wondering whether "free EV charging" quietly means "whatever the grid happened to cost that supplier this month," they see the actual answer before they book, whether that's clean, balanced, or fast, and the host decides which one matches what they can genuinely offer.
It also gives a host something that doesn't move every time a supplier sends out a price-change email. A hotel can offer charging as a guest perk or at a discount using a promo code requested from De Energy Hub and entered by the guest when they book, and whichever pricing model it uses, the energy rate label stays constant and verifiable, independent of which direction the wholesale market moves next quarter.
The same shifts reshaping home bills apply to a business's own electricity account, too. A hotel, farm shop, or campsite with rooftop solar earns Clean Export Guarantee payments on surplus generation exactly like a household does. It's worth checking annually given how much rates vary by supplier, and given that at least one has already cut its export rate substantially in 2026. And with dynamic, half-hourly tariffs now live from every major supplier, a business with predictable overnight or off-peak load, such as running a Boost-rated fast charger or charging a fleet EV, has the same opportunity a home battery owner does: shift consumption into the cheapest half-hour windows rather than paying a flat rate around the clock.
See Pure, Smart and Boost Energy in the app
De Energy Hub lets hotels, B&Bs, campsites and holiday lets turn an existing charger into a bookable, clearly-labelled guest amenity, using the chargers you already own and set up in under an hour.
What this means if you're just trying to run an EV cheaply
⚠️ Update, 29 July: CRU locks in an October network charge rise, but cuts the PSO levy at the same time
The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) has approved new electricity network charges for the 2026/27 tariff year, effective 1 October 2026. For a typical domestic customer, that adds roughly €41.25 over the year, or about €3.44 a month, around €13 less than network operators originally sought, after the CRU trimmed €138 million off their combined revenue request. Running alongside it, and taking effect on the same date, the CRU cut the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy by 66%, bringing the typical household charge down to €0.51 a month. Both changes land on the same October bill, so the net effect for most households is a smaller increase than the €41.25 network figure alone suggests, not the full amount, but not a wash either.
⚠️ Update, 14 August: another increase already confirmed for autumn
Pinergy has announced a 7.6% increase to its standard residential electricity rate, adding roughly €169 a year to a typical bill, effective from 14 September 2026. Standing charges aren't changing. This is separate from the EV Drive Time boost tariff covered above, which Pinergy's announcement doesn't mention; nothing confirms it's also rising in September. PrePayPower, Electric Ireland, Yuno Energy and Flogas had already raised standard rates earlier in 2026, so Pinergy is the first to confirm an autumn move.
None of the above changes the basic advice, it just raises the stakes on following it. Charge at home, on a boost tariff or from solar, as close to 100% of the time as your routine allows, that's still the single biggest lever available, and it's grown more valuable, not less, as the public networks have moved further away in price. If you haven't checked your own supplier's boost tariff against the standard rate recently, or shopped around given how much the market has shifted since you last switched, this is a reasonable week to do it.
For longer trips where public charging is genuinely unavoidable, the membership maths is worth revisiting too. ESB's €4.79 monthly fee pays for itself faster now that the PAYG-to-member gap on DC charging has widened. It won't undo a rate increase, but it takes some of the edge off it.
If you have solar, add two more checks to that annual review: your export rate alongside your import rate, since suppliers move them independently and a good headline rate on one doesn't guarantee the other stayed put, and whether a dynamic tariff now beats your fixed boost tariff, particularly if you're running a battery or a smart charger that can act on next-day pricing automatically.
The price of electricity is out of any single host's control. What a guest sees before they plug in doesn't have to be.
Prices are unlikely to fall meaningfully in the next year or two: wholesale volatility, rising network charges, and continued grid investment all point the same direction. That's not a reason to panic, but it is a reason to be deliberate: about which tariff you're on, about when you charge, and, if you're a host, about what you're actually able to promise the person plugging in.
Frequently asked questions
Why did electricity prices go up in Ireland in 2026?
Electric Ireland raised residential electricity prices by 8% and gas by 7.7% from 1 July 2026, its first increase since October 2022, citing wholesale volatility linked to the conflict in the Middle East. SSE Airtricity, Energia, Bord Gáis Energy, Pinergy and Flogas had already raised prices through late 2025, driven by the same wholesale pressure plus higher CRU-regulated network charges, which rose by an average of €101 per household in 2026.
Are electricity network charges rising again in October 2026?
