Ireland is paying €480 more a year for electricity than the rest of the EU, according to new research from statistical agency Eurostat.
The research shows that Ireland's prices are 40% more than the average in the EU and at 40.42 cent per kilowatt-hour. Germany is the second highest country at 38.66c per kilowatt-hour.
Hungary, Malta and Bulgaria were found to have the lowest electricity prices.
The news of this report comes shortly after Prepay Power announced that they would be increasing their prices by 10.6% at the start of next month.
The energy and gas provider said that they were forced to increase their prices due to "the increase in wholesale energy costs arising from the conflict in the Middle East", according to reports.
They estimate that this will add €3.23 per week to electricity bills and €3.28 to gas bills to the average household. Marking the energy and gas providers first price increase in three years, it will add €168 extra per year for average electricity bills and €170 annually for average gas bills.
Daragh Cassidy, of price comparison site Bonkers told the Journal that Ireland's electricity and gas bills have been higher than the EU "for years." “We’ve a relatively small and dispersed population with a lot of one-off housing, so the costs for the upkeep of our electricity network are very high on a per capita basis. The rapid growth of the population and the increase in the number of data centres operating here in recent years also hasn’t helped. This is putting pressure on the grid. And in recent years we’ve had to procure high-cost, emergency gas generation to plug the gap between electricity demand and supply," Cassidy said.
Taoiseach Micheál Martin stated this week that Ireland should consider using nuclear energy as an attempt to lower costs. “We’ve made significant progress on renewables, particularly onshore wind and solar, and offshore wind will be a major next step. But we should also look at alternatives, including nuclear, given advances in technology,” he said.
Cassidy explains that this would help lower costs, but we need to be more honest about their "true costs and the actual potential savings."
“Renewables require a lot of investment in the grid, as well as huge amounts of battery storage, the cost of which ends up getting passed on to consumers. And the highly variable and intermittent nature of wind and solar means they push up other electricity system costs," Cassidy continued.
