How to Switch Electricity Supplier in Ireland

Every rule and figure on this page was read from the regulator's, the network operator's or the supplier's own published page on 20 August 2026. Where something is a supplier's own policy rather than a market-wide rule, it says whose policy it is.

This page is about the mechanics of moving. If your question is which supplier to move to, we keep two separate answers: the cheapest electricity supplier league table for households without panels, and the best plan for solar owners, where the maths works differently because the import rate usually matters more than the export rate.

If greenness is part of your decision, read what a green electricity plan actually means in Ireland first. The renewable percentage on your bill is an annual accounting figure, and it varies from 26.88% to 100% depending on the supplier.

What You Need Before You Start

Three things, and all of them are on your last bill or in your online account.

• Your MPRN. The Meter Point Reference Number identifies your meter, not your account, so it stays with the house. The CRU tells you to look at the top of the front page of your bill.
• An up-to-date meter reading. This is what your old supplier uses to close your account and your new one uses to open theirs. Skip it and both bills get estimated, which is how people end up disputing a final bill months later. Smart meter households are read remotely, but taking a photo of the display on the day costs nothing.
• Your contract end date. The CRU is blunt about this one: there are no charges for switching at the end of your contract, but there may be a charge for breaking a fixed-term contract midway through. Bord Gáis Energy puts typical early exit fees at €50 to €100 on its own switching page.

Worth doing before you commit: ring your existing supplier and ask what they will do to keep you. The CRU explicitly suggests it as a step, and a retention discount that matches the market saves you the paperwork.

The Switching Process, Step by Step

The thing that surprises people is how little of it they do themselves.

Stage	Who does it	Roughly when
Compare plans and pick one	You	Day 0
Sign up with the new supplier, giving MPRN and meter reading	You	Day 0
Cooling-off period runs	Nobody. You can still cancel	Days 1–14
Market messaging with the MRSO inside ESB Networks	The suppliers	After the cooling-off period
Welcome letter from the new supplier	New supplier	Around 2 weeks
Final bill from the old supplier	Old supplier	After the switch completes

Sequence per the CRU's switching guidance. Timing per Bord Gáis Energy, which states the process takes about two weeks.

You do not need to contact your old supplier to cancel. The new supplier notifies them through the market process, and Bord Gáis Energy confirms on its own switching page that no advance notice is required if you are out of contract. Your supply is never interrupted. Nothing physical happens at the house, because nothing physical needs to: the meter, the wires and the connection all belong to ESB Networks either way, and only the name on the billing account changes.

If You Have Solar Panels: What Happens to Your Export Payments

This is the part general switching guides leave out, and it is worth getting right, because a mishandled switch does not cost you your registration. It costs you months of export credit.

Start with the rule that explains everything else. The CRU's own microgeneration Q&A states that you can only have a single supplier for both the electricity you use and the electricity you export. Import and export ride on the same contract. So when you move:

• Your previous supplier pays you for what you exported up to the date of switching.
• Your new supplier must pay you for what you export from the date of switching.

That is the regulator's position, and Electric Ireland describes the same handover on its own microgeneration page: it pays for the period up to your switch, and your new supplier advises how it will handle the next period. The CRU also says you should expect the same switching experience as a customer with no microgeneration at all.

Your NC6 does not need redoing

Your NC6 form registers your system with ESB Networks, not with your supplier. ESB Networks holds your Maximum Export Capacity against your MPRN and passes your export quantities to whoever is your registered supplier at the time. Change supplier and the data simply flows to a different address. There is no form to resubmit, no reapplication, and no new grid connection.

The corollary matters too. ESB Networks is unambiguous that only registered microgenerators are eligible for export payments, and the CRU adds that without the NC6 having been processed, your supplier will not pay you. If your export credits never started in the first place, switching supplier will not fix it. That is an NC6 problem, and it belongs with ESB Networks.

The step people miss

Here is where the regulator's guidance and at least one supplier's process do not quite line up, and the gap is worth knowing about.

The CRU's consumer page says that if you have a smart meter and your NC6 has been processed, your supplier already knows you have microgeneration, and there is no need to contact them directly. That is true as far as the data goes.

