Your electricity levy is being cut in October. Your bill’s still going up.
The CRU announced today that the PSO levy, one of the fixed charges on your electricity bill, is being cut sharply from October. That’s the bit you’ll see in the headlines.
Here’s the bit you won’t: on the same day, it also confirmed that network charges are rising by more. Put the two together and a typical household is about €30 a year worse off, not better, before your supplier changes a thing.
The short version
The levy being cut is small. It drops by about €11 a year for a typical home.
The network charges rising are bigger. They add about €41 a year.
So you’re roughly €30 a year worse offon the regulated part of your bill. The levy cut gets the good headline because it’s easy to point at. The network rise is quieter because it’s tucked inside your standing charge, the daily fee you pay no matter how much you use, and the part of the bill almost nobody reads.
Why this matters (and why it mostly doesn’t)
The €30 isn’t the point.
Honestly? €30 a year is not the thing to lose sleep over. It’s a couple of euro a month.
The reason it’s worth knowing isn’t the €30. It’s that a “levy cut” headline can sit on top of a bill that’s actually going up, and that the increase lands in the standing charge, the exact part of the bill that no discount ever touches. So if you were feeling reassured by the headline, don’t be.
The thing that actually moves your bill by real money isn’t any of this. It’s whether you’re on a good plan with your supplier. The gap between the cheapest and dearest deals for the same house runs into the hundreds a year, which makes a €30 regulated change look like small change.
The CRU said as much itself today: alongside cutting the levy, it pointed out that the way to actually save on your bill is to switch supplier. Hard to argue with the regulator on that one.
What to actually do
Nothing urgent. But check your renewal.
If your current deal is coming up for renewal, this is a decent nudge to check whether you’re still on a competitive plan, because that’s where the real money is, not in the €30.
And when you compare plans, look at the full yearly cost, standing charge included, not just the headline discount. The standing charge is the bit that’s rising here, and the bit a discount percentage does nothing about. More on why that matters.
The detail, and the sources
All figures are from two CRU decisions published on 29 July 2026, both effective 1 October 2026.
PSO levy (down):the domestic PSO levy falls from €1.46 to €0.51 per month, a 65% cut, about €11 a year. The total national levy drops from €125.38m to €41.48m. The levy moves inversely to wholesale electricity prices; higher forecast wholesale prices mean less top-up funding is needed for renewable generators this year. Source: CRU Decision Paper CRU2026107, 29 July 2026.
Network charges (up):the CRU estimates the combined transmission and distribution impact will increase a typical domestic customer’s annual bill by approximately €41 for 2026/27. Within that, the transmission element actually falls by about €4 (roughly a 3% reduction); the increase is driven by distribution network costs and continued grid investment. Source: CRU Information Paper CRU2026112, 29 July 2026.
Net effect:~€41 network increase minus ~€11 PSO reduction ≈ €30 more per year on the regulated portion of a typical bill. This is Shrewd’s arithmetic on the two CRU figures, not a combined figure the CRU itself published.
On switching: in the PSO decision, the CRU notes the levy cut reduces the fixed charge, and that customers can save money on their electricity bill by switching supplier and through energy efficiency.
All figures are the CRU’s estimates for an “archetypical” domestic customer and vary with your usage and supplier. This covers regulated charge changes only; your actual bill also depends on your supplier’s unit rate and standing charge.