EV Charging Cost Calculator Ireland

On a night or smart EV tariff of about €0.10 per kWh, a 60 kWh battery costs roughly €6.00 to fill from empty, and a typical 20%–80% top-up about €3.60. On a standard day rate the same charge costs three to four times more, which is why almost every EV owner charges overnight. Enter your own unit price from your bill for an exact figure. These are battery-energy figures — the electricity that actually reaches the car. Your meter records somewhat more, because some is lost as heat in the cable, the charger and the battery, and how much depends on your charger, your car and the temperature. Treat the figures as the bottom of the range: your real bill lands at or a little above them, never below.

Public 50 kW+ fast charging typically costs €0.56–€0.68 per kWh on the main Irish networks in 2026 — roughly €36.00 for a full 60 kWh charge, against about €6.00 at home overnight. Slower public AC posts sit in between. The more of your charging you do at home, the lower your cost per kilometre; the home/public slider models your own split.

At a real-world 18.5 kWh per 100 km and a home rate of €0.10 per kWh, an EV costs about €1.85 per 100 km — against roughly €9–€12 for petrol or diesel over the same distance at 2026 pump prices. Small hatchbacks use less (about 15–17 kWh/100 km); family SUVs use more (19–22). That €1.85 is the energy drawn from the battery, priced at the home rate, which is the same basis our EV vs petrol calculator uses; add a little on top for charging losses.

A 7 kW charger delivers about 7 kWh an hour, so a 20%–80% top-up on a 60 kWh battery (36 kWh) takes roughly 5.1 hours — an easy overnight. A 3-pin granny cable at 2.3 kW takes about 15.7 hours, roughly three times as long. Those are the times to move that energy into the battery with the charger holding its full rate, so a real session runs a little longer — some electricity is lost as heat on the way in, and a 3-pin socket loses more again. Fast public chargers are limited by the car: many used EVs peak at 50–100 kW, so a 20%–80% session takes 30–45 minutes.

The SEAI Home Charger Grant is €300 towards a home charge point installed by a Safe Electric registered electrician — and it applies whether your EV is new or used. Installation is usually a four-figure job before the grant, depending on the cable run and your fuse board; our guide on home charger installation costs in Ireland walks through the real quotes.

Yes, and by a wide margin when most charging is done at home. For a typical Irish driver on 15,000 km a year the calculator shows charging in the low hundreds of euro against petrol well over a thousand — the annual saving is shown for your own mileage and split. Public-only charging narrows the gap a lot, which matters if you cannot charge at home.