Your electricity bill, explained line by line

What are all the lines on an Irish electricity bill?

Layouts differ by supplier, but every Irish electricity bill carries the same cast of characters. Here is the annotated tour — what each line is, and who is really behind it (spoiler: less of your bill is set by your supplier than you would think).

Notice the split. Your supplier chooses the unit rate, the standing charge and the discount. Everything else — your MPRN, your DG group, your meter type, the PSO levy, the VAT rate — is set by ESB Networks, the CRU or the government, and follows you unchanged to any supplier you switch to. That is why switching changes the price and nothing else.

How does the unit rate line work?

The engine room of the bill: your unit rate in cents per kWh, multiplied by the kWh you used in the billing period. (A kWh is one kilowatt for one hour — an hour of an electric shower is roughly nine of them.) On a 24-hour meter it is a single line. On a NightSaver meter you get two lines — a day rate for 08:00–23:00 and a cheaper night rate for 23:00–08:00 — and on smart time-of-use plans up to three or more, one per time band.

Unit rates are where suppliers compete, and where the spread is widest. In the plans we verified on 28 August 2026, standard 24-hour rates run from Community Power’s 33.11c/kWh through Electric Ireland’s 38.04c to Energia’s 42.65c (all inc VAT) — while discounted year-1 rates dip below 30c, like Energia’s 29.86c at 30% off. A useful mental anchor: at the CRU’s typical usage of 4,200 kWh a year, every 1c/kWh of unit rate is €42 a year.

This is also the only line you can shrink by behaviour. Fewer kWh, smaller line — the standing charge and PSO do not care how careful you are. If the units line is the problem, cutting the bill and checking how your usage compares are the pages to read next.

What is the standing charge — and why is rural dearer?

The standing charge is a fixed fee — quoted daily or annually depending on the supplier — that you pay for having a live connection at all. It funds the wires-and-meters side of the system plus account costs, and it lands in full whether you used 6,000 kWh or none. An empty holiday home still runs up a standing charge every day of the year.

The number depends on two things: your supplier, and your DG group. DG1 is an urban connection, DG2 rural — printed on the bill near the MPRN, set by ESB Networks, and not something you or any supplier can change. Rural connections cost more to serve, so DG2 standing charges are consistently higher:

All figures inc VAT, verified on the suppliers’ own sites on 28 August 2026. Two things to take from the table: the spread between suppliers is real money (about €24 a year separates the urban rows shown), and the DG2 premium — €46 to €72 here — is bigger than most unit-rate gaps. The full picture, including why the charge exists and who currently has the leanest one, is in the standing charges guide.

What is the PSO levy on my bill?

The Public Service Obligation levy is a flat, government-mandated charge on every electricity account in the state, funding price supports for renewable generation. The CRU recalculates it every October, and it can fall as well as rise: it is €1.46 a month ex VAT (€1.59 inc VAT — about €19.10 a year) until 30 September 2026, then drops to €0.51 a month ex VAT (about €6.67 a year) for the year to 30 September 2027.

Because it is identical on every bill, the PSO never decides which supplier is cheaper — but it does belong in any “what will this tariff really cost me” sum, which is why the CRU’s EAB formula includes it. The history, the mechanics and where the money goes are in the PSO levy guide.

Is there carbon tax on my electricity bill?

How is VAT applied to an electricity bill?

Last line before the total: VAT at the reduced rate of 9%, which Budget 2026 extended for residential electricity and gas to 31 December 2030. It applies to the entire bill — units, standing charge and PSO levy alike — so there is no arranging your usage around it. The one place it bites comparisons: supplier terms and tariff sheets sometimes quote ex-VAT rates while adverts quote inclusive ones. Multiply any ex-VAT figure by 1.09 before comparing, or you will flatter one deal by nine per cent.

Where does the euro actually go?

Put the three charges side by side and the shape of the bill is obvious. This is a real, fully verifiable example — Community Power’s standard urban 24-hour plan at CRU typical usage, the arithmetic straight from our dataset (28 August 2026): 4,200 kWh × 33.11c + €274.52 standing + €19.10 PSO = €1,684.24 a year, all inc VAT.

Roughly 83% units, 16% standing charge, 1% PSO at typical usage. The ratio moves with consumption: halve the kWh and the units line halves while the other two stand still, pushing the fixed charges towards a third of the bill — which is exactly why low-usage homes and apartments should shop on different maths (we ranked for that separately).

What do E and A mean beside my meter reading?

Every bill shows an opening and closing meter read, each tagged with a letter: A for an actual read (collected by an ESB Networks reader, or remotely from a smart meter), C for a reading you submitted yourself, and E for estimated — the system’s guess, modelled from your history and the time of year, because no real read was available.

