{"id":24506,"date":"2025-10-23T20:22:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T00:22:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/2025\/10\/23\/wholesale-energy-prices-are-down-why-not-retail-prices\/"},"modified":"2025-10-23T20:22:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T00:22:44","slug":"wholesale-energy-prices-are-down-why-not-retail-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/2025\/10\/23\/wholesale-energy-prices-are-down-why-not-retail-prices\/","title":{"rendered":"Wholesale energy prices are down, why not retail prices?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The prices suppliers pay for electricity are now 75.6% lower when compared with the peak in August 2022.<\/p>\n

According to CSO figures released yesterday, wholesale prices fell by more than 16% in the year to September.<\/p>\n

It comes after the majority of energy providers increased their prices for customers ahead of the winter months.<\/p>\n

A recent report from the International Energy Agency found that energy retail prices in Ireland are three times higher than wholesale prices.<\/p>\n

So why are customers paying more for electricity if wholesale prices are going down?<\/p>\n

Energy prices are made up of multiple factors which make it difficult to compare them directly with wholesale prices.<\/p>\n

The wholesale energy price only reflects the energy part of a customer bill.<\/p>\n

The rest of the bill is made up of other costs associated with the grid, fixed costs, storage, and government charges.<\/p>\n

The average wholesale price of electricity in September was \u20ac94.48 per MWh, down from \u20ac112.73 during the same month last year, and a slight drop from the \u20ac96.38 recorded in August 2025.<\/p>\n

However, they are still much higher than historical prices, according to Professor Lisa Ryan from the School of Economics at University College Dublin. <\/p>\n

“Although we say that it’s 76% lower than 2022, that was an absolute peak where we were paying about \u20ac400 per megawatt hour,” said Professor Ryan.<\/p>\n

“Normally, it’s at about \u20ac40 per megawatt hour, so we are still well above that, we’re at about \u20ac110 right now, its much below the peak of the Ukraine invasion but we are much higher than historical averages,” she added.<\/p>\n

Yesterday, the Government said it is planning an electricity interconnector with Spain.<\/p>\n

Professor Ryan says interconnectors are good news for Ireland as it tries to switch to a fully renewable system, which is made-up of wind and solar.<\/p>\n

“We really need to be interconnected with other systems across Europe that can provide backup when we don’t have wind or solar available, right now we’re connected to Great Britain but they’re in the same geographical area as we are so if it’s windy in Ireland it’ll be windy there and vice versa,” explained Professor Ryan.<\/p>\n

“Connecting to Spain is connecting to a different region which has complementary sources of generation, they have often excess solar and their prices are lower than ours, so this should bring down costs for Ireland,” she concluded.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The prices suppliers pay for electricity are now 75.6% lower when compared with the peak in August 2022. According to CSO figures released yesterday, wholesale prices fell by more than 16% in the year to September. It comes after the majority of energy providers increased their prices for customers ahead of the winter months. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24507,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24506","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-news","entry","has-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24506","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24506"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24506\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24507"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24506"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24506"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharewatch.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24506"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}