Ireland Electricity Tariff API

How a household electricity price is built in Ireland

Ireland runs a liberalized retail market inside a Single Electricity Market shared with Northern Ireland — a genuinely all-island wholesale market with day-ahead and intraday trading. A handful of large suppliers compete for household customers, one distribution operator serves the whole state, and network charges are reset once a year by the regulator on an October-to-September cycle. The smart-meter rollout has now reached most homes, which is what makes half-hourly products possible.

What a household bill is made of

1. 1

   Energy

   Wholesale prices form in the all-island market. Standard household products quote a unit rate plus a daily standing charge, often with a night-rate variant. Smart-meter products add day/night/peak bands, weekend rates and free-hour offers, and from 2026 every major supplier must offer a genuinely dynamic tariff whose unit rate changes every half hour with the wholesale price.

2. 2

   Network charges

   Transmission and distribution revenues are approved annually by the regulator and recovered through published use-of-system charges. Network cost is a substantial share of a household bill — around 30% of the total cost of energy to a home — and is passed through by suppliers rather than billed separately, so it appears inside the unit rate and standing charge rather than as its own line.

3. 3

   Taxes and levies

   The public-service-obligation levy is the visible statutory item: one identical amount on every plan from every supplier, reset each October, funding renewable-support schemes and security of supply. It has swung between a meaningful charge, zero, and even a rebate depending on how wholesale prices compare with the supported schemes’ strike prices. Household electricity carries no electricity excise of its own; the carbon tax applies to heating fuels, not to electricity.

4. 4

   VAT

   9% on domestic electricity — a reduced rate introduced in 2022 and since extended to the end of the decade — applied to every component of the bill including the public-service levy.

Regulation shaping the price

• The CRU approves network revenue allowances and sets the public-service-obligation levy for a tariff year beginning 1 October.
• Wholesale trading is all-island: the Single Electricity Market couples Ireland and Northern Ireland into one price zone with shared day-ahead and intraday markets.
• Suppliers of a certain size must offer a dynamic half-hourly tariff, available only to homes with a smart meter since half-hourly readings are needed to bill one.
• Household solar export is paid through a supplier-set export rate under a statutory clean-export guarantee rather than a fixed state feed-in tariff, so the rate differs by supplier.