Ward calls for cuts in electricity prices to be applied to Electric Vehicle chargers

A Fine Gael Senator has said that reductions in the residential electricity unit rate must equally be applied to public chargers for electric vehicles.

Speaking as Electric Ireland announced an 8% reduction in the residential electricity unit rate, Senator Barry Ward said: “I welcome Electric Ireland’s decision to reduce the cost of electricity in homes, but they also operate a public charging network across the country and the discount must also be applied to that network.

“Electric Ireland will not say whether it intends to similarly reduce the cost of charging a car at one of its over 1,500 charging points around the country, as they deem it to be commercially sensitive information.

“If Electric Ireland is serious about reducing the cost of electricity, and they should be, they must apply the same deduction to their EV charging network. Not to do so would be inconsistent with their claims of being committed to supporting customers; electric cars drivers are customers too!

“It is now 3.6 times more expensive to charge your car than to boil your kettle[1], and even taking the most favourable comparison, the difference only comes down to 1.5 times.

“How can we say that we are incentivising electric car use when the electricity provider is blatantly discriminating between customers? Excuses that the cost of EV charging includes the cost of maintaining the network of car chargers won’t was since the cost of domestic electricity includes the cost of maintaining the much more extensive national grid.

“Electric Ireland must be consistent and pass on the same reductions to electric car customers that it has trumpeted for its domestic customers,” Senator Ward said.

The unit cost of charging a car is already substantially more expensive than the domestic rate, with the cost of a “high power” charge (68.2c/kWh without a monthly subscription) now 3.6 times more expensive than the domestic night rate (18.9c/kWh for domestic night rate), excluding domestic standing charges.

Comparison between the domestic day rate (36.4c/kWh for 24-hour standard rate, excluding domestic standing charges) and the standard EV charge with a monthly subscription (50.9c/kWh with a monthly subscription of €4.79).