The real cost of charging your EV in Ireland

If you're thinking about going electric, or you already have, the question that actually matters is: what does a year of driving cost me, where does that money go, and how low can I reasonably get it? Short answer: in Ireland the spread between the best and worst way to charge an EV is enormous — roughly 5× between cheapest and dearest.

The baseline

A typical EV consumes about 18 kWh per 100 km in Irish conditions. If you drive the Irish average of 17,000 km/year, that's about 3,060 kWh/year. Plug that into the different ways to charge:

• Public rapid charging (50c/kWh): €1,530/yr. This is what you pay if you mostly use motorway chargers. Convenient, sometimes necessary, but expensive.
• Flat-rate home (34c/kWh blended): €1,040/yr. The default if you plug in at home on a standard tariff and don't think about timing.
• Night-rate tariff (15c/kWh): €460/yr. If you have a Day/Night tariff and you remember to charge between 23:00 and 08:00.
• Smart-charged on dynamic pricing (~8–10c/kWh): €244–€306/yr. Algorithm picks the 4–5 cheapest hours of each night. You don't remember anything; the software handles it.

Why smart charging is so much cheaper than even night rate

A Day/Night tariff gives you a flat cheap rate across a fixed window. But within that window the wholesale price is not flat — the cheapest hours are often between 01:00 and 05:00, and they can be dramatically cheaper than the rest of the night. Smart charging chases those specific hours. You get the wholesale trough instead of a retail average.

Carbon: the second axis

Charging at a random moment on the Irish grid means about 250 gCO₂/kWh. Charging at peak can hit 380+. Charging on the overnight wind trough can drop to 80–120. Over a year that's roughly 0.8 tonnes of CO₂ saved by smart-charging vs random charging — more than you'd save by changing almost any other single household thing.

Doesn't this need a smart charger?

No. Driving Green's smart charging works via the car's API (starting with Tesla via the BTR / Energy Hub integration). That means we can schedule your charging whether your charger is a €1,200 smart wall box or a €300 tethered unit. You plug in; we decide when the electrons flow.

If you want to see it quantified for your specific car and driving, the Energy Score takes ~2 minutes. Or if you have a Tesla, go straight to smart charging.