But being paid also needs an export tariff on your account, and that is a product, not a data feed. Bord Gáis Energy states that to qualify for an export payment with them you must have them as your energy supplier, and that eligible customers sign up to its Microgen Export Plan through their online account and accept the plan's terms. Electric Ireland is equally direct that only its own customers are eligible for the microgeneration scheme through Electric Ireland. Neither of those is a criticism of either company. It just means the export tariff belongs to the supply contract, and a new supply contract does not carry the old one's export plan across with it.

So do the boring thing. When your welcome pack arrives, check the new supplier has you flagged as a microgenerator and tell them your MPRN if they do not. The CRU recommends exactly this if you are unsure, and it takes one phone call. Then check your first two bills for an export line showing the units exported and the rate paid per unit. The CRU says a compliant bill shows the billing period, the exported units and the rate, so if all three are absent, you have something to chase while it is still small.

Check how often the new supplier actually pays

The CRU raises a point that never appears in a price comparison: the interval at which suppliers pay for export varies, your new supplier's may differ from your old one's, and you should check it before switching. Some credit every bill, some settle a few times a year. It does not change what you earn, but it changes when you see it, and going from a per-bill credit to a twice-yearly one feels like a cut even when the rate went up.

Four Things That Delay or Block a Switch

1. A fixed-term contract you are still inside. The CRU's rule of thumb is no charge at the end of the term, possible charge for breaking it early. Work out whether the saving covers the fee before you sign, not after.

2. A debt flag. If you owe your current supplier money above a threshold set by the CRU, the supplier you are leaving can flag that debt to the supplier you are joining. The domestic electricity threshold is arrears of €225 or more, more than 60 days past the due date, published in the CRU's retail markets reporting and restated on suppliers' own debt-flagging pages. A flag is a notification, not a veto: the new supplier can still accept you, and the amount itself is not disclosed to them. If you are renting, you cannot be flagged for a previous tenant's debt.

3. No meter reading. Not a block, but the most common cause of a final bill that nobody can reconcile. Give a reading on the day you sign up.

4. Refusing a smart meter, if you export. This one is specific to solar homes and it is absolute. The CRU's position is that if you are eligible for a smart meter and refuse, or have refused before, you are not eligible for payment for exported electricity. Where you are eligible, ESB Networks aims to install one within four months of a valid NC6 being processed, and you can ask for a prioritised installation. We go through the whole rule in do you need a smart meter for solar export payments.

What Switching Does Not Touch

• Your SEAI grant. The solar electricity grant is paid on the installation. It has nothing to do with who bills you afterwards, and no supplier can affect it.
• Your grid connection and NC6 registration. Both sit with ESB Networks and follow the MPRN.
• Your physical supply. No outage, no engineer visit, no new meter.
• What your panels generate. Obvious, but worth stating: nothing about a billing change alters your system's output or how much of it you use yourself.

One thing that does change is your standing charge, because that is set by the plan you move to rather than by your meter. ESB Networks notes that installing a microgenerator leaves your standing charge untouched, which is why the fixed charge matters more to a solar home than to anyone else: your panels cut the units you buy, and they cannot cut a charge that does not depend on units.

Is Switching Actually Worth the Bother?

On the regulator's own numbers, yes, and the market agrees with its feet. The CRU reported in June 2026 that 46,087 customers switched electricity supplier in March alone, up 12.30% on March 2025. In the same month, the gap between the highest standard tariff and the lowest discount tariff was €727 in electricity.

Read that figure carefully, because it is routinely mangled. It is the spread between the dearest and the cheapest published position, not a guaranteed saving for you. What you save depends on where you are starting from. If you are sitting on a standard rate with an expired discount, you are at the wrong end of that spread and the number is close to real. If you switched last year and are still inside a discount period, it is not.

The CRU also makes the case for doing it repeatedly rather than once: as at the end of 2024, a customer who switched every year for four years would have saved €1,696 on electricity. Discounts are typically 12-month affairs, so the saving comes from the calendar reminder as much as from any single supplier.

Frequently Asked Questions