The €600 in energy credits announced by the government are likely to be eaten up by annual charges, as a series of price hikes kick off today.
energy bills are expected to soar this month as seven providers raise prices, with four providers offering them as of today.
As families turn on their heating for the winter, they will see steep increases in bills hitting their doormats.
Rising electricity bills will this time lead to some families facing additional annual charges of up to €600.
Over the past 18 months, average annual electricity bills have doubled to over €2,000, with similar increases for gas.
This will add another €1,200 to the cost of electricity for an average household in a year.
This means that the government’s plans to pay for three energy credits, totaling €600, will only cover around half of the higher electricity costs.
The first €200 credit should be paid out before Christmas – but prices are expected to see big increases in October.
Electric Ireland’s 1.2 million customers will see unit electricity prices rise by 38% from today.
Also increasing prices from today are SSE Airtricity, PrepayPower and Community Power.
The latest hike will add an additional €600 to the annual electricity cost for SSE Airtricity customers.
Bord Gáis Energy’s unit electricity tariffs will increase by 46% from tomorrow, adding €579 to the annual cost for its 300,000 electricity subscribers.
Next week, Energia will implement its fifth price hike since January last year, with electricity unit prices up 34% once the OSP tax reduction is taken into account.
Flogas Energy increases electricity and gas prices from the end of the month. Pinergy raised its prices last month.
The higher prices coincide with colder nights and come on top of huge increases announced in recent months.
Daragh Cassidy, of price comparison site Bonkers.ie, said October is when many people turn the heating back on and the demand for energy in the home increases.
“This year it also coincides with huge price increases. These increases come on top of energy prices that are already at record highs.
He said households should be prepared for energy bills over the coming weeks, which will be more than double those of last year in many cases.
And Mr Cassidy warned that further price increases are expected over the coming weeks.
“Although the price of gas has fallen slightly in the wholesale markets in recent weeks, it is very volatile and continues to increase massively compared to the beginning of last year.”
He said the next few months were going to be very difficult with the threat of outages, more suppliers exiting the market and further price increases.
Meanwhile, Tánaiste Leo Varadkar said a way must be found to protect 200,000 pay-as-you-go customers from having their gas or electricity disconnected.
He told Solidarity TD Mick Barry he would speak to the environment and social care ministers to find a way to protect these customers.
Mr. Barry highlighted the case of a woman whose gas and electricity supply is cut off if she runs out of credit.
A moratorium on electricity and gas cuts is in place for the winter. Mr. Barry asked if this applied to pay-as-you-go customers.
Mr Varadkar said the moratorium “should apply to everyone”.
However, he acknowledged that “it is difficult to know how one would apply this in the case of prepaid customers simply because of the nature of how prepayment works”.
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