An E is not a scandal, but a run of them is a slow-motion problem. Estimates drift — a new baby, a heat pump, working from home — and when a real read finally lands, the gap arrives as one catch-up bill that can be brutal. The habit that prevents it costs two minutes:

• Check the letter on every bill before you check the total.
• If it says E, read the meter and submit the reading — the next bill corrects to reality.
• Photograph the meter whenever you switch supplier or move house — it is your evidence if a closing bill looks wrong.
• On a smart meter, reads should be A automatically — if you still see E, the meter may not be communicating; worth a query.

Estimation has its own machinery — how the guess is made, your rights around it, and how to unwind a wrong one — covered in the estimated readings guide.

What is the MCC code on my bill?

MCC is the Meter Configuration Code — ESB Networks’ label for what kind of meter you have, and it quietly controls which tariffs you can be billed on. The ones you will actually meet: MCC01 is a standard 24-hour meter, MCC02 is NightSaver (separate day and night registers), and MCC12 and MCC16 are smart-meter configurations that enable time-of-use and dynamic plans. If a deal you fancy says “smart meter required”, this code is what it is checking. The full decoder — including keeping NightSaver on a smart meter — is in the smart meters guide.

Why does my bill show a contract end date?

Because suppliers are required to show it — and it is the most financially useful date in your household admin. It marks the end of your fixed term: the day your exit fee stops applying and, on most plans, the day your new-customer discount dies and the bill snaps back to the standard rate. In Ireland that snap-back is where the real overpaying happens — the year-1 vs year-2 gap on a typical plan runs to hundreds of euro.

So treat the line as an instruction: put a reminder in your calendar for a month before the date. That gives you time to compare, ask your current supplier for a retention offer, and switch with the 2–4 week lead time the process needs. Leaving before the date costs €0–€150 per fuel depending on supplier — the maths of jumping early is in the exit fees guide and switching mid-contract.

What is the EAB — and why is it not my bill?

Somewhere on the bill (and on every tariff advert) you will find the Estimated Annual Bill: what the tariff would cost over twelve months at the CRU’s typical household usage of 4,200 kWh, with unit rate, standing charge, PSO and VAT all included. It exists so that two tariffs can be compared on one number instead of four — and for that job it is genuinely good.

What it is not is a prediction of your bill. A one-bed apartment might use 2,000 kWh; a rural house with a heat pump and an EV can clear 8,000. The correction is printed a few lines away: your actual annual consumption, in kWh, on the same bill. Before you compare anything, pull these five numbers off one recent bill:

• Annual kWh — your real usage, the number every comparison should be priced at
• Unit rate(s) — including day/night/peak splits if you have them
• Standing charge — and whether you are DG1 or DG2
• Contract end date — your no-fee switch date
• MPRN — the 11-digit number (starts with 10) you will need to switch

Why is comparing unit rates alone a trap?

Because a unit rate is one-third of the bill’s structure, and the other two-thirds do not move with it. The classic mistake: shortlist by cheapest c/kWh, sign up, and discover the “cheap” tariff carries a standing charge €50–€70 fatter — or that the urban EAB in the ad never applied to your DG2 connection, which in our dataset adds €46–€72 a year by itself. At typical usage a 1c/kWh advantage is worth €42 a year; a standing-charge gap can quietly cancel all of it and more. The lower your usage, the worse the trap: the fixed charges loom larger, so the cheapest-unit-rate tariff is more likely to be the wrong answer in an apartment than in a farmhouse.

The fix is boring and reliable: always compare whole-year totals at your own kWh and your own DG group — units + standing + PSO, inc VAT — never rates in isolation. That is exactly how the EABs in our cheapest electricity ranking and best energy in Ireland are built, year 1 and year 2 side by side.

Where to next?

• Standing charges explained — the fixed line in full, and who keeps it lean.
• The PSO levy — what it funds and the October changes.
• Carbon tax — the line that lives on gas bills, not this one.
• Gas bill explained — the same treatment for the other fuel.
• Estimated readings — when the E has already done damage.
• Best energy in Ireland — whole-year totals, year 1 and year 2, all nine suppliers.

About the author

Conor Ryan

Energy Switching Analyst

Conor Ryan has tracked Irish gas and electricity prices, tariffs and switching since 2019. He builds matched.ie’s energy comparison tools and tests how smart meters and time-of-use plans affect household bills.

7+ years analysing Irish energy marketsCertified in Energy Efficiency (SEAI) and Electricity SupplyFocus on SSE Airtricity, Electric Ireland, Energia and Bord GáisBased in Limerick, covers domestic and small-business tariffs