SSE Airtricity Price Increase, October 2026

From Monday 5 October 2026, SSE Airtricity raises a typical electricity bill by 8.9% and a typical gas bill by 9.3%, which works out at an extra 47c and 38c a day. Underneath that average, its own rate table puts the increase almost entirely on daylight and evening electricity. Day rates rise 11%. Peak rates rise 11%. Night rates rise 5%. That is the reverse of the shape Energia published three days ago, and it matters, because the hours SSE has chosen to charge more for are the hours a solar roof is generating.

The New Rates, Side by Side

SSE Airtricity publishes both sets of figures as tariff tables on its own site, the rates valid now and the rates valid from 5 October. Every number below is the SSE Airtricity Standard column excluding VAT, and every before-and-after pair is the same tariff on the same meter rather than two different products lined up next to each other. Domestic electricity and gas carry 9% VAT in Ireland.

Rural households pay more in standing charge and therefore more in cash, though the same 6.1% applies across every meter type. A rural Nightsaver home pays €23.18 a year more excluding VAT before it uses a single unit.

Where the 8.9% Actually Lands

SSE's footnote breaks the headline into its parts: a 9.4% rise in the electricity unit rate and a 6.12% rise in the standing charge, which together make 8.9% on an average bill. The 9.4% is itself an average of the six rates above, and they have not moved together.

On a smart meter the day rate goes up 4.39c and the night rate goes up 1.28c. On a Nightsaver meter the day rate goes up 4.21c and the night rate 1.22c. In both cases roughly three and a half times more of the increase is charged in daylight than after 11pm. The peak rate, 5pm to 7pm on a smart meter, rises by the largest single amount on the whole list at 4.92c, reaching 49.64c excluding VAT or 54.11c including it.

SSE attributes the change to wholesale gas prices, which it says have more than doubled in twelve months on Winter26 contracts, and to higher electricity system operator and network charges taking effect in October. Neither of those is specifically a daytime cost. How the increase is split across the clock is SSE's own decision, just as Energia's decision to load its increase onto night units was Energia's.

Panels Only: This One You Can Actually Dodge

A solar roof buys you out of daytime units. When the increase is concentrated in daytime units, the roof is worth more the day after the change than the day before.

Take a household self-consuming 1,200 kWh a year of its own generation on the smart tariff. Today that avoided cost is worth €522.28 including VAT. From 5 October it is worth €579.71. Your existing panels earn you about €57 a year more than they did, for doing nothing different. On a 24 hour meter the same 1,200 kWh moves from €493.51 to €539.94, about €46 more.

Set against that, the urban standing charge rises €16.13 a year including VAT and no amount of generation touches it, because you pay it for being connected rather than for using anything. So a panels-only home on a smart meter comes out roughly €41 a year ahead of where it would have been without the panels under the new rates. Compare that with the Energia increase, where the two effectively cancelled.

That is arithmetic from stated assumptions, not a figure SSE publishes. Change the self-consumption and the answer changes with it. The direction is what holds: an increase weighted towards daylight is the kind solar protects you from.

The Export Rate Did Not Change, and That Is the Real Story

SSE Airtricity still pays 19.5c per kWh under the Clean Export Guarantee, listed unchanged on both the current and the 5 October tariff tables and on its tariffs page. The Activ8 premium rate, restricted to qualifying Activ8 install customers, still adds 12.5c on top for 32c in year one and 27c in year two. The announcement covers the electricity you buy, not the electricity you sell.

That leaves SSE joint best in the country on export, level with Electric Ireland at 19.5c and a cent ahead of Bord Gáis Energy, Energia, Flogas and Pinergy on 18.5c. The full table is on our Clean Export Guarantee rate comparison, and the mechanics of SSE's own scheme are on the SSE Airtricity microgeneration rate page.

Here is the consequence. A unit you export earns 19.5c. A unit you use in the house during the day saved you 43.52c including VAT and will save you 48.31c. The gap between using your own generation and selling it widens from 24.02c to 28.81c a unit. Export has been flat all year while import has risen four times. Every increase makes self-consumption the better half of the deal by a wider margin, and this one does it faster than most.

Batteries: Both Strategies Improve

Home batteries in Ireland get filled one of two ways, and unusually this price change helps both.

Storing your own solar. A unit generated, stored and used after dark saves you the night rate, which moves from 27.97c to 29.36c including VAT. Against the 19.5c you would have earned exporting it, the gain from storing it instead goes from 8.47c to 9.86c a unit. A modest improvement, because the night rate is the rate that barely moved.

Charging from the grid at night. This strategy lives entirely on the gap between the night rate and the day rate, and that gap widens. On the smart tariff it was 14.27c a unit excluding VAT and becomes 17.38c, a gain of almost 22%. Measured against the peak rate it goes from 19.06c to 22.70c. A household grid-charging 5 kWh a night through the winter half-year, roughly 1,000 kWh, displaces daytime units worth €31.10 a year more than before, excluding VAT.

This is the opposite of what Energia's customers face, where the night-to-day gap narrows by about a third from 12 October. If you have been running a battery on cheap night units, the supplier you are with now decides whether that strategy got better or worse this month. Our pages on home battery storage in Ireland and whether a battery is worth adding to solar work through the cost side.

One Thing Moving the Other Way

The PSO levy falls on 1 October, four days before the SSE increase. It drops from €1.46 to €0.51 a month excluding VAT, or €1.59 to €0.56 including VAT, which is €12.36 a year back in your pocket including VAT. It applies to every domestic electricity customer in Ireland regardless of supplier, and SSE's own footnote says its 8.9% figure already accounts for it. So the levy cut is inside the 8.9%, not an offset you can subtract from it.

Three Suppliers Raise Prices in Eight Days

Four suppliers have now moved for October, and SSE's is the second largest of them on the headline.

• Electric Ireland raised electricity 8% and gas 7.7% from 1 July 2026.
• Pinergy raised electricity 7.6% from 14 September 2026, having cut its export rate from 25c to 18.5c six weeks earlier.
• SSE Airtricity raises electricity 8.9% and gas 9.3% from 5 October 2026, this page.
• Bord Gáis Energy raises electricity 9.1% from 9 October 2026.
• Energia raises electricity 4.73% and gas 9.38% from 12 October 2026.

Three of the five increases below land between 5 and 12 October, eight days apart end to end. The run of Irish prices this year is tracked on our page on electricity prices in Ireland in 2026.

What SSE Airtricity Customers Should Do

• Check which meter you are on before judging the increase. A Nightsaver household that runs the immersion and the washing overnight sees 5% on most of its usage. A smart-meter household that works from home sees 11% on most of its usage.
• If you are on a discounted plan, the discount still applies. The fixed-term percentages come off the new standard rates, so a 30% plan rises with the standard rate rather than staying put.
• Do not switch away for the export rate. SSE's 19.5c is joint best in the market. If you leave, check what you are leaving for.
• If you have panels, this increase works in your favour. Daytime electricity rose 11% and your generation is daytime electricity. Check that your smart meter and microgeneration registration are both in place so you are actually paid for the surplus.
• If you do not have panels yet, the daytime weighting is the argument. The SEAI solar grant is worth up to €1,800 and export still pays 19.5c. Our page on the best electricity plan for solar owners compares the whole package rather than the export number alone.

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