Yes. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities (CRU) approved new 2026/27 electricity network charges on 29 July 2026, adding roughly €41.25 a year (€3.44 a month) to a typical domestic bill from 1 October 2026, around €13 less than network operators had originally requested. At the same time, the CRU cut the Public Service Obligation (PSO) levy by 66% for the same period, down to €0.51 a month for a typical household, so the two changes landing on the same October bill mean the net increase for most households is smaller than the €41.25 network figure alone.
Did ESB ecars public EV charging prices go up too?
Yes. From July 2026, ESB ecars pay-as-you-go rates rose to €0.60/kWh for AC charging up to 50kW and €0.72/kWh for all DC charging above 50kW, up from a previous split of €0.64/kWh and €0.66/kWh across two DC tiers. Members paying €4.79 a month get a discounted €0.55/kWh AC and €0.67/kWh DC. This is the second ESB ecars price rise since July 2025.
Did IONITY raise its charging prices in Ireland too?
Yes. IONITY raised its pay-as-you-go rate from 81.5c to 85c/kWh from 1 July 2026, a 4% increase applied across large parts of its European network, including its Circle K forecourt locations in Ireland. This is IONITY's highest publicly listed rate of any major Irish network, and industry figures have placed Ireland as the third most expensive country in Europe for public EV charging. An IONITY Motion subscription (€5.99/month) reduces the per-kWh cost for regular users.
Is home EV charging still cheaper than public charging in Ireland?
Yes, significantly. Named home boost tariffs range from Bord Gáis Energy's 8.45c/kWh to SSE Airtricity's 12.13c/kWh even after 2025-2026 supplier increases, while ESB ecars public DC charging now costs €0.72/kWh. For a driver doing 15,000km a year, that gap is worth well over €1,000 annually. Home charging remains the cheapest way to run an EV in Ireland by a wide margin.
What is Pure Energy on De Energy Hub?
Pure Energy is one of three energy rate types a host can assign to a charger on De Energy Hub, alongside Smart and Boost. Pure Energy means the host's chargers run on 100% renewable electricity from the host's own site, such as solar or wind, and the host chooses this label for those chargers. It is labelled clearly to drivers before they book. Smart Energy charges from renewables where they can cover the charge, balanced with the grid, and Boost Energy draws full grid power at maximum output for the fastest possible charge.
Have EV and solar night rates gone up in Ireland?
Yes, for some suppliers. Pinergy raised its EV Drive Time boost rate by over 80% from 1 August 2026, from 5.49c to 9.99c/kWh, and Flogas raised its boost rate to 9.96c/kWh from 20 July 2026. Others held steady: Electric Ireland's Night Boost sits at 9.94c/kWh, Energia's EV Smart Drive at 9.42c/kWh, and Bord Gáis Energy's EV Smart Electricity remains the cheapest on the market at 8.45c/kWh. Even after these changes, boost rates remain a fraction of daytime and public charging rates, but the gap between suppliers has widened, making an annual comparison worthwhile.
Are solar export rates falling in Ireland?
Rates vary by supplier and move independently of import rates. As of mid-2026, SSE Airtricity and Electric Ireland pay the highest standard Clean Export Guarantee rate at 19.5c/kWh, with Bord Gáis, Energia and Flogas at 18.5c/kWh. One supplier that previously led the market at 25c/kWh cut its rate to 18.5c/kWh from 1 August 2026, a 26% reduction. Solar households should check their export rate alongside their import rate at least once a year, since suppliers can change either independently.
What are dynamic electricity tariffs and are they available in Ireland?
Dynamic tariffs charge a unit rate that changes every 30 minutes based on the wholesale electricity price, with next-day prices published in advance. The CRU required Ireland's five major suppliers (Electric Ireland, SSE Airtricity, Energia, Bord Gáis Energy and PrePay Power/Yuno) to offer at least one dynamic tariff, and these launched in June 2026. Rates can fall to roughly 2–8c/kWh overnight when wind generation is high, or spike to 50–70c/kWh at peak demand, so they suit households with a smart charger, battery, or solar system that can shift usage into cheap windows automatically.
Prices verified against Electric Ireland, SSE Airtricity, ESB ecars, CRU dynamic tariff notifications, and published supplier rate cards as of July 2026, rechecked 22 August 2026 against Pinergy's own announcement of its 14 September standard-rate increase, and rechecked 31 August 2026 against the CRU's 29 July decision on 2026/27 network charges and the reduced PSO levy, both effective 1 October 2026. Supplier import rates, export rates and public charging tariffs all change without notice, always confirm current pricing directly with the provider before budgeting, switching, or registering for microgeneration.