Let’s crunch some data, shall we? The Central Statistics Office (CSO) reports that the mean electricity consumption for houses in Ireland clocks in at 4,200kWh yearly, approximately 11kWh daily. With the standard package from Electric Ireland, every kWh is charged 25c, accumulating an annual expense of €1,050.
As per 2024 charts, the Volkswagen ID.4 stands out as Ireland’s leading electric automobile, popular for its 77kWh battery pack. Charging this car from zero to full requires 77kWh of electricity, a process which costs €19.25. Should you charge your vehicle daily, the annual cost would soar to €7,026 – over twice your yearly household electricity expense.
Nonetheless, a closer look at the figures paints a different picture. The Volkswagen ID.4, with its 77kWh battery, boasts an advertised range of 570km. As revealed by the CSO, vehicles in Ireland cover an estimated 16,352km each year on an average. While this figure is skewed by including long-haul lorries, taxis, and delivery vans, let’s consider it representative of a typical Irish car user’s annual mileage.
Assuming the ID.4 consistently achieves its top range every charge, it would necessitate 28 full charges to complete 16,352km. Consequently, the monetary expense would be €552 per annum. That said, in a practical scenario, an ID.4 driving across diverse roads, inclusive of long-distance highway travels, yields around 450km each full charge. That translates to 36 full charges yearly, or a bill of €699, a whopping two-thirds increase on your electricity expenditure. Though not a doubling, it’s far from insignificant.
Certainly, we must consider another element. If you’re not incurring additional costs on your electric bill to power your electric vehicle (EV), then how are you commuting? Most likely, you’re driving a petrol or diesel car, which has a considerable expenditure on fuel.
Consider a VW Tiguan 2.0 TDI diesel, a comparable model to an ID.4. It’s rather efficient, with the official WLTP fuel economy data suggesting it averages approximately 5.3 litres for every 100km. Therefore, to tackle 16,352km, you’d need 866 litres of diesel. Given that the average nationwide rate for diesel stands at €1.71 per litre at the moment of drafting this, that amounts to about €1,480.
But once more, it’s not that straightforward. Based on our observations, in realistic driving conditions, the VW Tiguan 2.0 TDI doesn’t average 5.3 litres per 100km, but closer to 6.5 litres per 100km. Applying that figure to our calculations generates an annual fuel expense of €1,817. Hence, with all other conditions remaining constant, operating the most frequently used EV in Ireland would add roughly €699 to your yearly electricity bill. However, by abstaining from driving a comparable diesel vehicle, you’d save about €1,817, leading to a net saving of €1,118. This amount is sufficient to maintain your household for a whole year at its cost prior to adopting an EV.
Once more, it’s not as straightforward as it seems. That 25c per kWh rate is the standard electricity tariff. Electric Ireland (along with other energy suppliers) also provides an alternative deal that increases your daytime rate to 35c per kWh but reduces your nighttime rate to 17c per kWh.
In principle, the majority of electric vehicle (EV) recharging is anticipated to take place overnight. After returning from work and plugging in your EV around 5 or 6pm, you can command your vehicle or your home charging station (or even both, as they are intelligent devices and some such as those made by Ohme, can even decide when power is at its most inexpensive and begin recharging then) to postpone charging until the low night tariff starts at 11pm, which goes on until 8am. This provides nine hours of charging, a period that, delivering a charging rate of 7.4kWh, is more than adequate to replenish the battery of the ID.4, under the assumption that it wasn’t completely flat when plugged in. With a rate of 17 cents per kWh, a complete recharge will cost about €13, translating to an average annual expenditure of €471, taking into account 450km per charge as the standard mileage.
You can also reduce this cost even further by installing solar panels on your house and directing your intelligent charger to power up your car using solar energy. Also, many automobile manufacturers currently collaborate with energy providers to offer even lower night recharging rates or provide ‘free days’, where you get a day without paying for your energy, so you are free to charge as much as you want.
In conclusion, refuelling an EV at home will not necessarily cause your energy bill to jump twofold. Yes, it might go up by about fifty percent based on the national averages, but the monetary savings gained from not having to purchase diesel will more than compensate for this surge.