{"id":222412,"date":"2025-10-24T10:27:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:27:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/222412\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T10:27:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T10:27:08","slug":"wholesale-energy-prices-are-down-why-not-retail-prices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/222412\/","title":{"rendered":"Wholesale energy prices are down, why not retail prices?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The prices suppliers pay for electricity are now 75.6% lower when compared with the peak in August 2022.<\/p>\n<p>According to CSO figures released yesterday, wholesale prices fell by more than 16% in the year to September.<\/p>\n<p>It comes after the majority of energy providers increased their prices for customers ahead of the winter months.<\/p>\n<p>A recent report from the International Energy Agency found that energy retail prices in Ireland are three times higher than wholesale prices.<\/p>\n<p>So why are customers paying more for electricity if wholesale prices are going down?<\/p>\n<p>Energy prices are made up of multiple factors which make it difficult to compare them directly with wholesale prices.<\/p>\n<p>The wholesale energy price only reflects the energy part of a customer bill.<\/p>\n<p>The rest of the bill is made up of other costs associated with the grid, fixed costs, storage, and government charges.<\/p>\n<p>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<p>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<p>&#8220;Although we say that it&#8217;s 76% lower than 2022, that was an absolute peak where we were paying about \u20ac400 per megawatt hour,&#8221; said Professor Ryan.<\/p>\n<p alt=\"7:50am Business News\" class=\"tpe\" data-description=\"Presented by Gail Conway.\" data-embed=\"rte-player\" data-id=\"22554217\" data-ot-category=\"C0004\" data-title=\"Presented by Gail Conway.\">We need your consent to load this rte-player contentWe use rte-player to manage extra content that can set cookies on your device and collect data about your activity. Please review their details and accept them to load the content.<a class=\"blocked-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/business\/2025\/1023\/1540140-wholesale-and-retail-electricity-prices\/javascript:void(0);\" onclick=\"OneTrust.ToggleInfoDisplay()\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Manage Preferences<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Normally, it&#8217;s at about \u20ac40 per megawatt hour, so we are still well above that, we&#8217;re at about \u20ac110 right now, its much below the peak of the Ukraine invasion but we are much higher than historical averages,&#8221; she added.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, the Government said it is planning an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/business\/2025\/1022\/1539968-ireland-spain-interconnector-plans\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">electricity interconnector with Spain<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>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<p>&#8220;We really need to be interconnected with other systems across Europe that can provide backup when we don&#8217;t have wind or solar available, right now we&#8217;re connected to Great Britain but they&#8217;re in the same geographical area as we are so if it&#8217;s windy in Ireland it&#8217;ll be windy there and vice versa,&#8221; explained Professor Ryan.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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,&#8221; she concluded.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The prices suppliers pay for electricity are now 75.6% lower when compared with the peak in August 2022.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":222413,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-222412","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222412\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/222413"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}