ESB ecars Announce Price Decrease

Good news for eletric car owners as the ESB have announced a planned price decrease across the public EV charging network in the Republic of Ireland, which will be effective immediately. This will see unit rates for High-Power (200kW) chargers reduce by 13%, Fast chargers reduce by 12% and Standard chargers reduce by 8%. 

Commenting on the price reduction, John Byrne, Head of eMobility at ESB, said: “We are pleased to announce a reduction of prices across our extensive EV public charging network. We are lowering our prices following reductions in wholesale energy costs while continuing to upgrade and improve our charging infrastructure across the country. We keep our prices under constant review and are committed to providing value to our customers with competitive prices.”   

ESB has installed 42 multi-vehicle, high-power charging hubs nationwide over the past two years and replaced over 300 chargers to increase the speed and capacity of the charging network. We now have over 1,600 public charge points in place across the country with an average reliability rate of 98%.  

What are the prices?  

Please see the table below for full view of the new prices:  

	Membership	PAYG
Standard Charging (<22kW+)	€0.47 / kWh	€0.52 / kWh
Fast Charging (50kW - 100kW)	€0.52 / kWh	€0.57 / kWh
High Power (150kW - 300kW)	€0.54 / kWh	€0.59 / kWh
Monthly Subscription	€4.79	N/A

There is no change to the membership subscription. Contactless payments will be available on the high-power chargers from June 2024. The ESB are continuing to roll out this functionality on all fast chargers over the coming months. There will be no premium charged for using contactless on the network.

Changes to overstay fee 

As 76% of a recent customer survey respondents support an overstay fee to reduce queuing, the ESB have listened to suggestions and have made some changes to the overstay fee to reflect the feedback revceived.  

The existing one-off overstay fee of €8 has been replaced by a more progressive, incremental fee to further encourage drivers to free up charge points for other drivers when finished charging. The new overstay fee structure is 50c/min and kicks in after 45 minutes on fast and high-power chargers and after 10 hours on our standard chargers.   

To ensure you are notified of when overstay fees would apply, drivers are encouraged to turn on notifications on the ESB ecar connect app. This will mean you will receive push notifications as a reminder overstay fee when you start your charge.

UPDATES	High Power Chargers (150kW - 300kW)	Fast Chargers  (50kW – 100kW)	Standard AC Chargers  (<22kW)
€0.50 per minute incremental overstay fee is applied AFTER:	45 minutes	45 minutes	10 hours

Do drivers need to do anything?  

If you are already signed up to use ESB’s public EV charging network, you do not need to do anything – the new rates will be displayed on the ecar connect app and you can continue to charge as normal.  It is also worth noting that local parking enforcement is managed separately to ESB by local authorities. Please refer to local parking fee signage when charging to ensure you are compliant.